MBP 13 or 15... going to be a uni. student soon.

I want a MBP because I'd like to experience the whole OSX thing and whatnot. I have been a windows user all my life. OSX looks great and interesting!

I have desktop right now...
AMD 64 X2 4400 @ 2.4GHZ
2 GB DDR2 RAM

A bit weak in today's standards... I get lags in FireFox after a while.

What should I get? I am going to be a Commerce student... and the reason why the 15 comes to mind is the i5 and the better GPU over the 13... the 13 still has the I2D... how much better is the i5 over the I2D? The 13 would provide much better mobility though.

 

Im in college now, I decided on the 13 b/c of
Portability:fits in my Bags laptop slot perfect, the 15 would require a bigger bag.

Battery Life: its nothing short of impressive for the power this thing delivers

Power: While its not the cutting edge (i5/7) It is very fast with anything that I have thrown at it, infact I had all the iWork and iLife programs open and like 6 windows open, and there was no noticable lag using spaces and expose.

 

Really it comes down to the portability - are you going to be carrying this thing around a lot to classes and such? Also, what kind of budget do you have?. Power wise, both laptops will be more than enough for your needs as a Commerce student.

And Fyi, I think you mean C2D, not I2D.

 

If apple had made the 15 100 dollars more and all the specs the same I would have bought it, but its 600 more and to me not worth it to me, but if you will tap into the i5's power (Programing, Heavy Video editing, etc) then its worth it.

 

I don't know how you can say an 1800 USD machine is worth it just so you can program and edit video.

If you have serious work to do, get a PC ... You're a commerce student though, I cannot imagine you having to run Matlab, LabView or any other process intensive application engineers use. The 13" MBP should be fine for your needs assuming all you're doing is Excel and Word.

You need to ask yourself if spending 1800 USD on a computer just because you want to experience OSX is a reasonable investment. I mean, this is really a no brainer ... Just because the i series is out doesn't automatically make C2D machines sluggish, they're still good computers as most applications out there are still optimized for dual core processors.

 

When I was in college the only thing I could think of was portability as said above. I just bought a 13" mbp and although its not the smallest thing in the world I could not imagine carrying around a bigger one.

Plus as said above, the battery life is great and when I used to take 3hr courses I know that would be crucial.

 

13" is really the best form factor, I got a 15" but ended up almost never taking it to campus with me. It is really too big. The 13" is a really good size. And you said you are a commerce student and unless I am mistaken, I don't think you will be running any extremely intensive programs on it which the 13" can't handle.

 

I suppose I should have said worth it to me lol
Hell if I had the money to burn in my pocket I would have gotten the i7 17 MBP.
Yeah the value and logic may not there, but money aside I personally think its unparalleled in terms of size, feel, battery life, power, and looks. Not just the OS X its the whole package.
Either way its hard to justify getting one MBP over this or or that based on price/specs alone. When I was deciding to buy mine I put out a limit I wanted to spend comfortably and decided which laptop would make me the most happy, not what was necessarily the best value financially. (although resale value on macs arent bad)
Really depends on how much money this guy has to spend and if is willing to spend it...

 

13" by miles unless your doing heavy media editing. If you are doing gaming as well, the 15" will be better, but not amazingly different. Certainly not worth the extra 500 or so for your needs, I honestly think.