Does the MBP 13" being complete toilet bother you?

Soldato
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I have a 2010 MacBook Pro with Nvidia 320 Graphics and was never tempted by the 2011 i5's and their intel graphics. Always figured gaming would be better on mine and a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor is plenty fast enough for browsing and office applications. Made a huge difference when I stuck a 156GB SSD and 8GB memory in it :)
 

fez

fez

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To me it means the same as a business laptop, so favouring performance over expense because it's a tool, and maximising productivity is vital.

Thats why they have a range of laptops. They used to have the polycarbonate macbook along with the aluminium 13" which was then consolidated into the 15" pro line which made sense as it was only the screen size that that was different.

Its always a balance between cost and the intended target. Why would you get a 13" laptop unless you intend to travel with it? In that case, portability is more important. The fact is that a hell of a lot of people use macs these days and a high res screen would benefit very few of them. My boss at my last job used to have a 15" full HD laptop from dell that 90% of the office would need to use a magnifier or drop the res to make it usable. They were asking for the res to be dropped on 1280 x 1024 19" native res monitors.

My MBP from mid 2010 has been upgraded to 8gb ram and 128 SSD but the new airs would slaughter it in every way and yet I have zero need for a new laptop even though my ram is a few generations old as well as the SSD.

Honestly, I think that we have got to the stage where a decent macbook will last for years with minimal need to upgrade. You wouldn't find that the current generation of SSDs in the MBA or its ram are suddenly incapable of running the latest apps in a few years.

What do you want it for? I run 2 or 3 browsers with ~100 tabs over them, virtual machine with windows 7, ftp, sql, terminal, itunes, spotify, code editors with a hundred or so tabs open and I never have any problems with my 2 year old laptop so I think you should be fine.

Thats genuinely one of the things that I love about apple products. I always used to be looking to upgrade or get the latest model of phone / computer but since I swapped to a mac 5 years ago and an iPhone last year I haven't even thought about changing them. (ok I might want the new retina MBP but who in their right mind doesn't, its a beast!)
 
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Associate
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The resolution is poor for the price and it it seems likely that it's not been increased due to Apple having a roadmap to pixel double in the near future. The use of the word 'toilet' seems intentionally inflammatory mind you.
 
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Soldato
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Until they find some way of fitting a quad core processor into the 13" pro, ill never buy it.
The performance is just too low compared to the 15" Pro, and not enough better then the 13" Air to make it a worthwhile purchase.
 
Associate
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The air has its flaws. The main one being the lack of affordable storage.

The 13" MBP is significantly more upgrade friendly than tbe air. Rip out the optical drive and bang a mechanical into a HDD caddy. Then get an affordable SSD for the boot disk. All of which is significantly cheaper than spec'ing one through the online store and the Apple SSD's aren't the quickest either.
 
Soldato
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The air has its flaws. The main one being the lack of affordable storage.

The 13" MBP is significantly more upgrade friendly than tbe air. Rip out the optical drive and bang a mechanical into a HDD caddy. Then get an affordable SSD for the boot disk. All of which is significantly cheaper than spec'ing one through the online store and the Apple SSD's aren't the quickest either.

Its not really an issue though is it? theres so many options for storage now externally, networked and cloud that having so much storage on a smaller laptop is completely pointless imo.

And to counter the Air's flaws, the better resolution over the MBP 13" is better.
 
Associate
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The 11" MBA has a better resolution than the 13" MBP in terms of overall pixels.

Don't underestimate the power of a 2012 13" MBA w 8GB.

My 2011 w 4Gb is perfect for almost everything.
 
Associate
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No idea why anyone would go for the 13" pro over the air now.

You gain aload of weight, a crappy screen and extra bulk for 30% faster CPU and upgradable ram/hd... woopdeedoo.
 
Associate
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No idea why anyone would go for the 13" pro over the air now.

You gain aload of weight, a crappy screen and extra bulk for 30% faster CPU and upgradable ram/hd... woopdeedoo.

Considering to do a switch over to the MBA 13" base model with 8GB RAM.

Should come in just under £1k with HE Discount I think.

Or I hope it does anyway :eek: :D

But for now, my MBP 13" Early 2011 does just fine for what I do.
 
Soldato
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Is 1280x 800 really that hard to deal with on a 13" display? I have to ask this because I am genuinely torn as to what to get.

I will need to run a virtual machine with Window 7. I'm hoping the MBA with i7 and 8GB will do the job (as well as run photoshop etc OK?).

Would love an MBP with Retina and discreet gfx but I just can't afford it :(
 
Associate
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Its not really an issue though is it? theres so many options for storage now externally, networked and cloud that having so much storage on a smaller laptop is completely pointless imo.

And to counter the Air's flaws, the better resolution over the MBP 13" is better.

Kinda destroy's the portability factor of buying a 13" laptop though dont you think if your constantly having to also carry with you an external drive and cable. Then there's the hassle of having to plugged in constantly.

I'm also not a fan of the silver chrome bezel around the screen.

The natural step forward would be a 13" retina model, so here's hoping and lets get saving!
 
Soldato
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Depends entirely on your requirements of the device.
Well I'm not a graphics designer. I guess my question is how bad is 1280x 800 on a 13" display? Guess I'll have to pop along to an Apple store to take a look.

What about running virtual machine on the MBA with i7 and 8GB? Would this be OK?

It's tough - because by the time you add the additional 4GBs and i7 you're up to the MBP 15" base model price, which although lacks SSD and only offers 4GB does include discreet gfx - I think! Lists HD4000 and 650M, guess it switches between the two.

In case you're wondering, this is my first Apple computer! I'm not impressed with any of the Ultrabook Windows machines out there.
 
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