Advice/opinions please: is it worth a small upgrade?

[PieMac]

I have been going back and forth over the Lightroom vs Aperture debate for the last week or so and I keep coming back to Aperture. I just feel that's it's a more robust application, all things considered...and I like to support Apple.
My main concern with Aperture, however, is possible performance issues.
That said, I have a four month old 15" 2.16 MacBook Pro Intel Core Duo 2 with 2 GB RAM with the standard features (120 GB hard drive, 128 MB VRAM, 5400 rpm hard drive).
So far, Aperture runs pretty good except I have noticed that it did tend to lag here and again when I transferred my entire iphoto library over to it (5800 photos, 12.4 GB worth). It seems to be zippier with smaller libraries. I am thinking that I will probably just start fresh with Aperture and just bring over select photos from my current iphoto library- but I know that with time, my Aperture library will, of course, grow.

So, my question is: would it be worth the trouble and expense of upgrading to the next level 15" MacBook Pro? This would increase the CPU to 2.33 Ghz, and the VRAM to 246 MB. I've been very happy with my current MBP and I was planning on adding a cinema display down the road (23" or 20"). I prefer laptops, or I would, of course, look at the MacPro or the iMac. Also, would it be worth maxing out the RAM to 3 GB?

As a side note, I have yet to try any RAW processing as I've been shooting jpg but I see RAW in my near future.


Thanks for any insight!

 

[Macanadian]

Advice/opinions please: is it worth a small upgrade?

If I had this system setup with a bit of a lag. 120 gb drive, 2gb memory and 2.16 ghz.

Not too sure how full your hard drive is. but what might be happening is your computer is starting to have a tough time swapping between the hard drive and RAM memory. This is due to the hard drive filling up.

My choices would be to upgrade the memory to 3 gb and getting an external firewire drive.

That is a small hard drive to get into RAW files. I myself shoot RAW and export to TIFF (54 meg file) to do cropping into JPG. Not all shots are exported to TIFF. And I have a 160 gb hard drive with a 250 external USB drive.

check out http://www.newegg.com

 

[M@lew]

Are you willing to pay the extra money for those increases? I don't think it'd be THAT big of a difference with Aperture, but I could be wrong.

 

[PieMac]

If I had this system setup with a bit of a lag. 120 gb drive, 2gb memory and 2.16 ghz.

Not too sure how full your hard drive is. but what might be happening is your computer is starting to have a tough time swapping between the hard drive and RAM memory. This is due to the hard drive filling up.

My choices would be to upgrade the memory to 3 gb and getting an external firewire drive.

That is a small hard drive to get into RAW files. I myself shoot RAW and export to TIFF (54 meg file) to do cropping into JPG. Not all shots are exported to TIFF. And I have a 160 gb hard drive with a 250 external USB drive.

check out http://www.newegg.com

Hard drive is at 75 GB's...so, not really full. I deleted and re-imported my iPhoto library and it seems a little snappier with only a little lag here and there. I'm sure that I will invest in another external drive down the road to hook up directly to my MBP (I have a 250 GB LaCie plugged into my new Airport Extreme base station for wireless back-up purposes for my MBP and my partner's iMac).
I think I've decided to just start fresh with Aperture and just import select photos for post processing from iPhoto and archive the rest...or just leave in iPhoto. I'm thinking that I might use iPhoto for personal family photos and Aperture for the rest.

 

[PieMac]

Are you willing to pay the extra money for those increases? I don't think it'd be THAT big of a difference with Aperture, but I could be wrong.

I tend to think that it wouldn't be worth it...unless Apple comes out with a big upgrade to the MBP line in the near future...but I wanted to get other's opinions, hence the thread.