the price of MBP

hello guys, i am planning to buy a MBP that i haven't used before. my old samsung is really out of date cpu is too low i am looking at the "Apple® - MacBook Pro® with Retina Display - 15.4" Display - 8GB Memory - 256GB Flash Storage" on best buy which is 2079. it's over my budget and i really want to get an MBP. is 2079 really the lowest price? how about i go to the apple store? or a second-hand MBP? just use for work or small entertainment. thank you.

 

2079 is a terrible price

MacMall | Apple 15.4" MacBook Pro (with Retina display) quad-core Intel Core i7 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM, 256GB flash storage, NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB GDDR5, Intel HD Graphics 4000, OS X Mountain Lion MC975LL/A

there is also apple refurb store

Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Quad-core Intel i7 with Retina Display - Apple Store (U.S.)

 

That seems like a drastic overkill notebook if its going to be used for work and entertainment. You can save money and essentially get the same performance out of the 15" MBP. I've seen it being offered for $1500 lately. Granted, it doesn't come with SSD but you can always upgrade it later down the road. Toss in an extra $40 to upgrade the RAM to 8GB and it's a much better bargain than the 15" RMBP if you're on the market for a notebook with the purpose of being used as a work and entertainment unit (unless your work revolves around you programming retina OS X programs).

 

given the price of the rmbp from the refurb shop I would be very hard pressed to buy the mbp 15

 

It would be helpful if we knew what you planned on using the laptop for. http://forum.notebookreview.com/wha...ould-i-buy-form-must-read-before-posting.html

If you're just performing very basic tasks and you really want a Mac, I'd suggest a MBA 13" over a really expensive model, since really basic stuff doesn't really need a full-voltage CPU and dedicated GPU.

 

Why? I picked up mine for $1399, new, from Microcenter. They had it on sale at $1499 for a while but reduced it to $1399 for a period of time (at least my local store did, I think its back up to $1599). That is a much better bargain than a refurbished RMBP. It essentially has the same performance and I can slap 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD in there all while still coming out below the price of a refurb RMBP. Plus it can be customized even further with aftermarket upgrades whereas an RMBP cannot be upgraded beyond what is installed in it.

RMBP vs MBP debate aside, at $1400-$1500, that is more than enough for basic business and entertainment needs. No one needs an RMBP for those purposes, I would even argue that Kuroi is right as even the 15" MBP is overkill. A baseline 11" MBA would perform those tasks with ease. Even a $300 Core i3/Pentium Wintel machine would be able to perform work and entertainment related tasks without issues.

 

A MBA 11" would also certainly do the trick as well. Though personally I find 11.6" to be a bit small for a main computer. Just my two cents, though.

 

thats the thing you had a very low base price and assume that its the same now. Well... it will be soon when they are finally killed and woes of despair can be heard

Although I would agree, there is no need for that kind of power for such simple tasks

but in the end we all learned from this, fluffy bunnies (rmbp/mbp 15) can be killing machines, so to avoid that we use this (mba)

 

Those deals are only good in-store, not online. So if you don't have a MicroCenter nearby, you wouldn't be able to take advantage of those prices.

 

And? Apple currently only has three configurations of the RMBP in their refurbished store, that number can and will change over time and they have one model that is less than $2000. That option may go away over time. In order to get that deal, you would essentially have to buy it now before stock runs out. Is being able to access a smaller retail store chain any different than buying a model from a nation-wide website with limited and changing stock options? Not really. Is it any different than someone finding a good deal at their local mom and pop shop? Nope. I don't see how the practices of Microcenter relate to the discussion especially since every other option out there is also limited in some way.

 

national availability and local availability have quite a great difference.

aside that I agree, you have to scrounge for deals, and the deal on the rmbp at the refurb is much better than getting a mbp 15 for 1500

 

Maybe... After having a 15" MBP and sitting next to someone with a 15" RMBP for the last 4 months, I would say that, aside from the display, the RMBP still seems way overpriced. It (essentially) has all the same specs as an entry level 15" MBP, less aftermarket customization (you have to spend an extra $200 to get 16GB of RAM vs spending $100 to get 16GB of RAM later), there aren't that many Retina apps available, and many (most) websites still aren't optimized for the retina display so they load weird. Facebook literally stutters when vertically scrolling in Safari.

Don't get me wrong, it is a nice notebook. However, it is a luxury notebook at this point and it's way too early to be anything more than an early adopter luxury. I will probably be singing a different tune in ~3 years when programmers start fully supporting Apple's retina displays but, at this point, everything out there is made for non-retina displays. It will all change over time but that will take a while. It isn't like in iOS with the iPhone 4 and iPad 3 where developers had to support Apple's retina standards if they wanted their apps on newer devices. Apple still has plenty of Mac on the market that don't have retina displays.

The RMBP is also way too much of a machine for anyone wanting something for work and entertainment tasks. It's a notebook that is 20 times more powerful than what is required for those purposes.

 

I think for most people who want a powerful computer with a quad i7, the SSD is a given and should be factored into the price comparison.

Has anybody ever seen a hi-res MBP 15 on sale? I don't look around at prices that much, but when I do it's always the base model being discounted.

 

That's because the standard configurations of both the base (2.3 GHz CPU) and uplevel (2.6 GHz CPU) MacBook Pros are the ones produced en-masse (eg the ones you can buy and carry out of the store with you). The high-res screen is a built-to-order option. Any antiglare versions so equipped that Apple produces for retail sale are part of so-called "Ultimate" configurations that include nearly every other upgrade, including CPU and hard drive. These versions do get discounted, typically near the end of their lifecycle, as seen here, but they're still quite pricey. My MBP was the late-2011 Ultimate and cost $1599 brand new. This was about 6 weeks after the 2012 MBP line was announced and available at retail. It would have been $2649 retail had I ordered it when it was a "current" model.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't there only two classic MBPs available i.e. the glossy 1400ish resolution and the higher 1600ish resolution for the anti-glare model? Pity that when I bought the anti-glare model two years ago, there wasn't any in the apple refurb store so it had to be brand new.

PS Does having too many tabs open slow down the browsers? It seems that this happens to me more so in the Mac than on windows machines in chrome or firefox and I have done ACL reset, clean the library folder and even set up a new account (haven't test this yet fully). I have an SSD on both machines so hard drive issues can't be the reason.

 

try to see the connection speed.

and no you can configure all the blings that you want on the mbp 15, its much more difficult however to find something in between the base model and ultimate, as it always was

 

I don't think that you have that much of a choice between either glossy or matte display.

PS I see channel, mode (in 'g') but don't remember a speed rating? Wouldn't changing channels help as speed would be relative at any time?

 

read this and this

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