Thinking of taking the plunge and getting a Macbook Pro

[SimplyZero]

I'm a long time Windows user, but I've recently got myself a little more interested in Apple products. Over the past couple of months I've been in and out of a couple of Apple stores looking at the Macbook Pro line, and I think that it might be my next notebook purchase. I do some video production in Sony Vegas, some Photoshop work, Flash design, and a lot of other web development stuff that is somewhat intensive but it's not something I do 24/7 on my machine. Currently I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 series that only has a single core Intel Centrino 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. It still does the things I need it to do, but it's getting a little more sluggish with every new release of a product that I need to use.

 

As hesitant as I am, I've started looking around MacMall.com for the best pricing and the base model that I'm looking at is priced at $1,789.98 which is the 15.4 inch 2.4GHz system with the 256MB graphics card. Currently I'm trying to debate if it's worth bumping up to the 2.5GHz model with the additional 50GB more worth of hard drive space and the 512MB graphics carad, but I just can't see how I could justify the additional $500. I plan on sometime down the road picking up an external 20 or 24 inch Dell monitor to use with the Macbook Pro if I should need more screen space, considering that the 17 inch line of Macbook Pro's more than likely wouldn't work well with my travels every couple of months. I've also heard that it might be in my best interest to bump up to a 7200-rpm drive because of better performance, but I'm not sure what I think about that.

 

I don't think that I'll be able to completely shut Windows out of my life because I'm not a big fan of Entourage and need Outlook for all the stuff that syncs up to my company Exchange. So I think a copy of VMWare Fusion would be in my best interest for that purpose.

 

Sorry that this has been long winded. I just thought that I might collect some thoughts from the experienced Mac users out there to get an insight to any recommendations for a converting full time Windows user, and what you would do about the 2.4GHz to 2.5GHz line for my needs.

 

Thanks!

[limini]

Hi. Not that I have tons of experience with Macs, but I took the plunge last year and got a fully decked MBP 17" with 4 gigs of RAM and a 160 gig 7200 rpm hard drive. It's a great machine and it feels more like a PC 15" than a PC 17". And needless to say, it was also expensive. Now I'm wondering if I did a good thing. Please read this thread. All MBPs since Mid 2007 are using the same G86 chipset that's in question. Considering how much money is involved, I would hold off till this dust settles if I were you.

 

Right now everyone's in denial and repairs involve logic board replacement... with probably the same chips and the same potential problems. This is much like the cheap capacitor fiasco of a few years back. And the consumer absorbs the brunt of it. Again.

[SimplyZero]

I was afraid that someone would mention the design flaw with the G86 chipset. No one has really mentioned this to me except for what I've found through my own limited research. However, it's definitely something that I need to think about and will probably make me hold off on my purchase for a while until the next refresh of the line. I am sort of in need of a new machine in the worst way so I also want to get a new one as soon as possible as well. I've read over the speculation threads and polls about when people think that the next refresh of the Macbook Pro's will be, and I think most people are leading towards August. I can't believe Apple would do that though because of their "Back to School" sale that they're currently running. It looks like to me that Apple would have some pretty angry students if they later found out that a refresh was right around the corner.