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Hi all,
I would like your help on this matter. I have passed my PhD prelim exam last Friday and promised myself a notebook in reward (still 2 more years of schooling). Most of my professors at school have Macs so I was thinking that may be for a reason. I have never owned one before and am typing this post from my PC.
I would like to use the laptop mainly for word processing and graphing (word and excel) for my research the next couple of years. When the Macbook Air was released, I was really impressed by its weight and thickness (or lack of). But after reading all the reviews and noticing it doesn't have a freaking ethernet port, I had 2nd thoughts.
I went to my school's computer store (UCLA) and found the following deal for a MacBook Pro:
MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz 15.4" Display LED backlit
2G RAM DDR2, 160GB, DVD+R
NVIDIA 8600M GT, 256MB
4MB L2 cache
Price: $1499
After doing a little research, I noticed this was the discontinued version. The new 2.4GHz has the following specs:
2GB Ram DDR, 200GB, DVD+R
Same video card
3MB shared L2 cache
Multitouch trackpad
Price: $1799
Are the new trackpad and 40GB increase in hard drive worth the addition $300? Are there any other changes done to the laptop I am not aware of? Which one would you go with?
Thanks a lot ;D
I would like your help on this matter. I have passed my PhD prelim exam last Friday and promised myself a notebook in reward (still 2 more years of schooling). Most of my professors at school have Macs so I was thinking that may be for a reason. I have never owned one before and am typing this post from my PC.
I would like to use the laptop mainly for word processing and graphing (word and excel) for my research the next couple of years. When the Macbook Air was released, I was really impressed by its weight and thickness (or lack of). But after reading all the reviews and noticing it doesn't have a freaking ethernet port, I had 2nd thoughts.
I went to my school's computer store (UCLA) and found the following deal for a MacBook Pro:
MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz 15.4" Display LED backlit
2G RAM DDR2, 160GB, DVD+R
NVIDIA 8600M GT, 256MB
4MB L2 cache
Price: $1499
After doing a little research, I noticed this was the discontinued version. The new 2.4GHz has the following specs:
2GB Ram DDR, 200GB, DVD+R
Same video card
3MB shared L2 cache
Multitouch trackpad
Price: $1799
Are the new trackpad and 40GB increase in hard drive worth the addition $300? Are there any other changes done to the laptop I am not aware of? Which one would you go with?
Thanks a lot ;D