Maxed out MB or basic MBP

[iW00t]

if you've got the money, go with the macbook pro.

If he has the money, he should go for a Macbook and a 23" or even a 30" ACD at home as his auxiliary display monitor instead. Alternatively he can just buy the monitor, a Macbook Pro, and a separate Mac Pro.

For varying amounts of "If you've got the money" you can get infinitely many options, but for his needs the Macbook Pro has absolutely nothing that would benefit him.

GPU? Photoshop doesn't need it.
Increased screen size? Poor colour gamut, graininess, poor colour saturation negates it.
Firewire 800? Who needs that for editing photos anyway?

 

[whosgotsoul]

I'm completely backing iW00t..if you spend $2500 on a notebook only to find that the screen is cheap & crappy - you should be upset!

iBorg: just because something is made by Apple, doesn't mean it's perfect (although they usually don't miss the mark). If all you care about is the name/logo, I'm sure a used-car dealer would love to sell you a BMW with a Skoda engine/transmission/etc. You may love the BMW logo on your car, but after paying $60,000 for it, you'd be pissed to find out that BMW decided to cheap out on the engine!!!

Long-winded metaphoar, but some Apple users are blind followers. They make great products, but missed the ball on the C2D MBPs.

My advice for the original poster...wait for a couple weeks and buy a MBP BECAUSE Apple is appearently fixing the screen problem (they halted production in December to get to the bottom of it). I'll be buying a MBP soon, but am waiting to see if the screen gets fixed - otherwise I'll wait for the next generation to get released (with LED technology for the screen).

Can't wait to get my hands on OSX and never load windows again!

 

[iW00t]

My advice for the original poster...wait for a couple weeks and buy a MBP BECAUSE Apple is appearently fixing the screen problem (they halted production in December to get to the bottom of it). I'll be buying a MBP soon, but am waiting to see if the screen gets fixed - otherwise I'll wait for the next generation to get released (with LED technology for the screen).

Apparently this is not true. Hardmac posted a follow up to the original blog post about the production line suspension and it turns out that it is only an issue affecting limited runs of the 9C56 screens.

Since the 9C56 is one of the original models of panels used, it is quite reasonable to assume that Apple isn't using the new and improved AUO B154PW03 V0 panel.

@iBorg20181, if you have such a flawless screen as you purport to own please follow the instructions posted in the linked forum post in my sig and show the whole wide world what a magical screen you got.

Go to the nearest shop, see for yourself. If you don't like it the best bet is to sit the current revision out and wait 2-3 months for Leopard + Santa Rosa based Macbook Pros with probably a higher resolution panel. A higher res display is a very good guarantee that Apple has broken away from the current crop of 3 or so LCD panel models.

 

[whosgotsoul]

Thanks for the update iW00t.

I really don't want to wait 2-3 months, but if Apple announces a significant upgrade (Leopard/Santa Rosa/better screen), then it'll be worth the wait.

Cheers!

whosgotsoul

 

[Gosh]

Recent Macworld (UK) test gave MBP C2D 2.16GHz speedmark of 209 and the MacBook C2D 2.0GHz was 173.

Adobe Photoshop (testing a set of 14 scripted tasks using a 50MB file) was 1 min 16 sec and 1 min 25 sec respectively.

Biggest difference was Unreal Tournament test with frame rate 63.9 compared to 17.8.

Overall the if 3D graphics/games is a central requirement go MBP.

Otherwise really down to smaller portable size of the MacBook (plus maybe a secondary display) versus the arguably more iconic MBP!