imac vs. macbook pro
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- meffid
this has been discussed til the cows come home I know, but I purchase my new machine on thursday and need the low down.
it's going to be my home machine for solid design work, the imac is big and sexy and much cheaper but only has the ATI radeon 256 gfx card, do I go all in and get the 15" with the better grfx card, the same amount of ram and get a nice lcd to go with it? but then I'd have a messy desk and wires everywhere.
The portability I'm not fussed on, I already have a laptop.
what's your opinion, stories, tales or regret on buying your new hardware.
cost is not the deciding factor in this one.
- ian0
Macbook pro. The iMac is not a professional piece of kit, its more for home users. Go pro and get the best build you can afford but get memory elsewhere, it'll be cheaper and just as good if you don't buy from apple.
- crayz0
The builds are very similar i am not to keen on the screen on the Imacs. and you will kick your self in a year if you did not get the macbook pro. i use a basic macbook with a 24 inch benQ hd monitor. it works perfect as long of course if i am not touching 3d. like ian said. don't upgrade your ram and hdd space. upgrade that later at a much much cheaper price if you do it your self. go with the laptop and get your self a nice monitor is your best bet for longevity.
- YAYPaul0
I don't think I’ll ever go back to a desktop machine again after this MBP, however, I am just about to buy a 17" with hi-res screen, because the max res on the 15" just doesn't give me enough real-estate when doing design work.
On the iMac front, I’d say unless you are doing motion, video or huge raw work you're not going to really notice the difference on the gfx card front.
* Side note: If you plan on playing any games what so ever, get the MBP.
- vague0
get a Boxx (http://www.boxxtech.com/) and get far more power and infinitely more support for less than anything mac has to offer.
aww, i can just see you starting to tear up and desperately trying to think of a reason to defend your inevitably Mac-only choice.
- it's purely OS. I just can't work XP or Vista and refuse to invest time tending to it's every question every 12 seconds. OSX, update it, run it.meffid
- rafalski0
What type of work are you planning to do? unless you do 3D, there is no need to worry about video card.
I say macbook pro, matte. the only department it is going to be slower in is hard drive. "only" means it is a bottleneck for overall computer performance. Best you can do is order a 7200rpm drive, but even this will not be a match for a 3.5" drives that afaik are used in iMacs.
What laptop do you have btw? Is it worth keeping two of them? I use a macbook witn an external lcd and would never swap this for having 2 computers I'd have to keep in sync.
- kalkal0
Actually, that isn't the only bottleneck, the FSB is 200mhz slower on the Macbook Pro. Unless you get the 17" which is pretty much identical .
- We're talking of a possible speed decrease of like 20% though. But combine that with the slower HD and inferior GFX card...kalkal
- card...kalkal
- Oh and all you bitches that are reading this on your macbook pro right now, I didn't say its slow, its quite fast, its just SLOWER than the iMackalkal
- SLOWER than the iMackalkal
- rodzilla0
My new iMac is faster than the machine I use at work. The only flaw is the screen, I don't really like that its not matte finish, but the iMac was a much cheaper solution. I maxed out everything and the machines breezes through everything. I don't get into 3d or video so the computer is fine for me. I would suggest seeing them in person if at all possible.
- kalkal0
To be fair, if you're seriously into 3D and video, neither of them are going to be the right solution for you...
- emecks0
I just got a 24" iMac - loving it.
Don't have much in the way of heavy apps to run on it admittedly but it seems to perform bloody marvelous :)
- mimeartist0
i have a 24 imac and put 4 gbs in it, as it was suffering for just 1. it is probably the same speed as my 17 hi-res macbook pro
- did you get the extra ram yourself, if so where from?emecks
- DUKIE08220
look at the refurbished section...they have great deals on mb pros and the imac
the 2.8 imac was 1899 the other day when it is usually 2499...plus you get the same warranty-it's a no brainer- got mine on the refurb in the uk. ordered it on wednesday, arrived on thursday :Demecks
- I did the same thing but wgot the mbproI love the speed and interface comp to my windows machineDUKIE0822
- I have officially bought my last windows computer - time machine especially will be very helpful to meemecks
- Faction180
go pro.