I've been thinking of getting a MacBook Pro for a while now, as I perform with Ableton Live sets and need a laptop that can handle my sets better than my Acer Travelmate 8202. MacBook Pros have somewhat become the industry standard for laptop-based live performance, so I thought, my laptop is getting pretty old, if I get a new one, why not make the switch?
The Acer has a 1.66Ghz Core Duo CPU with 2Gb RAM, an ATi Mobility Radeon x1600 and a seagate 100Gb 5,400rpm drive.
The basic MacBook Pro has a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2Gb RAM, an nVidia 8600m 256Mb and I'd upgrade it to the 200Gb 7,200rpm drive.
Will I notice much of an improvement over my old laptop? Spending about £1,200 on a laptop that isn't much better would set me back quite a bit.
In addition to this, though the entry level MacBook Pro seems reasonably priced having done a fair amount of research, I'm not so sure the better models are actually worth the amounts they have. An extra £300 for 256Mb Graphics Memory and 100Mhz CPU? A further £300 just for a bigger screen?
One thing that does annoy me about the MacBook Pro series is that only the top end 17" one actually does the resolution that my Acer already does, and when I bought it it was only £1,200. 1,440x900 is a fair large drop from the 1680x1050 that I'm used to, and I don't really want to have to spend an extra £600 just to get that back lol.
The Acer has a 1.66Ghz Core Duo CPU with 2Gb RAM, an ATi Mobility Radeon x1600 and a seagate 100Gb 5,400rpm drive.
The basic MacBook Pro has a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2Gb RAM, an nVidia 8600m 256Mb and I'd upgrade it to the 200Gb 7,200rpm drive.
Will I notice much of an improvement over my old laptop? Spending about £1,200 on a laptop that isn't much better would set me back quite a bit.
In addition to this, though the entry level MacBook Pro seems reasonably priced having done a fair amount of research, I'm not so sure the better models are actually worth the amounts they have. An extra £300 for 256Mb Graphics Memory and 100Mhz CPU? A further £300 just for a bigger screen?
One thing that does annoy me about the MacBook Pro series is that only the top end 17" one actually does the resolution that my Acer already does, and when I bought it it was only £1,200. 1,440x900 is a fair large drop from the 1680x1050 that I'm used to, and I don't really want to have to spend an extra £600 just to get that back lol.
) as that's something I can relate to properly. As for OSX, yes I've heard many good things about it, and if it handles RAM as well as everyone says it is, then I'm sure I'll look forward to moving to Mac. If there's not much difference, I might wait for a bit.