Making the big jump to a Mac

In August of 2006, I bought my first mac. It is a 13" white Macbook. I really enjoy it and since that time I haven't really used my PC at all and my parents have switched to Macs, in November, getting a 24" iMac.

I have the chance to get a really great deal on a 15" MacBook Pro. It would be a 2.6 C2D with 4gigs of ram (from Kingston.com) and a 250 GB HD for about $2,200. I'm not a film maker or an artist type. I'm an economics graduate student and I will get my last fellowship payment on January 16th. I know that this is a great deal and I'm not a Mac hate at all (check my post history).

I would use the computer for school work, general internet surfing, music, movie watching, and I'd like to be able to play real games. I'm not a "big" gamer, but I'd like to play WoW or Lord of the Rings Online. I would use Bootcamp because some of the games I'm interested in only run on Windows and I'd like to be able to run any software I need. I prefer OSX to Windows. Since I've made the jump, I've become very comfortable with the operating system.

My girlfriend is from China so I've been to China and Taiwan and I'd like to get into digital photography since I'll be going back for the Olympics. I also will be getting season tickets for the Milwaukee Brewers and I'd like to be able to post cool photos on my iWeb website.

My hesitation comes from the fact that I could get the equivalent PC notebook for about $1700, so it's about a $500 price difference not including Apple Care. That is the cost of one seat for the baseball tickets. The upside is that my dad needs a new notebook and I would give him my macbook. He has really enjoyed the switch.

How long do you think a 2.6, 4gig ram, 250 GB HD MBP would last? I would like for it to last a good 4 years. If it's only going to be 2-3 years, then I might as well save the $500 ($750 when I factor in Apple Care) and get the PC. If I can get that extra year to year and a half, I'll be really happy.

I'm going to wait until after Macworld no matter what. Just thinking out loud.

ALSO: Would I be running the 64-bit Leopard or 32-bit? I'd like to go 64-bit but I do not know why.

I would suggest going to a dell site and building a comparable laptop first, many people compare products and don't look at all the stuff that is included in a mac, n wireless for example.

EDIT: I just built your system at Dell.com in the XPS M1530 to the specs you stated and I show a price of $2469.

Ulairi said:

How long do you think a 2.6, 4gig ram, 250 GB HD MBP would last? I would like for it to last a good 4 years. If it's only going to be 2-3 years, then I might as well save the $500 ($750 when I factor in Apple Care) and get the PC. If I can get that extra year to year and a half, I'll be really happy.

Click to expand...

Why don't you think it would last more than 2~3 years? Newer computers will always be faster, but I couldn't imagine that a MBP would get so quickly dated as to be useless in 2~3 years. I've got some Thinkpads that are 5+ years old that are still going strong, both from a performance and durability standpoint.

The only limitation I can see with the MBP (or any laptop for that matter) is if you save all of your photographs in RAW format to your HD. In that case, 250GB will get used up in no time. You'll want to save images to an external HD.

EORI said:

Why don't you think it would last more than 2~3 years? Newer computers will always be faster, but I couldn't imagine that a MBP would get so quickly dated as to be useless in 2~3 years. I've got some Thinkpads that are 5+ years old that are still going strong, both from a performance and durability standpoint.

The only limitation I can see with the MBP (or any laptop for that matter) is if you save all of your photographs in RAW format to your HD. In that case, 250GB will get used up in no time. You'll want to save images to an external HD.

Click to expand...

What I mean in 2-3 years, I mean, I don't want to buy it and then run into a place that I won't be able to play anything on it in two or three years. More of a gaming thing than a productivity thing.

Right now, I just have a Sony Cybershot camera I got last year (2006) for Christmas. When I buy a new camera, it will be this summer and I'll get an external for that.