l'm looking to get a 13" macbook pro february 2011 model. Does anyone know where is the best value to be found north or south it doesn't matter. Best at the minute seems to be about €1200.
Mac Book Pros and most Apple products have a fairly uniform pricing structure and there isnt usually much in the way of "shopping around". Your best bet would be to get someone to bring you one home from the USA. There is a refurb one on Apple Store for £1099.
You can get the new lower specced 13" MBP for £999 from Apple store.
thanks minder, taking into the account the rate of exchange its about the same price.
If you know someone with a uni account or is a teacher then you get quite a good discount.
So the new MacBook is a bit of a disappointment going by some of the threads i've read in other forums. Serious money to pay for the new mac book and the 13" mac has been given a shit update apparently. Anyone know anything about the Air?
I've been working with an Air for the past 9 months and for the life of me I can't work out what the attraction to Mac products is - and I speak as an iPhone and iPad lover.
Keynote is a wonderful presentation tool that's miles ahead of PowerPoint.
But in every other aspect a Windows PC is either as good or better. Finding a file on a Mac is a pain in the arse. Print settings are a pain in the arse. Shareware software is nowhere near as good. Numbers is like Excel of 15 years ago. Pages is painful.
And despite lies and promotion to suggest otherwise, it crashes just like a PC.
Yeah it looks great. But a PC at half the price is a better job.
Quote from: JimStynes on June 12, 2012, 11:02:33 PM
So the new MacBook is a bit of a disappointment going by some of the threads i've read in other forums. Serious money to pay for the new mac book and the 13" mac has been given a shit update apparently. Anyone know anything about the Air?
The new retina machine is a serious piece of kit. If you have to ask why then it's not the machine for you.
As for the 13inch Pro, the expectations were far too high. There was no way it would get the same quad core i7 as the 15 inch models or a dedicated graphics card.
Quote from: thewobbler on June 12, 2012, 11:17:36 PM
I've been working with an Air for the past 9 months and for the life of me I can't work out what the attraction to Mac products is - and I speak as an iPhone and iPad lover.
Keynote is a wonderful presentation tool that's miles ahead of PowerPoint.
But in every other aspect a Windows PC is either as good or better. Finding a file on a Mac is a pain in the arse. Print settings are a pain in the arse. Shareware software is nowhere near as good. Numbers is like Excel of 15 years ago. Pages is painful.
And despite lies and promotion to suggest otherwise, it crashes just like a PC.
Yeah it looks great. But a PC at half the price is a better job.
Spotlight???? The little magnifying glass in the right right of the menu bar? Not only does search the file system but also return matches based on file/web page content. Otherwise you could do a search via unix terminal.
As for your comparison of pages/numbers to office; just get office ::)
Agreed. Numbers is more comparable with Works than Excel.
As for the new MacBook, as someone who's really getting into Photography and modern post processing of photographs a retina screen on a MacBook would be spectacular!
Quote from: JimStynes on July 20, 2011, 06:37:12 PM
If you know someone with a uni account or is a teacher then you get quite a good discount.
what way does that work?
do you just need a .ac.uk email adress to get the discount?
Quote from: mc_grens on June 15, 2012, 01:00:44 PM
Agreed. Numbers is more comparable with Works than Excel.
As for the new MacBook, as someone who's really getting into Photography and modern post processing of photographs a retina screen on a MacBook would be spectacular!
If you were any good at photography you wouldn't need to post process them :P
If I want to make it look like I'm walking on thin air a couple feet off the ground I've no choice!
Also- if I shoot in RAW all the time, which I do, then the photos MUST be processed before anything can be done with them. A retina display would mean that the level of detail/ colour/ etc. would be much closer on screen to what would be on a print.
As someone who went through three microsoft based PC's in 7 years due to multiple virus crashes and just slow operation, I would never go back. I have a Macbook Pro now for the last two years and its as fast as the day I bought it. I couldn't praise it highly enough. I need Office products for my work so I just got the Mac version and its technically the same thing. Don't understand anyone who would prefer microsoft windows operation system products over this machinery. Now also with the App store, most software is available for mac and its just a click away. To each their own but to me there's no comparison.
Just to throw it into the mix, I love windows 8. I hope the sort it out before the official roll out as the UI is pure class.
I want the Retina display so much but they dont have dvd drive anymore, the 13" hasnt been released yet and it's bloody expensive.
My own laptop is 4 year old so I am looking to upgrade. I need a laptop for general use (Internet, downloading, watching DVDs) a little bit of CAD and my teaching resources/plans etc. So would I be safer with the 2012 Non retina display MBP or should I hold out for the 13" Retina Display whenever it comes out? I hear you can buy the standard i7 laptop and then upgrade to 8GB and then change the hard drive to SSD. I would rather have the SSD version rather than the normal hard drive but I dont think I would know how to upgrade it myself but dont want to pay the ridiculous price that apple are charging.
Also I dont know what thunderbolt is and what it does. Could someone explain it to me in non-computer geek language.
If I was to buy the retina display can I buy a external dvd drive that I can plug into the computer?
Im sure I will have more questions. Cheers lads.
Quote from: JimStynes on July 08, 2012, 12:14:05 AM
I want the Retina display so much but they dont have dvd drive anymore, the 13" hasnt been released yet and it's bloody expensive.
My own laptop is 4 year old so I am looking to upgrade. I need a laptop for general use (Internet, downloading, watching DVDs) a little bit of CAD and my teaching resources/plans etc. So would I be safer with the 2012 Non retina display MBP or should I hold out for the 13" Retina Display whenever it comes out? I hear you can buy the standard i7 laptop and then upgrade to 8GB and then change the hard drive to SSD. I would rather have the SSD version rather than the normal hard drive but I dont think I would know how to upgrade it myself but dont want to pay the ridiculous price that apple are charging.
Also I dont know what thunderbolt is and what it does. Could someone explain it to me in non-computer geek language.
If I was to buy the retina display can I buy a external dvd drive that I can plug into the computer?
Im sure I will have more questions. Cheers lads.
Thunderbolt is a port (like USB) through which you can connect external devices.
Upgrading to a SSD, with some Macbooks it's a simple process, remove battery, remove 3 screws, pull out HD and slot in SSD.
With other Macbooks, you have to use an appropriately sized torx screwdriver to remove the case screws, store screws carefully :), remove case and find your way to the HD.
Unless you have the shakes, this is doable, following step by step instructions which you can find online. First time demands cautious approach but 2nd time opening up the macbook is a piece of cake. Then you can uses the HD as external storage/back up/bootable drive.
Seeing as you have your heart set on a retina display, then why not go for it? you are only going to be wondering why you didn't chose one.
I don't use DVD any more, at least not a laptop. Flash USB storage is cheap, minuscule and more abusable. If I ever have to use a dvd drive, I just use another computer.
The retina MBP already has a 256gb SSD and 8gb ram
I went and had a look at the retina display MBP today and I have made the decision that I cant justify spending that money when the MBP 13" comes out so I will just get the 2012 MBP 13".
For me I cant notice a big enough difference in the quality of screen to make me go 'wow this is a amazing'. I have a basic laptop so the 2012 MBP 13" even looks like unbelievable quality to me.
Also although I am probably talking crap i think the retina display MB dont look or feel as sturdy as an older MBP. The rMBP is quite thin and light but it just feels a little fragile compared to the other one.
I will be updating the 13" MacBook to an SSD drive and probably upgrade the Ram. What does everyone recommend? 8gb and 256gb SSD? The basic model has intel i5 and the next model up has intel i7. Is it worth the extra couple hundred for the better processor?
I will be getting student discount. Any other ways to save money on this?
Samsung 830 is a sound SSD. Probably the best SSD for the price.
4GB ram is more than enough to run Lion, If you want to upgrade after purchase then you discard the 2 x2gb ram
You can work out if it's cheaper to buy it with 8gb ram or upgrade later.
The i7 mobile processor in the 2012 MBP is the best dual core i7 going for laptops, it performs about 20% faster than the i5 in processor tasks.
You just have to figure out if you do stuff which is processor intensive, eg video, music. Decoding music hogs a lot of your processor usage, decoding a FLAC file to Apple Lossless is about x100 speed on the i5 and x120 on the i7
With decoding 70 mins of music, you can compute the difference you would notice, a few seconds?
It's €300 more for the MBP with the i7, 8gb ram and a larger HD