Looking to buy a laptop - lots of questions

Hi all,

I'm not a switcher exactly, but I might as well be for the amount of questions I have!

In 2008 (!!) my friend sold me a used macbook, one of the white ones. I was studying photography at the time and we learned on macs, so it fit my needs and I jumped on it because it was a good price.

These are the specs:
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz


The thing has been amazing - traveled around the world, been my TV/phone/computer/entertainment, help up absurdly well, and never given me any trouble. But it's also old, slow, and I'm looking to buy a new one.

I'm living in the UK at present, but am in Canada for a week to visit family. I'm thinking now would be the wisest time to buy, because if I wait till I'm back in England I'll wind up paying almost double.

The thing is, I grabbed this one pretty much on a whim, and now that I'm going to be investing in a new one I hardly know what to look for or what questions to ask.

The one I have now, I mainly use for photoshop and internet browsing. I'm thinking of buying a 13 inch Macbook pro, with extra RAM because everything I've read says that's the most important thing to upgrade.

But yeah, I'm at a total loss. Help?

Yes, definitely max ram. I got the 13" MacBook pro and love it. The other option is the 13" Air. It is smaller, lighter with no moving parts but it is non-upgradable and has a much smaller hd. Because it uses sad for storage the fact that it has a slower processer may not make a difference in performance. It also doesn't have a DVD-rom drive. The retina is more expensive and I really don't think it's a great value. It's also non-upgradable. hope this helps

Since you use Photoshop a lot, I'll recommend the MacBook Pro as well. It's a solid notebook with a fast processor and RAM expandability, so maxing that out would be a good idea. With the non-Retina MBP, you should be able to add RAM yourself after-sale, so you don't have to pay Apple's higher rate on pre-installed RAM.

The Retina display (currently only available on the 15", but I hear it will come to the 13" model eventually) is groundbreaking, but kind of a luxury option at this point until the rest of the industry get up to speed there (I note that Samsung has already announced some "Retina"-level models of notebook).

The MacBook Air is very capable but doesn't have the graphic oomph for heavy Photoshop work IMO.

I agree completely with the mbp recommendation, particularly if you do any heavy photo-manipulation. With regards to the ram, skip the apple upgrade it's too expensive. OWC will happily sell you two 8gb sticks (16gb of ram rocks) for $150.

Upgrade Memory for Apple MacBook Pro to 8GB, or 16GB DDR3 1600MHz SDRAM + SSD and Drive options up to 1.0TB - for all 13

Which will, indeed, fully max out what the machine will use (apple I think still says 8, but 16 does indeed work).

Check their page, and their shipping rates to UK. Even with that post, I suspect it'll save you more than a few bob.

Thanks for your advice so far, all. Really appreciate it!

I think a lot of my hesitation comes from not really knowing which questions to ask or what to look for.

I agree that the retina isn't worth the extra money for me at the moment.

Would I really notice the difference between 8 and 16 when it comes to RAM if I was just photoshopping and/or using the internet? I have 2 at the moment, so even 8 seems like it'd be a massive step up. If you do use third party RAM, does it invalidate apple care?

The no moving parts thing about the Air, does that make it more durable in any way?

Basically, my main concern is a computer that will last me a long time (as I won't be able to afford a new one for AGES after this!). I don't really know what else is upgradable about the Pro, what else is there besides RAM? How hard is it to get this all done later on?

The storage thing is also a biggish deal to me. I use external hard drives, but as backups, and as much as possible like to keep all my info in one place.

I also agree a MBP is what you need. I got the 13" 2.9ghz, 8gb ram and 256 ssd and I do not regret it at all. I've had it for about a week now and love it! For the price, the MBP that is upgraded and especially with the SSD is a better buy than a macbook air. It's more powerful and at a better price for what you get. I may upgrade the ram later down the road. As far as I know upgrading the ram yourself does not void your warranty, but let someone else confirm that. I did buy Apple Care so I would also like to know if it voids the warranty.

If you need quad-core for video encoding or high-end photoshop (fast!) work I would suggest the 15" regular MBP.

But I find that the 13" screen on the 13" macbook pro just fine. I don't need anymore room than I have thanks to spaces. But if I didn't have spaces I would have probably went with the 15 or an older 17 inch mbp. But I'm coming from a 17" dell laptop and even with that knowledge I do not regret getting the 13 inch mbp.

I use the Time Capsule for backups and router since you can be anywhere in your house and backup due to it's wireless features.

Just food for thought.