Refurbished MacBook Pro? A few questions.

I was eagerly anticipating the release of the new15 inch MacBook Pros as I've been wanting to replace my very old PowerBook G4 (non-Intel) for quite some time now. However concerns over the Retina display but probably even more so over the non-upgradability of most of its parts have made me reconsider my options.

So...I am contemplating a refurbished 15 inch MacBook Pro, 2.3 GHz, quad-core Intel i7 (June 2012 model). A lot of my questions have been answered by Apple on their store site but I am foggy over what OS version the machine would have (Lion? Mountain Lion?) and most importantly, can I upgrade it to Mavericks? The machine's specs are as follows:

Originally released June 2012
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, 1440-by-900 resolution

4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB of GDDR5 memory

This will be a huge upgrade for me so pretty much a win situation, I believe, but making such a fast decision is a bit scary!

Any advice very welcome.

The machine may come to you with Mavericks pre-installed. Some refurbished machines are updated by Apple before shipping, some are not. But in either case, that machine can run Mavericks, so no worry. Sounds like a very nice machine.

Oh excellent, thank you! I've just ordered it - so excited! Hoping it'll last quite a few years, my last one gave me 7 good years.

BarbMac said:

Originally released June 2012
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, 1440-by-900 resolution

4GB (2 x 2GB) of 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM
500GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 512MB of GDDR5 memory

Click to expand...

A little off topic, but this reminds me of something... these machines have RAM and HDDs that the user can upgrade? I seem to remember that only being an issue with the Airs and rMBPs.

You're correct, that machine is fully upgradeable: memory and hard drive. The only thing that can't be upgraded is the graphics. She found a very nice machine in the refurbished store.