Want a new MBP 13" - 2.26 or 2.53?

It is time for me to jump into the world of Apple and OSX. I was patiently waiting to see what would come of the keynote and the welcome upgrades/price cuts have made me decide this is the time to purchase a 13” MBP.

After comparing the 2.26 and 2.53 models, the extra $300 gets me .27Mhz worth of processor, 90GB more storage and 2GB more memory. I think $300 can easily get me a 500GB+ HDD and 4GB of memory.

I will be surfing the web, watching video/DVD, maybe some video encoding, DVD/CD ripping, bootcamp here and there and occasional gaming. The 2.26 should be plenty of power, but want some opinions on my decision.


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I'd think that the 2.26 would be fine, too. On those occasions when you use it for gaming, performance will be checked by the GPU long before the small difference in CPU will have any effect.

The other benefit to doing your own upgrades is that you can go with a 7200 drive if you like. My early 08 MBP with a stock 5400 HDD booted OS X in well under a minute, so the 7200 may not have a lot of value. On the other hand, if you're doing lots of encoding to your internal hard drive, then a faster drive might be useful. And you can't get one via "build to order."

 

You're certainly right. $300 bucks will get you all the upgrades and then some! 2.26 is enough. I have the early 2009 white MB with just 2.0ghz and I put upgraded parts into it and basically it can handle just about anything i throw at it. I even run virtual machines on this thing. I think for $300 through some deal hunting, you could probably put in a 5400rpm 500gb HD and 8gb of ram.

I too have a 7200rpm HD but it doesn't offer much of a speed difference, just a bit more vibration, heat, and battery consumption. Do not get a 4200rpm though - i tried that in my macbook and that was definately slower than 5400. haha. Have a great time with your new macbook! I would certainly love 7hrs of battery life with productivity! Just make sure you're not one of those people who like to swap out batteries since the new one is internal.

 

The current setup should be plenty for me right now. I will do some searching and when I see a deal on upgrades I will take the plunge. I would prefer to have a removable battery, but that is not a deal breaker.

OSX is very efficient with this hardware, so I don't think I will ever have a problem with the MBP not handling my workload.

Thanks for the replies. I can't wait to get my MBP!


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How difficult is it to upgrade the RAM and HD on the 2.26 model? Does doing that void the warranty?

Possibly interested in doing the same as the OP. Thanks!

 

It is prob just as easy as the first gen unibody Macbook. Not sure how the design will change with the integrated battery. These upgrades will not void your warranty.


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very easy to upgrade the ram. just remove the screws (refer to supplied manual), open the case and swap the ram. all unibodies now come with backlit keyboards. i suggest you go with the cheapest one.

 

Thanks for the info!
Does anyone know if the hard drive on these can be replaced with an SSD manually?

 

of course it can! it may or may not be easy to do, but it will be possible.

 

Make sure you set aside plenty of time to do so.

 

So I'm getting from you all that it's best deal to get the 2.26, upgrade RAM on my own - and then wait till SSD prices go down to do that on own?

 

if you are trying to cut costs as much as possible, sure... me I just get it with what I want in it... its only money...

 

If you absolutely need the extra .27Mhz go for the 2.53 trim. I would grab the 2.26 and search out good deals on more ram and an SSD.

I'm going for the 2.26. It is plenty of power and after some rebates and Ebay sales my actual cash out of pocket will be well under $1K.


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ssd prices will not go down that quickly. so that will be looong wait.

 

I would get the $1200 mbp and buy a 80gb intel x-25m, it's only $314 on newegg, and it's one of the fastest ssd's you can buy. I would be fine with just 2 gigs of ram.

 

I don't understand why so many people still lust for SSD when they are so much slower overall than drives.

Anyway, get the 2.26GHz.

 

I don't think so...

my friend got an Apple SSD 256gb in a 17" MBP and that thing is freaking fast as heck... much faster than either of the drives in my MBPs, one thats 7200 and one thats 5400 rpm

 

For some things, like cached read, SSD is much faster, but for most other processes, like random small writes (e.g. cookies), SSD is a complete dog. The newer Intel controllers are much better but are still slow compared to regular disks.

 

But the inverse can also be said, regular disks are fast at small writes, but extremely slow (in comparison) during cached reads or writes. SSDs are new, cool, and people wanna try them out. It's that simple.

I just bought a 5400 RPM WD Black HDD for like 85 or so, and ram will probably be around 100 or something, with the CPU upgrade costing just another 120 or so.

Think of the future, in a few years, will you be regretting not buying that slightly faster CPU? It might make sense now to save the money, but just think of how much time you use the computer, and how mad you might get in the future when it begins to slow down..
Alternatively, if you only plan to keep it for a year or two, do whatever is cheapest

I for one, cannot stand the thought of a slow computer, so I'm getting the Highend 13". SSD/HDD combo, and as much ram as I can buy in a year or so. I can't wait until the latency in the current ram drops, so that DDR3 will finally be way faster than DDR2.

 

Now, now, you guys are talking about MLC. That said, newer Intel controller firmware plus some of the newer Indilinx controller based drives (like OCZ Vertex) are faster then 7200 RPM even in small rights/reads. Samsung drives never had controller issues (use their own controller) and Dell uses mostly, I believe. Also, SLC drives are even faster. Not sure what is offered by Apple here, but my guess its a MLC drive considering the price but I am not sure of the manufacturer. A sure way to figure this one out is to buy the drive yourself separately.

 

When you compare the processors, they are the exact same specs (Core 2 Duo/1066MHz bus/3MB L2 cache) other then the .270Mhz difference. That tiny bump in processor speed won't make much difference in real world use. Possibly in encoding and video production, but $300 for another few frames of encoding just doesn't make sense financially.


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Truth is for normal computing like music/surfing/office you wont notice a difference between a 2.0ghz and a 3.0. On one of my old hps it has a 1.4 ghz amd and it runs vista flawlessly. Multi-tasks office programs fine. Altho it takes 5mins to unzip a 100mb file.

 

I just went through the same debate and decided to get a 2.26 - I already have 4GB ram and an intel X25 160Gb SSD from my sony that I will put into this machine. Used the extra money for apple care.