MBA or discounted, old MBP?

[dcodea]

I am considering replacing my ancient Dell 600m laptop, and I am considering the MBA. I am a college professor, and my expected uses are taking the laptop to and from campus, using it around town, taking it to conferences and giving presentations, doing email, writing papers, browsing the web. Sounds like a shoo-in for the MBA, right? Well, not so fast. One of the things I will be doing is light computational tasks, and I will be installing Matlab and Mathematica. Now, the sort of things I'll do are things my current Dell can do, so I have no doubt the MBA will be able to handle it, but we begin to move away from the MBA's wheelhouse; CPU intenive tasks aren't its forte. I won't be doing any serious three-days-max-cpu tasks, but still, these programs will eat a lot of hard drive space, and I may be better served by a MBP. Not to mention the IR receiver for presentations. And, it turns out my campus store has a display model MBP13, model MB990LL/A, for sale at $949. I guess this model is from mid-2009? 2GB memory, 160GB SATA harddrive. Is this a better option for me? It is upgradable, and so could be a good workhorse for some yearsto come. It looks to be in good cosmetic condition - they had a speck case on it. Is $949 a good price for a used MBP of this vintage? Would I be better off either getting an ultimate MBA or waiting for the MBP refresh, than getting this computer?

 

[Appleind]

I am considering replacing my ancient Dell 600m laptop, and I am considering the MBA. I am a college professor, and my expected uses are taking the laptop to and from campus, using it around town, taking it to conferences and giving presentations, doing email, writing papers, browsing the web. Sounds like a shoo-in for the MBA, right? Well, not so fast. One of the things I will be doing is light computational tasks, and I will be installing Matlab and Mathematica. Now, the sort of things I'll do are things my current Dell can do, so I have no doubt the MBA will be able to handle it, but we begin to move away from the MBA's wheelhouse; CPU intenive tasks aren't its forte. I won't be doing any serious three-days-max-cpu tasks, but still, these programs will eat a lot of hard drive space, and I may be better served by a MBP. Not to mention the IR receiver for presentations. And, it turns out my campus store has a display model MBP13, model MB990LL/A, for sale at $949. I guess this model is from mid-2009? 2GB memory, 160GB SATA harddrive. Is this a better option for me? It is upgradable, and so could be a good workhorse for some yearsto come. It looks to be in good cosmetic condition - they had a speck case on it. Is $949 a good price for a used MBP of this vintage? Would I be better off either getting an ultimate MBA or waiting for the MBP refresh, than getting this computer?

Check out this website to determine the best price. http://www.mac2sell.net/

 

[dcodea]

Well that comparison makes it seem like this MBP is not a good deal; your webstie suggest $630, a far cry from 949, especially considering that 949 is not so far from the low end of the current MBP line, and money is not the major constraint here, since I am considereing an ultimate MBA.

What made me consider the discount MBP is that if it is spec-wise similar to the MBA, I might consider it, but it seems that is not really the case.