Need help deciding.

Need help deciding, iMac vs Macbook Pro

Hi,
I am a 14 year old year 9 student in high school. I am having a very hard time deciding whether I should buy an iMac or a Macbook Pro. I know both are great systems. I want something to at least last me until the end of year 12 and something that will be good with my wifi. I am going to use it for school and want to be able to play one or two games on it with good properties. I like portability but also like the power of an iMac. I primarily use it for documents (word, excel, etc), downloading pdfs, checking emails, youtube, internet, a COD game, flash, basic photo editing programs. I also wish to get an iPad 2 by the years end, so cooperation with it? So if you can contribute please do, and current owners of the systems, pros and cons?

pretty much the same as eachother: theres not really many cons when compared to eachother, besides one being portable and the other not. the iMac can have a greater internal storage because they use different sized drives.

for gaming an iMac would perform slightly better than bottom end MBPs.

both will be perfectly adequate for what you want to do however. Any of the entry level systems will be able to handle it.

Thanks are there any other helpful comments people want to add?

Also, out of all the mac computer that are no more than $1500, what is going to last me at least until the end of high school comfortably? And also (I'm new to mac), on average how often are macbook pros and iMacs rereleased?
I will very much appreciate any answers.

any of the new iMac's or Macbook Pro's should last you at least a good 3 years. there are users on here still on five to seven year old Macs and they still run great today. Youll have no trouble with any of the new machines.

If I had just $1500 to spend, and no real need to transport my system to and fro, I'd get a base model iMac (3.02GHz / 21.5in), bump the RAM up to 8GB, and get Applecare.

The large screen and standard keyboard/mouse will make both gaming and writing papers a lot less tedious.

As for the release schedule, I'd direct you to the Mac Buyer's Guide. The short version is that Macbook Pros were refreshed, like, two weeks ago, and the new iMac is due very soon. Generally they refresh every 7 months.

Thankyou both of you. When you
say very soon do you mean the apple meeting due around june?

ebby said:

I am having a very hard time deciding whether I should buy an iMac or a Macbook Pro.

Click to expand...

The VERY first thing you NEED to decide...is whether you need portability or not.

- if you need portability...get the MacBook Pro
- if you don't need portability...get the iMac

...decision made...problem solved!!!

- Nick

ebby said:

When you
say very soon do you mean the apple meeting due around june?

Click to expand...

Nobody knows for sure what Apple's release schedule is. But according to the Buyer's Guide to which I linked, iMacs are updated, on average, every 226 days, and it's been 229 days since the last release. So soon could mean tomorrow, or it could mean next month. Frankly, I'd be surprised if they waited until June though.

you could save a big some of money upgrading the RAM yourself, but to be honest, for your uses you dont really even need 8GB. go for better specs on the Macbook Pro, instead of worrying about the RAM.

ok thanks.