Hi everyone,

This is my first time posting on this site, so pardon me if I seem naive.

I am an art student at UMass, and gradually becoming more and more addicted to Final Cut Pro. I have decided that rather than dealing with the few open hours available at the video lab here, I want to buy my own MacBook Pro.

I've looked around, and it seems the best deal I can find that would work best for me and for final cut is a refurbished macbook pro 15.4" with Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.2GHz. I am seriously considering this Mac, but also one sold at the UStore here at UMass. There are a good few differences between the two, but the differences that seem most important to me are

Refurbished vs. New
$1449 vs. $2299
2.2 vs. 2.5 ghz intel core 2 duo
128 vs. 512mb nvidia geforce 8600m gt video card

if i was looking to run final cut pro, would going with the cheaper refurbished macbook really cause some harm? how much more wait time am i looking at? where, if there would be a problem, should i make the change in my search? is there really that big of a difference between 2.2 and 2.5ghz? what changes will i notice between the 128 and 512mb video card? regardless of the macbook i choose, i plan to buy two 2gb ram sticks.

also, how much experience do you have with macofalltrades.com and smalldog.com? would i do well to purchase from these vendors? if not, would you mind recommending some others?


thank you so much for reading and considering,

chaz