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which would be better option for $300 difference?

C

cntryislandboy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 8, 2011
4
0
Well after joining this site long ago, and finally having the funds to purchase a macbook I'm just down to a couple questions. The 2 mac books I'm looking at are the 13.3 version with from what I can tell all the specs being the same expect the following and the price difference is $300. I'm just trying to figure out if the price difference is worth it. Will mostly be used for school and internet surfing with the occasional photo and video work.

500gb hard drive vs 750
2.5 i5 dual vs a 2.9 i7 dual
4 gig ram vs 8

I figure I can jump to 16 gigs of ram for about $100 and add a 1TB or larger external HD for another $100 or so. I'm still coming in at $100 less on the macbook with double the ram and hd space, just not the processor. So your suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
 
cntryislandboy said:
Well after joining this site long ago, and finally having the funds to purchase a macbook I'm just down to a couple questions. The 2 mac books I'm looking at are the 13.3 version with from what I can tell all the specs being the same expect the following and the price difference is $300. I'm just trying to figure out if the price difference is worth it. Will mostly be used for school and internet surfing with the occasional photo and video work.

500gb hard drive vs 750
2.5 i5 dual vs a 2.9 i7 dual
4 gig ram vs 8

I figure I can jump to 16 gigs of ram for about $100 and add a 1TB or larger external HD for another $100 or so. I'm still coming in at $100 less on the macbook with double the ram and hd space, just not the processor. So your suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
Click to expand...

Get the i5 and save your pennies for a ram upgrade and 128 or 256 SSD and optibay to use with the stock hard drive (there's good instructions to turn the two into a DIY Fusion Drive). You'll feel more of a performance difference with this than a i5 to i7 or going from a 500 to 750 gb HD.
 
For what you are going to do seems to me all you need to do is get the base model and take that $300 and buy a SSD and 16GB of ram and you will have all of the performance you will ever need. It's what I did and I have had no issues with any photo or video editing.
 
Thanks guys for the info, sounds like adding a ssd drive might be a nice option, i didn't know you could do that in a mac. I know nothing of adding things like this but sounds like a nice challenge.
 
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