[relita]

Hello im looking to buy my first apple laptop ( MBP 15 ) but there is few things i don't understand

First: what the diference between Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i7?


Second: hard drive options:

# 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
# 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm [Add $50.00]
# 128GB Solid State Drive [Add $200.00]
# 256GB Solid State Drive [Add $650.00]
# 512GB Solid State Drive [Add $1,300.00]


whats the pros and cons of each option?


i really wanna order my laptop but cant really figure out

Thank you,

[turtle777]

Let me google that for you



-t

[P]

Originally Posted by relita 

Hello im looking to buy my first apple laptop ( MBP 15 ) but there is few things i don't understand

First: what the diference between Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i7?

Complicated answer, but for the Macbook Pros in particular the answer is that the i7 has a 4MB cache and the i5 has only 3MB, and that it will Turbo up one extra clockspeed bin - plus whatever clockspeed advantage it had to begin with.

Originally Posted by relita 

Second: hard drive options:

# 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
# 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm [Add $50.00]
# 128GB Solid State Drive [Add $200.00]
# 256GB Solid State Drive [Add $650.00]
# 512GB Solid State Drive [Add $1,300.00]


whats the pros and cons of each option?

A 7200rpm drive is faster than a 5400rpm drive. A Solid State Drive is much faster than a 7200rpm drive and has better battery life to boot, but you pay for it with a much lower capacity and much higher price.

[Cold Warrior]

seagate has a hybrid drive coming out that has high capacity and some performance benefits over regular HDD but not as good as SSD.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...ps/laptop-hdd/

[SierraDragon]

Short answer is that the performance benefits of i7 generally are not for +$200 cost-effective with today's software; go with the i5 configuration (tests at barefeats.com). $50 for 7200 rpm generally is cost-effective if one does any significant amount of disk i/o, and many folks do. SSDs are awesome but best bet is to wait for prices to fall some more and then buy third-party (like buying RAM).

The only real downside to 7200 rpm is the $50. IMO added noise, heat and lessened battery life although non-zero are small enough to be insignificant. Of course if one will do nothing but surf the net and email, save the $50, heat, noise and battery life.

[AltecXP]

I have had 7200RPM in all my macbooks and never noticed any heat/noise or battery change. In fact my Unibody Macbook was rated for 4hrs of battery and i could get 4.5 out of it with the 7200rpm HDD. I'm not saying that it ADDED battery, but it definitely didn't hurt it.

[tinkered]

7200RPM drives are worth the $50 as people use their hard drives more often than they think and waiting for the drive can often be the bottle neck most users experience as slow. Many users I know get impenitent when opening a document or power point, or when waking the computer form sleep, but don't really multitask or use CPU heavy software enough to notice their CPU speed until the computer is several years old.

[Oisín]

Many users I know get impenitent when opening a document or power point

That’s odd. I know quite a few Mac users myself who’d consider opening Power Point something to be most ashamed of.

[-Q-]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

That’s odd. I know quite a few Mac users myself who’d consider opening Power Point something to be most ashamed of.

I can't remember if I die inside a litle or the gods kill a kitten. Either way, opening a powerpoint on a mac is bad.

[tinkered]

Originally Posted by Oisín 

That’s odd. I know quite a few Mac users myself who’d consider opening Power Point something to be most ashamed of.

Not to derail the thread, but I honestly can't seem to escape Power Point, even though I prefer using keynote. The big problem is when I collaborate with power point on a Win box users and the conversion just mucks everything up. I work in the life sciences, and half my presentations are graphs and they never convert well. If someone has found a solution for this, let me know. Otherwise I am stuck with

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by tinkered 

Not to derail the thread, but I honestly can't seem to escape Power Point, even though I prefer using keynote. The big problem is when I collaborate with power point on a Win box users and the conversion just mucks everything up. I work in the life sciences, and half my presentations are graphs and they never convert well. If someone has found a solution for this, let me know. Otherwise I am stuck with

My own personal solution (though I guess it doesn’t help much for collaborations): unless you really need some of the fancy features of Power Point/Keynote presentations, just use PDF. Much easier, and it renders the same everywhere.

[Tuoder]

Remember that you can upgrade the hard drive later, but not the CPU. Also, SSD prices have been falling pretty quickly as time goes by. SSDs are also more impact-resisitant, as they have no moving parts. Now, there is an accelerometer in the MBP that does help with falling protection on regular HDDs, but SSDs are going to be a bit mroe resistant than that. Also, I'm concerned that OS X doesn't seem to have any load-leveling, so I'd be concerned on whether or not the SSD drive firmware handles that. If not, they may not last terribly long.

[tinkered]

Tuoder has a good point. I upgraded my hard drive on my MBP, but if you are not comfortable working on you computer, you might as well decided to spend the bucks based on how long you thin you hope to keep the computer. If you only want 2 years out of it, go frugal, if your ant 4 or 5, you should pay for upgrades now.