Is the latest refresh of the entry-level MacBook Pro worth $355.19?

I've decided that I'm going to go crazy and buy the 15.4" $1,999 MSRP MacBook Pro after a few months of on-again off-again lusting, but I'm at a crossroads. With my university discount, the brand new MBP costs $1,905.14 ($1,799 + tax) -- I know this (because Tyler knows this, and) because I have one in my Apple.com shopping cart.

Meanwhile, I can get the "Late 2007" Merom-based MA895LL/A 15.4 MacBook Pro for $1,549.95 total (free shipping, no tax). A difference of $355.19.

Do you guys think the benefits of the refresh are worth it? Looking down the list, I see a boost in video RAM from 128MB to 256MB, a worthless (to me) hard drive upgrade, updated Bluetooth, those (admittedly awesome) touchpad mechanics from the MB Air, and a 0.2 MHz quicker processor.

Would you guys do it? Guide me.

 

Well... $355, if you can afford it, would be worth it. The boost from 128mb to 256mb is noticable, depending if you actually use it for graphic intensive things or not. The extra HDD space is nice to have, and the multi-touch stuff, although gimmick-y is pretty neat. Processor will be a tad faster and save you a tad of battery life, but it's marginal in both cases. I'd say if you can afford it, definatley go for it, but if you're strapped for cash then stick with the cheaper one, as long as it will fit your needs.

Personally, if faced with that choice myself, I might end up picking the cheaper one... since I'm a student and as such, can sometimes be really strapped for cash. Especially since materials, books, and tuition are so expensive these days.

 

Arquis hit it spot on. If it were me, I'd probably go ahead and spend the extra money on it.

 

Heh, I'm kind of leaning toward the more expensive one as well, but it's for the stupidest of reasons. I could drive down to the Apple Store in Denver tonight and have one. Am I hopeless?

The video memory is definitely appealing: I'd like to throw some games at this thing.

The hard drive isn't really an issue because I'm just going to sell whatever hard drive it comes with and put in my own 100GB 7200RPM drive. I like faster hard drives at the expense of capacity because I'm weird -- do most people still stick with 5400RPM drives in notebooks?

The battery life is actually better on the refreshed MBP, correct? I was a little thrown off by that because of the way Apple reported battery measurements.

 

I prefer a 7200 RPM drive, but I've got an 800 MHz Laptop, so I need all the speed I can get Most people prefer space over speed, but if you do certain things you'll want the speed more (Audio and video work will be much nicer with a 7200 RPM drive).

As for driving to Denver to pick it up Vs. getting it shipped, if you had my car I wouldn't spend the extra $30 in gas, but if you have something efficient, it is more convenient to not deal with FedEx because you will have to sign for it in person.

 

Keep in mind that it voids the warranty to replace the hard drive in a macbook pro.

 

Battery life is marginally better, like, a few minutes, maybe 15? I'm not too sure, but it's a bit better. If you're going to do any gaming though, you'll really appreciate the 256mb 8600. I'd stick with the 5400 drive out of convenience really. You'd have to pay Apple to change it for you or risk losing your warranty. Although I hear that if you replace it yourself they would have no way of knowing you did, and if you ever needed a repair you can put the stock one back in. Unless of course you accidentally broke something while installing it.

 

That's a tough decision. Will you game on it? The extra VRAM is nice and so is the larger HD. The advantages of the T8300 vs T7500 CPU are not spectacular based on the reviews and benchmarks. Basically you're going to see about 2-4% increase in performance and a very slight increase in batt life but a noticeable drop in heat dissipation. Multi-touch is nice I hear although I've never seen it in action so I don't know.

Personally, if you're not going to game on it and can do without the multi-touch pad and the smaller HD, the money saved can be used to get quite a few extras like applecare, .mac, a nice case etc...

I faced a similar decision a week ago and decided to stay with the older MBP but I ended up saving over $500.

 

I had both, and I just "feel" better having the new version. 355 is a lot if you are strapped for cash though.

 

I'd say unless you really need the more VRAM and hard drive size, go with the lower cost version. $355 is substantial...if hard drive space is your main reasoning for it, you can get absolutely huge external drives for $300. Its mainly the VRAM, really, that should be your deciding factor.

 

I was in your shoes yesterday. I was debating to get the old versus the new. I ended up getting the older one mainly for personal reasons. I don't really game much so the jump to 256 meg of video ram doesn't bother me. The extra space doesn't bother me either because i'm throwing in a 7200 rpm drive. Regardless, i'm happy with my decision. The extra money that you save can be spent on a nice sleeve or some other goodies.

 

Hey guys, thanks for all the responses. After calling around and finding that I'd be paying 8.45% sales tax at my nearest Apple Store (bringing the differential to just over $400), I think I'm going to pocket the difference and go with the previous gen's MBP. My local Best Buy still has the old MBPs in stock (at the bargain price of $1,999.99 + tax) so I stopped in and played around with one this evening. I like what I saw -- it feels snappy and it's just as aesthetically pleasing as the new one will be. ATC, your response resonates the loudest to me: $400 will go a long way toward buying some accessories... like a TripleHead2Go with cash to spare.

The only game(s) I'm really interested in are the Half-Life 2/Source-powered mods. Have any of you guys tried TF2 on the 128MB GeForce 8600 card? I'm hoping it can handle them -- I don't really care about anything newer.

 

the 128mb 8600 will handle all source games reasonably well.

 

My wife has the base model May 2007 MBP and I hae the new 2.5 GHz Penryn. The two are really about the same speed on routine MS Office-type tasks, and Safari loads a little faster on hers for some reason. The screens are exactly the same, the keyboards are slightly different (moved keys around), but no other exterior changes. So, if you don't need the larger hard drive or extra video memory, I would suggest you buy the previous model and opt for Applecare with the extra cash. You won't notice a speed difference and now you'll have three-year hardware coverage.

 

Is that a typo or the 17" model?

Apple still has refurbished MacBook Pro 2.2GHz 15.4" models for $1449 online, just incase you hadn't seen them yet.

It's the same model that BestBuy lists online for $1699.

 

I said "bargain price" tongue-in-cheek because the prices of the Late 2007/Santa Rosa MBPs have dropped pretty much everywhere (including bestbuy.com apparently!), but the one in my particular B&M store still had the $1,999.99 tag on it. Maybe it was just an old tag -- I didn't bother asking the associate.

$1,449 + tax will be right around $1,550 so I'd rather not go refurb for the same price.

Zeos, your feedback is encouraging. I'm feeling pretty good about this decision so far.

 

The biggest difference, I think, will be the VRAM increase. So if you're gonna game, then you'll probably want to shell out the money - otherwise, keep it. You can get a 500 GB external HD for much less than $350, if you need the storage. Multitouch is cute, but still a gimmick, I think - though down the road, it might have more practical applications. 0.2 GHz of extra speed isn't going to make a big difference, either.

All told, though, I'd probably get the more expensive one myself - but as the others have mentioned, it really comes down to how strapped for cash you really are right now.

EDIT: Wow, totally missed this second page, I see you made your decision. 128 MB 8600M GT should handle those games just fine, generally - I know my 256 can do TF2 and HL2 with high settings just fine, so you just might need to drop a few settings a bit.

 

there is absolutely no reason for you to put a 100gb 7200rpm HDD in the machine when you can get it with a 200gb 7200rpm drive, with double the cache, they should have a model in the store with this drive as well.

 

kalibar, I know you have already made your decision, but I was going to mention if you go a little farther south to the Aspen Grove store in Littleton, they only charge 7.35% sales tax.

Personally I would go with the newer Penryn based one on the fact that it will run cooler alone. It always irked me having to type on a keyboard that felt like it was over 100F.

 

If yours is that hot then there might be something wrong with it I think. Mine only gets hot when doing heavy video editing, anything else and it sits comfortably straight on my lap and the keyboard has never even felt warm once.

 

Weird. Mine is always warm when it's on. When watching videos or gaming it gets mild-hot. The keyboard though, never gets hot since it's made of plastic, and not aluminum....

 

I think I may have really lucked out with mine which made it that much tougher of a decision to exchange it for the new model. It's also silent that I have to put my ear to the keyboard area to hear anything.

As far as the keyboard, of course it won't get hot itself but I think the area below the keyboard can radiate heat if the whole thing got super hot which I assume is what win32asmguy was alluding to.

 

The whole thing gets hot after a while. The iLap is pretty cool and I may order it so I can watch TV and still get stuff done.

 

I've never been one to care much for working with a laptop on my lap so heat on the bottom isn't much of an issue for me. The only place I dislike getting too warm is the palm rest area. I had a Lenovo x61s here a little over a month ago and it was a bit of a cooker after a period of time.

 

Thanks again to everyone for your helpful feedback. It would appear that I'm basically a flip-flopping flippery flopperson because I ended up going against my financially-sound judgement, drove down to Boulder (didn't realize an Apple Store was that close to me!), and picked up a Penryn-based MBP for $1,799 + 8.13% sales tax. I was pretty bummed to find out that the free iPod nano deal is only available from July - November or whatever -- yeah yeah "back to school promotion," but rewarding buyers based on the time of year seems a little bit arbitrary. At least they still let me have that crappy free-after-rebate HP printer.

Ultimately, it was reading AnandTech's shockingly-detailed and extensive reviews of the Penryn MBPs and their real-world benchmarks of the new computers vs. the old Merom-based 2.2 GHz MBP that swayed me. Faster, cooler, and more video RAM: I decided it would be pretty nice to have all those gains, as dismal battery life has been one of my big complaints of my Notebooks Past (Dell Inspiron 9300, Lenovo ThinkPad T61). Anyway, once I started weighing the benefits coupled with "now now now, I could have this computer right now!" against the Merom MBP and 7-10 day shipping it was hopeless. I'm banging out these very keystrokes on my Penryn MBP.

So far I'm loving the computer and feeling pretty good about my marginally-irrational decision. The multi-touch mechanics are straight-up phenomenal, though I do wish Firefox (3.0 beta 3) supported the three-finger back/forward navigations -- my second-favorite touch feature, right behind two-finger scrolling. This has been my first "real" experience with Mac OS X, as I've been staunchly a PC guy all my life. I had a pretty good idea what I'd be getting into, but I've gotta say to anyone out there still sitting on the fence: just do it. The production and presentation values of the whole "Mac experience" and setup are really just exceptional, and interacting with my PC resources hasn't been any kind of a problem. I'm really alarmed at how well-done MS's Remote Desktop Connection: Mac is; I actually prefer the product to RDP on Windows, as it lets me seamlessly interact with my MacOS apps by using CMD+TAB, whereas a Win-to-Win remote session passes an ALT+TAB to whichever desktop you're looking at.

Still loosely studying my virtualization and Boot Camp options (Parallels vs. VMWare, Vista for aesthetic appeal vs. XP for lower resource requirements), but I'm not really in any kind of rush. I've had a long-time lust to try out Adium, Sling Media's Mac SlingPlayer client works great, and I'm thrilled to jack around with QuickSilver. Mac Office 2008 looks like a pretty big steaming turd, but hopefully it'll be passable for most things and I'll always be able to fall back on Office 2007 via Coherence/Unity if needbe (going against popular consensus, I'm a really big fan of Office2007's ribbon ).

The only two problems I've come across so far are the computer's obnoxious insistence on sleeping everytime I shut the lid without giving me an option to modify the behavior (Mac users seem to find this offense acceptable!), and Firefox 3.0's inexplicable removal of favicons from the Bookmarks Toolbar -- presumably to make the program look more "Mac-like" or somesh!t -- in addition to breaking compatibility with my previously-discovered Firefox-fixing solution. I solved the first problem with a little program called InsomniaX, but I'm still thirsting for a solution to the second one. Hopefully Mozilla will include an option to turn Bookmarks Toolbar favicons on in the final release of 3.0, but I'm not really holding my breath on that one.

Thanks again to everyone for your input and recommendations. At this point, I think I'm going to just fire off stuff I notice about OS X while using my spankin'-new Mac.

 

Congrats. The multi-touch sounds good. I use the two finger scroll and two finger right-click a lot and now I can't get by without them. I subconsciously look for it every time I use a PC.

 

Sounds good, kalibar! Glad to hear you're enjoying it!

If you ever have any questions, don't be afraid to ask!