Mac Laptop Required, Pronto. Question is, which one? Help most appreciated :-)

[robert-a-hudson]

I brought a fully loaded 15" MBP a month and a half ago, however it was faulty and so I returned it.

Now I'm back, having taken my exams, and have the time to look and buy again. With all the new releases that have happened, my options have been blown open, so now I need some advice. My criteria are as follows:
- It _must_ be a laptop.
- I would like to beable to play games on it (in windows, so intel, and probably a MBP again)
- My limit is £1929.50 (how much i spent last time)

These are the absolute musts of the computer.

This will be my fist (long time) mac I hope, and laptop. Now, I have priced up the following MBPs, all with the 7200rpm hard disc, and Apple Care. I have also priced up with 1GB sticks, and then 2GB through apple and through Crucial (I dont know where else I can get supported reliable ram in the uk?). So, i have the choice between 2, 2.16 15ers and the 2.16 17er, and am unsure as to which to get (i will undoubtedly max out the RAM to 2GB one way or another).

I plan on using the laptop for, as I have said, gaming on windows, but also I am wanting to make my own DVDs using iMovie (eversince I played with on my friends mac). So, would the extra speed be worth it for gaming and movie making, these probably being the most intensive things I will use the mac for?

With me wanting to game, is the 256MB graphics card worth the extra cash over the 128, and also, I have read somewhere on this forum about the 17inch having a variable speed graphics card. Is this true (since I would not be keen on overclocking the card)? Is this different from the 15's, or do they do this too?

Since I will be using both windows and osx, is it more worthy to get the 100GB 7200rpm drive, or 120GB 5400rpm drive? I seem to recall my old 7200rpm drive being noisy, will this be cut drastically by the 5400?

With regrads to the ram, from crucial vs apple, is the apple ram superior in anyway? Is the crucial ram as fast as the apple ram etc?

If I can save enough from my original budget (£279, i.e laptop for less than £1650.50 - i.e. a limit of the 2.16GHz 15er with 1GB ram), I may get an Xbox360 aswell... but my key priority is a good laptop that will last me a long time.

Another quick question, is about apple care. Since I will be getting the laptop via the UK HE store, I will get the 3 year warrenty. However I will have left University by then, so, is this warenty still valid? Also, is the £58.75 worth it for the extended apple care (I presume this is just adding phone support, and nothing more?)?

Thanks in advance,

Robert


---MBP's Speced out and priced on UK HE Store---
15.4"
___________________
2GHz
100GB 7200
Apple Care (£58.75)
1*1GB--->£1486.36
2*1GB--->£1664.96

1GB Cricual stick - £118.66
--> Brings 2GB version down to £1605.02 (saving £59.94)

--------
2.16GHz
100GB 7200
Apple Care
1*1GB--->£1571.36
2*1GB--->£1749.96

1GB Cricual stick - £118.66
--> Brings 2GB version down to £1690.02 (saving £59.94)

-------
17"
___________________
2.16GHz
100GB 7200
Apple Care
1*1GB---->1672.50
2*1Gb---->1841.70

1GB Cricual stick - £118.66
--> Brings 2GB version down to £1791.16 (saving £50.54)

 

[FragTek]

l'll just tell u about my experience with my day old 17" glossy MBP. I think that its quite possibly the best laptop on the market (albeit not the most powerful if u factor in pc laptops). Mine runs fairly cool and doesn't make a lick noise, none of the inherent "mooing", etc.

The screen is absolutely amazing with the glossy finish. Colors are super vibrant and the reflection level is very low, after a bit of moving around I have yet to find somewhere that I can't use the laptop due to screen glare.

The x1600 does a fabulous job in Windows. I play a bit of CSS, BF2, and CoD2. All run flawlessly at very impressive framrates. High enough to actually make some of my pc gamer buddies go "wow!".

All in all I think your best choice is the 17" MBP unless you don't have the bit of extra space for it. In that case a fully loaded 15.4 would definitely do you well.

MacBook Pro FTW!

 

[robert-a-hudson]

Space isn't a major problem, since it will mainly be in one place, just I will have to move about a bit every now and again, and hence want a laptop rather than desktop.

I plan on going to an apple store this weekend to look at size and also glossy vs matt!

Thanks for your reply FragTek

Keep 'em comming

 

[robert-a-hudson]

Anyone have any idea about the speed steping on the 17inch MBP? I can't find any mention of it on the apple website.

The site I found about the GPU

 

[mortey]

Here goes.

As far as I'm concerned the speed difference is minimal at best. Unless you are super number-crunchy and want the best of the best, you would be just fine with the 2.0. This is my experience with the slower (5400) drive as well. Unless you really need that extra few seconds to rip data then you would be fine with the 5400. I recently had a Dell 9300. A 17inch widescreen glossy laptop. It had a 5400 drive and I noticed no issues at all. I figure opt for the 2.0 and get the 5400 drive so you could get the xbox 360.

However, if you feel that you would want these features then definitely go for them.

The difference between Apple and other RAM makers such as Crucial is just really price and often times warranty. I believe Crucial has a wonderful warranty program and there have been no complaints regarding their RAM, maybe just the price. One thing to keep in mind is that if you hapeen to send in your lappy to Apple, take out the crucial otherwise they might blame the 3rd party ram for whatever faults there may be.

There is no issue with the warranty from what I remember. As long as you have it and it is activated you should be just dandy regardless of you moving from College.

Hope this helped.

 

[FragTek]

As far as the RAM goes, I use G.Skill. All G.Skill memory comes with a lifetime warranty, but most memory these days does come with a lifetime warranty.

I use G.Skill fairly often in my PC builds when I'm trying to find RAM with specific IC's. It seems like they always have some of the best overclocking RAM you can find when you really need to find it.