13' with 4th Gen i5 or 15' with 3rd Gen i7

My question is... which one of the following should i go for … main usage will be Photography & Day to Day office (Windows 8.1 on Parallels 9)

Also keep in mind that i tend to travel, so portability is also a key requirement

1. 13 inch 4th Gen i5-4258U (Intel Iris 5100 GPU) + 16GB RAM + 256SSD
2. 15 inch 3rd Gen i7-3610QM (nVIDIA GeForce GT 650M) + 8GB RAM + 256SSD

Thanks
Chris

Thread moved to more appropriate sub-forum. Not a "Community Suggestions and Feedback" topic.

- Nick

chris0628 said:

Also keep in mind that i tend to travel, so portability is also a key requirement.

Click to expand...

- If portability is a key requirement. Then the 13" MacBook Pro would obviously be the better choice.
- If more powerful graphics hardware is more important...then the 15" MacBook Pro is the obvious choice.

With current Macintosh laptops...you cannot have it both ways. Dedicated graphics is only available in the 15" MacBook Pro models.

- Nick

The 13" would be my choice. The Intel Iris 5100 should be more than sufficient for your needs unless you plan on gaming on the machine. The Haswell i5 in the 13" is far more power efficient than the Ivy i7 in the 15" also.

This wasn't one of your options but Apple has the refurb 2012 13" MBPr on blowout prices now. The processing power is almost equal to Haswell and the battery life is only about 1 hour different. On Mavericks I'm getting 8 hrs vs the advertised 9 hours on the 2013.

The main tradeoff will be in the GPU area where the 2013 has the Iris Graphics. But with the Mavericks upgrade the Intel 4000 graphics is much smoother and I've never had any issues with it. It may be a worth it tradeoff if you are getting a 512gb SSD and an I7 processor. That model is going for $1659 right now at the Apple Store.

Thanks for the suggestions.. i will look into it.

One problem i have is that i cannot purchase online from the Apple Store since i do not have a US Credit Card

chris0628 said:

One problem i have is that i cannot purchase online from the Apple Store since i do not have a US Credit Card

Click to expand...

If you cannot purchase from the US Apple Online store due to not having a US credit card...maybe you can go to your local US Apple Store...and maybe there's something they can do to help (somehow assist you in making this refurbished purchase with a non-US credit card).

Or...can you purchase from the refurbished section of the Apple Store from the country where you do have a credit card from? For example...the Canada, UK, and Australian Apple online stores all have refurbished sections.

- Nick