[illperipherals]

Facing a buying decision/dilemma and need some advice re: the following--

I do all sorts of work (at a major Cali. university) on my current four-year-old 15'' MBP which is showing its age. I've been looking forward to getting a new MBP for much the same work purposes (from basics of layout, occasional webdesign, creating presentations to editing images, audio and up to now rarely video for our sites etc).

But *which* MBP to buy?

Consider the specs and the big price difference:

1) High-end "Rev. E" (Early 2008) MBP
Old design, but condition NEW (not refurbished)
2.5 GHz with 6MB L2 Cache
15'' matte LCD (no preference here)
250GB hard drive
2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
NVIDIA 8600M GT with 512MB (shared? not sure?) RAM
2 FW and 2 USB ports, etc.
DVI output
3-year AppleCare
Total price after the Oct. 14 announcement: $1,700

2) The brand NEW unibody enclosure (Late 2008) MBP
2.4GHz with 3MB L2 cache
15'' glossy screen (no preference here)
250GB hard drive
2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
NVIDIA 9600 GT + M GPUs with 256 shared RAM
1 FW and 2 USB ports, etc.
Mini-DisplayPort output
3-year AppleCare
Total price after the Oct. 14 announcement: $2,140

These are special EDU pricing deals for our and prob. many other universities... But the difference in price is large: $440

So — Which one would you go for? And why? Any other caveats, recommendations, etc?

Just trying to get a sense and a few outside opinions.... Thanks to all who reply!

[mduell]

If you're fine with the old case and tight on money, I'd go with the old model.

[iREZ]

I bought a 2.4ghz 200gb 256vram matte screen mbp last night from the refurb store for $1349 (i was going to order the 2.5ghz model but apparently they sold out right when i got my credit card out and i didn't want the same thing to happen with the 2.4 model as well). $1999 vs $1349 for virtually the same machine is def a no brainer for me (not to mention the perks of having FW/matte screen). I was even considering the blackbook at one point but decided not to because of A. I freelance and whipping out a macbook (vs a mbp) would be a lil amateurish looking, and B. With all this talk about apple and adobe relying more on the GPU of these notebooks for their future software, i just couldn't wholeheartedly get an integrated GPU (although i still find the black MB to be one of the best looking macs ever made).