Upgrading: Which MBP will give me significant speed boosts?

[IAmBen]

Hey everybody. I'm more of a lurker around here than a poster but I sure do a lot of lurking.

I currently own a 2.16GHZ C2D MBP (purchased 2 1/2 years ago) and am considering an upgrade in late summer/early fall to a new Macbook Pro. My desire for an upgrade began when I had recent hard drive issues, presumably due to the smoky environment in which I do a lot of work with my current MBP. For this reason, I'd like to keep my current MBP for working in smoky environments dj'ing (my job) and upgrade to another MBP for use for everything else (music production, graduate school work, some photo editing and web work in Adobe).

As of now I'm considering the new 13" MBP due to its nice pricepoint, but I want to be sure that whichever laptop I buy offers a significant boost in performance over my current MBP. Should the 13" models be on my radar or should I be considering the 15" models given my performance requirements?

I suppose an iMac 24" along with a 13" MBP may be in my price range as well. What are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

[CrimsonRequiem]

15" tier 2, upgrade the HDD and RAM yourself.

If you can't afford it the 15" then I would go with the 13" tier 2 and do the upgrades yourself.