In the market for a new laptop

  • Thread starter Thread starter Boz Mon
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Boz Mon

Boz Mon

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So my 6ish year old Sony Viao gave me the old blue screen the other day. Its been working fine ever since then (knock on wood) but I figure its days are numbered. I figured its about time to move to the Mac world since I like video and photo editing. I was just looking for some opinions on the different levels of Macbook Pros. With my student discount, the 15 inch pro starts at $1,999, and the 17 inch starts at $2,099. Thats about $200 off each. I plan on going to the Apple store tomorrow to talk to them about the different features, but I figured I would throw it out here to see what you guys think.
 
Right.

  1. There's no need for the 17 inch version. At all.
  2. If you think you won't be able to cope with a hideously glossy screen, factor in the extra £100 (or whatever in $) for the 'antiglare' option. And you have to order it online.
  3. Engadget have reported that the 'graphics switching' business has a habit of not working correctly, so you'll probably never reach the quoted battery life figure
  4. If the US discount works like the UK one, you should be able to get AppleCare at a significantly reduced price if you tack it on to your online order. If so, do it.
  5. Consider how important i5 is to you. If 'not massively' is the answer, take a look at their clearance bargains and see if there's anything cheaper (though student discount may not work with them)
  6. If you're going to buy in-store, make sure they're giving you the same discount and AppleCare price as their website.

I believe that is all.
 
I have the 13" MacBook Pro and it's great, the bigger version were just not necessary in my opinion. It's a laptop, it's supposed to be small and portable, plus the 13" ones are even less expensive (Mac's can never been considered cheap).

And yes the Apple store should match the stuff online, they did for me when I got my laptop.

Oh and I would suggest getting Boot Camp running on it too and installing Windows so you can run programmes you otherwise wouldn't be able too.
 
I have some more specific questions now...

1. What is i5? I would assume that i7 is better?
2. Whats the difference in the hard drives that run at different RPM?

I think thats all for now. I'm gonna talk to the apple guys tomorrow.
 
1) If by "better" you mean faster processing, then yes, the i7 is better. If by better you mean longer battery life, no, the i7 is not better.
2) The higher the RPMs, the faster the read/write time but you'll sacrifice some battery life and the faster drives will likely be a bit noisier.
 
Boz Mon
I have some more specific questions now...

1. What is i5? I would assume that i7 is better?
Click to expand...

The i5 is the name of the series of Intel processors that have somewhat recently made it to laptops. They probably have the best performance to efficiency ratio, but that's just looking at the CPU.
 
Heres the general decision for now: 15 inch Macbook pro with the 500gig hard drive and i5 processor. Now I have to save some green.
 

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