Macbook pro 13 inch and adobe cs5.5?

hey all, not sure if I am the right forum.

new to the forums, I am looking at a buy my first mac, I am familar with mac, used them for my first undergrad in photography. I am thinking about a macbook pro 13 inch. My question is this is a hardware one. I am going into a graphic design program in the fall, and I am going to buy a educational copy of cs5.5 or 6 for mac (whenever it comes out) in the fall.

My question is do you need a dedicated graphic card like the AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 512MB in the MBP 15 inch to help run the creative suite? I am looking at the either the design suite or biting the bullet and buying the master collection with my educational discount Or can I buy a 13 inch with the integrated graphics and just upgrade the ram from 4gb to 8gb etc.

I guess my question is this do I need the dedicated graphic card or not with cs5.5/6.

thanks
schunn99

first mac buyer.

Do you NEED a dedicated graphic card in order to run Adobe CS 5.5 or CS 6? No.

Will you be REALLY SORRY you didn't get a dedicated graphics card if your primary use is to run Adobe CS? YES YOU WILL!!

You can "get by" without the dedicated graphics card, but since you're going in to graphic design I would *strongly* suggest you get the model that has a dedicated graphics card. AND all the RAM you can afford.

Bottom line: you want the 15" for a variety of reasons, but graphics power, RAM expandability and the larger screen make this a no-brainer for a graphics arts student.

Im currently running CS5 on a macbook pro 13" from 2009 without any problems at all. I upgraded the memory in it myself to 8GBs (do the memory upgrade yourself paying apple the exorbitant amount they charge for upgraded memory is stupid)

Buy what you can afford but I concurrently run CS5 Photoshop, CS5 dreamweaver, and Lightroom 3 without any problems at all even hooked up to my 24" Apple cinema display. If you are getting the i5 machine you will have way more power than my macbook for sure.

Although you can certainly run CS5.5 on a MBP 13" machine with the Intel HD 3000, I have to agree with chas. It will be so much better on a 15" machine with dedicated graphics. Of course if the $$ are a problem, then do as member Brunhild suggests.