upgrade advice please - from imac 2.8ghz (merom x7900) to MB/MBP

I'm seriously considering upgrading (if that's the right choice of word) my iMac to one of the new laptops, but wondered if anyone knew any performance comparisons to help make the decision easier. In short my girlfriend lives on the other side of the UK so every other week I'm travelling to hers on the weekends and without my machine for study/work and using stuff like LogMeIn on her Macbook to connect to mine is a bit of a b*tch. So I'm thinking a laptop with a screen at home is a better solution for me.

A lot of my work relies on VM's running server 2008, with sharepoint/sql 2008. I use VMware workstation at work and haven't really noticed much of a performance hit when using VMware Fusion. In fact in some ways it's better because the host OS (OS X) is a lot more stable than XP/Vista. Typically I'll be running 2-3 VM's at once depending on what I do. So memory is the main benefactor here. Obviously SQL server loves a good CPU but this is for development not a production environment.

On the Mac side of things I only do browsing, the odd decoding of divx/xvid to iPhone, music and movies via front row. Occasionally bootcamp for some COD4/TF2 but I haven't touched that in months.

My question is what are the average speed comparisons for my X7900 Merom XE 2.8Ghz with 4Mb L2 cache versus say the P7350 2Ghz with 3Mb L2 cache or the 2.4Ghz P8600 found on the base MBP. I'm losing .8Ghz, maybe .4Ghz but gaining in FSB and the option of DDR3 ram.

I'm torn between the base MB and the base MBP. Forgetting ram and harddrive which I'll gut and replace myself, and I'm hoping Snow Leopard will be able to address the Mac's memory issues over 4GB so I can lump in 6-8GB which the hardware can obviously support (just read the new MB/MBP's still won't like more than 4Gb of ram).

I should also add I have one of those Western Digital studio hard drives, using FW800 which is used for Time Machine and movie storage. It has USB capabilities but moving from FW800 to USB will probably annoy me, though I'm sure I'll get over it. The lack of a dedicated graphics card again is something that will annoy me, but I'm not playing games at all at the moment so again I'll get over it. Screen real estate isn't much of an issue because it'll only be portable say 6 days out of every month when not plugged into an external display.

Really it comes down to processor speed, but the addition of FW (can't believe Apple killed it), possibly the expresscard slot for additional USB/esata ports of perhaps a 32Gb SSD drive would be quite beneficial is itching the back of my mind. And who knows I may pick up a new game in the future.

The middle Macbook is a bit of a moot product, I don't care for lit keys, I can already touchtype perfectly with my eyes shut and the high end MBP is way too expensive considering ram/harddrive replacement will be done myself and the extra vid card memory offers little performance boost.

So after selling my iMac and hopefully netting a grand, buying a new laptop through my brothers edu discount means I could save some money on the base MB and use it to upgrade memory/harddrive and peripherals or plump for base MBP and enjoy extra screen, FW, expresscard and dedicated vid...

Argh decision. Any advice? (Sorry for long post )

 

Well, ask yourself this: If you are going to be very portable, wouldn't you prefer a smaller notebook to carry around with you? If screen real estate is no big deal and you are not going to be gaming on it, I would say the MB will suit you just fine. Also the integrated card I hear is actually functional on many games. It won't let you play at the highest settings mind you but it definitely does the job. I think the Macbook suits you the most. But I recommend you go to an Apple store to check out one for yourself.

 

What you do on your current computer matches my almost 90% i.e. vmware sessions, Databasese and IDEs. Although the new MB or the MBP would not be my first choice for such tasks (mainly due to screen resolution, battery life and price) I would imagine your choice should come down to the 9600M GT, processor and screen size, Processor wise the the 2.53 is far superior due to the 6MB L2 caches (its in my VAIO Z11VN) than the ones in the MB which has only 3MB L2 Cache, I will give you this as my main advise having run VM sessions on all my laptop including the old MBP (C2D 2.4Ghz).

 

The 2.53Ghz is a bit too expensive though. Having thought about it, I think I'd prefer the MBP. Just the addition of FW and the expressport with the bonus of vid/screen is handy.