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Will the 13" MBP suit my needs?...and maybe my wants

K

kvtp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 27, 2007
11
0
My main reason for wanting to switch from my old dell laptop is I need a new one for college , the longevity of the macs and great customer support.

But as far what else I do when computing other than school work is I like to multitask alot, firefox with 30 tabs open and multiple programs running and switch between them without much lag, and I download alot of movies/tv shows and watch them on my laptop, I don't do any gaming so I figured I wouldn't need anything with a insanely good graphics card but is the 9400M more than acceptable for what I do?

I'm looking into getting either the 13" 2.53ghz MBP with 4gb ram or possibly the 15 incher with same specs, the 15" MBP has two fans if I'm correct and I've heard that the 13" MBP does not and has some occasional heating problems and that OSX has some problems with flash and takes up alot of CPU space causing it to overclock or something to cause lagging.

any input greatly appreciated
 
If you do not need all 15" of screen size, I'd recommend going with the base 13" and upgrading to 4 Gb of RAM as well as a SSD with the extra coin. This will suit you well for quite a while and the SSD will be quick as hell. Good luck.
 
kufford said:
If you do not need all 15" of screen size, I'd recommend going with the base 13" and upgrading to 4 Gb of RAM as well as a SSD with the extra coin. This will suit you well for quite a while and the SSD will be quick as hell. Good luck.
Click to expand...

I agree. Multitasking isn't so CPU intensive unless you run 30 tabs with Flash content and convert movies at the same time, so get the 4GB RAM because it'll speed multitasking a lot.
 
15 inch isnt necessary
signature_SmileyFace.jpg
the base 13" will be fine and that will give you the money for an SSD HD and some extra ram which i think you should install yourself as apple charge hefty amounts. As for the CPU, 2.53 will be fine so long as you aren't say running 30tabs full of flash apps whilst ripping and converting movies, but even so, it wil only be a little bit laggy, nothing too bad (i have first hand experience lol)
 
thanks for the replies, never considered getting a SSD, what exactly would the benefits be vs what comes stock with the computer?
 
Have you ever owned a Mac before? Firefox is really unstable, especially if you're the type to have 30 tabs open and 50 extensions loaded.

Anyway, I'm not trying to bash Mac, I just don't want you to be surprised when FF crashes at least once a day. I got my first Mac a few weeks ago, and love it, but was definitely unpleasantly surprised by how unstable the Mac version of FF is. I switched to Safari, which is very stable, but I still sometimes miss my extensions.

EDIT: I'm running Snow Leopard, so maybe that has something to do with it. Can any Leopard users comment on FF stability?
 
kvtp said:
My main reason for wanting to switch from my old dell laptop is I need a new one for college , the longevity of the macs and great customer support.

But as far what else I do when computing other than school work is I like to multitask alot, firefox with 30 tabs open and multiple programs running and switch between them without much lag, and I download alot of movies/tv shows and watch them on my laptop, I don't do any gaming so I figured I wouldn't need anything with a insanely good graphics card but is the 9400M more than acceptable for what I do?

I'm looking into getting either the 13" 2.53ghz MBP with 4gb ram or possibly the 15 incher with same specs, the 15" MBP has two fans if I'm correct and I've heard that the 13" MBP does not and has some occasional heating problems and that OSX has some problems with flash and takes up alot of CPU space causing it to overclock or something to cause lagging.

any input greatly appreciated
Click to expand...

is this a joke? you barely do anything on a computer then. why would you need a mbp for this? if 'multitasking' to you is just switching browser tabs and downloading tv shows then yes obviously mbp could easily cover this. even a netbook would be enough to do this.

the best suggestion would be more ram. why the hell would this type of user EVER need an ssd? it wouldn't boost any performance at all since he/she basically does nothing on the machine.

snow leopard is awful so far and breaks a ton of apps.
 
beala said:
Have you ever owned a Mac before? Firefox is really unstable, especially if you're the type to have 30 tabs open and 50 extensions loaded.

Anyway, I'm not trying to bash Mac, I just don't want you to be surprised when FF crashes at least once a day. I got my first Mac a few weeks ago, and love it, but was definitely unpleasantly surprised by how unstable the Mac version of FF is. I switched to Safari, which is very stable, but I still sometimes miss my extensions.

EDIT: I'm running Snow Leopard, so maybe that has something to do with it. Can any Leopard users comment on FF stability?
Click to expand...

Most usual cause of crash is plug-ins and extensions. Without those 50 extensions your FF would be rock solid
 
!0.5.8 (and all previous versions) have been rock solid with FF, no crashes.

beala said:
Have you ever owned a Mac before? Firefox is really unstable, especially if you're the type to have 30 tabs open and 50 extensions loaded.

Anyway, I'm not trying to bash Mac, I just don't want you to be surprised when FF crashes at least once a day. I got my first Mac a few weeks ago, and love it, but was definitely unpleasantly surprised by how unstable the Mac version of FF is. I switched to Safari, which is very stable, but I still sometimes miss my extensions.

EDIT: I'm running Snow Leopard, so maybe that has something to do with it. Can any Leopard users comment on FF stability?
Click to expand...
 
Another vote for a 15inch. better to have the screen size and not need it then need it and not have it.

james
 
silentnite said:
I had FF crashing on me at least once a day as well. It was after the my Snow Leopard install. I just got the new FF 3.5.3 and the seem to fix it so far. knock on wood.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the heads up. I'll update and give it another try. I don't think it's my extensions, because I have the same extensions on my PC and it's pretty stable. Or maybe my addons just don't play nice with Mac.
 
gonna pick up the 15" tomorrow, does anyone know if the low end 15" has two fans in it?

and what the difference is between that and the top end 13" mbp other than the obvious screen size
 
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