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fredr500

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 12, 2007
227
19
I've decided it's time to switch. I had decided on a 2.66Ghz mac pro, with 5GB RAM and a couple 750GB drives. Now I'm wondering if I should get a MBP instead. Someday the portability may come in handy. And I have read so many glowing reports here on the MBP.

I use Lightroom with about 55K pictures imported right now and it is always open. CS2 (soon 3) is always running. And I am usually running Firefox with over 20 open tabs.

My Athlon PC with 1.5GB of RAM slows to a crawl many times in LR and CS2. I can't take the lack of speed, thus the plan to move to a mac pro.

My question - assuming I don't change my behavior and continue to keep memory hogging programs running all the time, will I be frustrated with the MBP response? And I will need to run the 750GB drives externally, which will also hurt performance.

Any cost difference is immaterial, they are close enough that it doesn't matter to me. The portability would be nice. But if I am not going to be happy with responsiveness I won't be happy with the system.

I have 2 17" LCDs now, will probably buy a new 22" wide and give my wife one of my 17's.

So - MBP or Mac Pro? The order goes in the day they announce new product or the day after WWDC, whichever is first.

Thanks
Fred
 

zen.state

macrumors 68020
Mar 13, 2005
2,181
8
it seems to me like you simply need more raw speed.. much more.

it also does not sound like portable is a must for you..

the answer is easy MAC PRO. the extra 2 cores and 64 bit of the mac pro will really serve you well in the type of stuff you do.
 

pianoman

macrumors 68000
May 31, 2006
1,963
0
simply because of the processing and RAM limitations on the notebooks, i would recommend the Mac Pro. if you still want/need portability down the line, you can add on a MBP but i would suggest the Mac Pro as your main machine since you do so much intensive work.
 

iMacZealot

macrumors 68020
Mar 11, 2005
2,237
3
You can probably find reasons to use a portable, but it sounds like you don't NEED one. Mac Pro.
 

maestrokev

macrumors 6502a
Apr 23, 2007
875
8
Canada
I've decided it's time to switch. I had decided on a 2.66Ghz mac pro, with 5GB RAM and a couple 750GB drives. Now I'm wondering if I should get a MBP instead. Someday the portability may come in handy. And I have read so many glowing reports here on the MBP.

I use Lightroom with about 55K pictures imported right now and it is always open. CS2 (soon 3) is always running. And I am usually running Firefox with over 20 open tabs.

My Athlon PC with 1.5GB of RAM slows to a crawl many times in LR and CS2. I can't take the lack of speed, thus the plan to move to a mac pro.

Am I reading this right, you've got 55,000 pictures in Lightroom? I've got 8,000 CR2/JPG files using WinXP on a 2GB RAM Core Duo at 2GHz and it crawls, I couldn't imagine 55,000 especially with keywords etc. I'm deciding on the same problem right now as well on whether to go MBP and see if OS X is better for Lightroom. In the field, it would be nice to have a MBP to edit, sort and start the development process under Lightroom rather than waiting to return from photoshoot and then processing.
 

RedTomato

macrumors 601
Mar 4, 2005
4,155
442
.. London ..
If you make money from your pics, get a mac pro.

That would open up the option of adding a lighter, smaller, cheaper laptop for fieldwork.

e.g. macbook or low spec macbook pro?

If your laptop is your main machine, then for the work you do, you'll always be wanting a bigger screen/ more power, then it becomes expensive, and a pain to look after and carry around.

Keep the laptop as a lightweight cheap second machine and then it might be less worry to look after and easier to carry.

Just my 0.02.
 

fredr500

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 12, 2007
227
19
Thanks all

Thanks everyone. The votes are in and the results match my intial assumption - get the pro.

The order will go in either 6/15 (after WWDC) or the day they announce the replacements, whichever comes first.

Fred
 

speekez

macrumors 6502
Nov 19, 2003
350
2
Agree. Mac Pro. That's what I did.

I've talked to folks editing on MBPs. Pretty slow going in comparison.
 
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