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Is a Macbook pro actually worth it?
Draper
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__BANNED USERS regular
I'm studying abroad in Spain for 4 months starting Feburary, and I need a new laptop. I have one right now that's almost 5 years old, and I'm looking for an upgrade. I do a lot of film work, and I've always wanted to use final cut pro, so I'm looking into getting a mac. I've been a PC guy all my life, never really saw myself making the jump to mac, but with boot camp I thought maybe now is the time. Problem is, Macbook pro's are absolutely absurdly expensive to the point where I don't know how I can justify it. It costs $2000 for a 15 inch pro with a big enough harddrive for Windows 7, and for $1000 less I can get an Alienware laptop with better specs. Basically I would be paying $1000 for final cut pro, since that's all I need it for. But at this price I feel like I should just keep using premiere pro and stick with PC's. Can anyone help me out with this decision? Should I somehow find it in myself to bite the bullet and go with the mac?
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Just whatever you do, don't buy a fucking Alienware, they are garbage and you will look like a huge chump hauling that attention-seeking monster to class
Use your student discount and upgrade the HD yourself. I put a 7200rpm 500gb in my 13" MacBook Pro for $75.
You'll be under $1,700 with that.
So, operating system, hardware, and software aside: How much do you care about build quality?
I'm not sure how well the Alienware does, but the Macbook Pro's battery life is really damn good. As far as general mobility goes, they really get it right... size, weight, keyboard, glorious trackpad, long battery life.
Also, bear in mind you can always just buy a hard drive from Newegg or something and upgrade it yourself for much less.
Your call. Do the advantages of a Mac, some of which I just mentioned, really matter to you enough to pay 1000 bucks more? They did for me, but that doesn't mean they will for you.
Edit: And yes, don't forget the student discount!
If I got the 13 inch it wouldn't be an issue, since the price for that is nice. The 15 just seems perfect for me, along with the increased specs. It's just so expensive. And I don't know how to put in my own HDD, maybe a shop would do it for me.
It's stupid easy. It tells you how in the manual. Also, hauling around a 15" sucks after a while.
-if you get applecare (which is out to three years), you get very good service. i've had them hand me a replacement mb, new in box; also, every time i called with an issue i got a friendly person who spoke english well and sent me an email followup
-the quality is magnificent... my aluminum macbook has been dropped several times (from 3 feet high), had water, juice, and soda spilled, etc. it's got issues here and there but it's still ticking
-people who like OSX really like OSX (i'm one of them)
-the trackpad is amazing; unless you're gaming (or maybe doing high caliber editing) you might never be tempted to get a mouse. the real estate, smoothness, singular 'button', and multi-touch makes the trackpad my favorite input device ever
so, there are definitely some intangibles that aren't going to show up on a 'specs' page
whether they're worth the cash to you is, of course, a personal decision that hinges upon your preferences
You want the hi-res anti-glare if anything. It's the one thing I hate that I couldn't upgrade on my 13".
GT: Tanky the Tank
Black: 1377 6749 7425
So, instead of looking at it as paying twice as much for a laptop, look at it as buying your next three laptops all at once, except they're all identical and you won't have to migrate all your data every three years.
I bought mine at a boxing day sale from Futureshop. Apple themselves rarely offer such deals, though.
If you can afford to wait until February, have a look at the buyers guide on Macrumors.com. They have a pretty good handle on when Apple products, in this case the Macbook Pro, will be updated. So, if you really want to get your money's worth, buy as soon as they're updated. Apple doesn't lower their prices over a hardware cycle, so as the hardware they're using for the cycle "ages", you're getting less bang for your buck.
And yes, the batteries do seem to last a while. My aluminum Macbook is about 22 months old now, and the battery has gone through 183 cycles, but is still at 96% health. I literally bring the thing to school with me every day, and run the battery down below 40%. And, well, the fact that I do that and it still looks pristine is also quite a testament to its build quality.
Also, the Buyer's Guide says wait, if you can:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook_Pro
Watch my music videos
That, in addition to this (click)... yeah, definitely wait.
The only discounts Apple ever has are the educational discounts. I got mine off an authorized 3rd party seller (PC Connection Express) and they had a $150 rebate that actually came within six months. Shocking.
Also, I highly recommend the 15'', especially if you're going to be doing video editing. You mentioned that you'd be going to Spain, and unless you plan on getting a monitor there, editing on a 13'' 1280x800 screen absolutely sucks.
Plus, you know, core i5 and all that.
Ooooohhhhh. Media event, sweet. I wonder if they'll have live streaming video from the event again.
Watch my music videos
Yeah, I'll want to do some gaming too, so I'll make a windows partition probably.