Which Mac to choose

Hi all, buying my first mac here in the next week or so. Switching from an XPS M1330. Not a bad machine, I'm just selling it and making the switch. With that said, I know I want a 13.3" notebook, however my choices are between the following:

13" Macbook pro $1199
13" Aluminum macbook 2.0Ghz/160GBHD (refurb) $949
13" White macbook $999

I'm trying to stay in the low $1000s, deff. under $1500. Maybe I can even wait to find a refurb 13" MBP (no idea how long that's going to be though) Anyhow, my needs aren't much. I do a little photo editing, surf the web and that's about it, I don't play any games. I guess I want a decent all around machine. Tough decision, that's where I can really use some help.

Thanks in advance!

Hi and welcome. There's no reason to need the Aluminum MB or MBP, the White MacBook should do you fine. It might not be as stunning when you look at it, but it's a perfectly good machine.

My vote is for the $1199 MacBook Pro. Not to sound like a broken record, but the non removable battery is just so impressive in how long you can work on battery power. Light web surfing and hulu/netflix and I'm getting over 5 hours easily. Just web surfing and I could probably get 6 or more easily, and that's with a bigger 15" screen, the 13" could probably do a little better due to the smaller screen.

You also get a faster processor and faster DDR3 RAM, and an SD card slot. Will the difference be noticeable? Depends on what you are doing, but for the $200 premium, I think it is definitely worth it. The multi touch glass trackpad on the unibodies are cool too, I'm already using the gestures like second nature, and I get irked when I use a different notebook and they aren't there.

The one that you can afford.

Thanks for your responses. Also, what are the benefits, if any, of buying new vs refurb? The savings on a refurb machine is not bad, but at what expense?

Refurbs are just as good as new ones and they're covered by the same warranty as new ones. You can get a 15" Macbook Pro for the amount of money you want to spend.

MBP no doubt.

Thanks to everyone for their input. After much consideration I've ordered a 13" MBP. I'm so excited and can't wait to get it.

Thanks again, I'm sure I'll be on here asking questions often.

13" Aluminum macbook 2.0Ghz/160GBHD (refurb) $949 is a GREAT deal. I paid 1099 for mine, and I am still in love with it, even after the announced upgrades. Boohoo, no backlit keyboard... how often do you use that anyway? I can touch type, and I feel many others don't have trouble being able to type without too much thought as to where keys are, and if they do, they don't have to use the computer in the dark. That's just my opinion.

For 949 dollars now (I wish I held out just a little bit longer) you get a computer with a solid dual core processor at 2GHz-plenty fast, given that your processor will bottleneck with anything that has to be loaded from RAM (a lot) at the speed of the RAM and fsb, which is the same across the board- or the speed of your hard drive much of the time as well. On top of this, if you ever want to run headphones out and a line in at the same time (to hear a monitor, i.e. garageband or any other music software), then the refurb macbook is the way to go. The new 13 inch MBP has a combined audio in and out, so you can only have one running at a time, unless you're willing to try and record all of your audio in from a headset. F'that.

All in all, I can say my refurb aluminum MacBook at 1099 was a great purchase, at 949 it's a steal.

Best bang for the buck out of the ones listed is the 13" MBP. Faster CPU, backlit keyboard, SD card slot and 40% more battery life is well worth the extra $$