WORTH THE UPGRADE ?? Help

[Wanski]

I am going to get my high school student a new MBP that she hopefully will suit her needs through college. BB has the 512GB on sale for $200.00 more than the 128GB. Is the faster processor and bigger HD worth the extra investment?
Thank you for your help.

 

[klause10]

are we talking 13", 2.6GHz, 8GB ram, 512GB SSD?

Then you get faster processor, 4GB ram more and the 512 ssd!
This is what i got (and the 16GB ram), and i love it. I don't do anythings which require a lot of processing power but i definitely need the portability

 

[Wanski]

Yes it is the 13" MBP.
Is the processor much of a jump?
256GB doesn't seem like a lot of storage these days and less in the future.

 

[Gjwilly]

The jump from 128GB to 512GB is worth $200 right there.
The RAM bump and the processor bump are just bonuses at that point.

 

[Buck987]

Actually there is no ram bump in this case. The BB deal is 1399 for the 8/256 or 1599 for the 8/512.

The process bump is nice but not significant. I would get the 8/256 and spend the extra $200 on a quick external storage device. Great for backing up and also keeping seldom used files.

If you have extra cash get the 8/512 but still get the backup drive. It's amazing how this comes in handy with college kids.

 

[raptor402]

I am going to get my high school student a new MBP that she hopefully will suit her needs through college. BB has the 512GB on sale for $200.00 more than the 128GB. Is the faster processor and bigger HD worth the extra investment?
Thank you for your help.

Well, with the 13" retina, the 24Ghz to 2.6GHz will be bump, but not really noticeable.

8 GB RAM is a must for a futureproof laptop.

Avoid 128GB; you'll only get around 100GB of useable storage due to OS and recovery partition.

If you want to avail a student discount (I'm not sure if it stacks with BB deals), you can go for the middle model (2.4GHz / 8GB / 256GB) and get $100 off. I did that, but also upgraded to 2.6GHz for a small discount (students get additional discount on upgrades).

As recommended above, do get an external drive.

Regards
Raptor

 

[etcetera.]

I ordered the 128gb/16gb model. Here's my reasoning..

1. Cloud services are abundant these days; Dropbox, Skydrive, Google Drive and now Mega. With these services I don't have to tote 10 years of family photos around or worry about the songs I write in Logic taking space. I can stream iTunes radio, Spotify, Pandora and SoundCloud. I can upload to those services on-the-go.

2. The PCI-E SSD is probably the ONLY easy upgrade to do on the machine. They are not affordable at the moment but in the future they should be. I cannot however upgrade the memory in the future without swapping the entire logicboard.

 

[Wanski]

She's not using much of her HD now and the only big program I'm going to install is Office.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

I'm in college and got the 2.4/8/256 (history major). Unless she's in a major like engineering, architecture, design, or art, she'll be fine with the 2.4. The 256gb also goes a long way if you use the cloud and/or external drives. I have a desktop 1tb and a portable 500gb. With those I was just fine with my old MBP with a 160gb. She'll really only need to keep files from the current semester on her internal drive. The 256gb allows for iTunes if she has those as well as photos. 8gb of RAM is pretty much the standard anymore, so I'd highly suggest it.

Make sure she's backing up using Time Machine! This is the other reason to have an external. While an SSD isn't likely to crash, it ensures that she won't lose that paper she pulls an all nighter to finish. I suppose you can use the cloud for that now, but you don't always have an internet connection everywhere, and the average dorm internet is pretty terrible.

 

[qawsed]

2.4/8GB/256 is the rMBP to get in my opinion.

 

[safelder]

I was planning to get the 2.4/8/256 with Best Buy's $100 off deal, and then saw the $200 off on the higher-end model. That might be enough to change my mind; I'm somewhat undecided still. I know I'm going to be offloading my iTunes library to an external; the question is whether I also offload my photos.