much faster or eh?

[kayzee]

I am in advertising / marketing, and use my mac pro at the office -- but i travel often now and need to be able to edit large files, (not video) on the go. I currently am married to my late 2oo9 mbp 17"

CURRENT SPECS:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,2
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Graphics card
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCI
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0863
Revision ID: 0x00b1
ROM Revision: 3436
gMux Version: 1.7.10


APPS USED:
illustrator
indesign
photoshop
after effects

I use these apps jumping between each other every day. With 15+ tabs open in chrome -- i noticed today it was a little sluggish going back and forth

THE QUESTIONS:
What would be your recommendation for me and for the work i do?
Do I really need a MBP quad core?
Is Quad that much more noticeable from my current MBP?

Not the most tech savvy

 

[thesaint024]

Mosdef. I came from a 13" 09 and it was a big jump. I don't think you'll need quad core or the dGPU on the 15" but it depends on how you are multitasking. Aside from the pretty sizeable chip improvements, the SSD is very helpful in booting up and loading apps, and in your case, I imagine for switching between large RAM intensive programs. But the chip difference alone is worth it for your usage. If you're keeping all these programs open with large files open in them, you could benefit from the 16gb of RAM too. In my case, booting and opening apps were multiples faster, not just percentage. It now feels like the computer is always ready and waiting for ME, not the other way around.

 

[kayzee]

think i could get away with a macbook air? just looking for a cheap replacement for my 17" 09 or you think its worth it to go to the mbp 15"

 

[thesaint024]

think i could get away with a macbook air? just looking for a cheap replacement for my 17" 09 or you think its worth it to go to the mbp 15"

If you're looking to spend as little as possible, go ntb 13". Once you use a retina screen, the others are unusable. You probably could go Air, just not much of an upgrade in a number of areas. ~$1000 vs. $1400? I think it's worth it in this case. I wanted an Air too, but they didn't update the screen (or add usb-c) so I got the MBP instead.

 

[leman]

Even the MacBook 12" will be an upgrade from your 17", so, it doesn't really matter I agree with thesaint024 that non-touch-bar 13" would be a very attractive option for you. And it almost matches the MBA in mobility.

 

[tryrtryrtryrt]

...

AFAISee you haven't specified if you've upgraded it to SSD or not. If it's still with HDD, I would advise upgrading to some cheap SSD first without changing the machine and wait until MBP 2017 is out. If it's already with SSD...

THE QUESTIONS:
What would be your recommendation for me and for the work i do?
Do I really need a MBP quad core?
Is Quad that much more noticeable from my current MBP?

Considering there are at least 6 generations of processors between your MBP and current MBPs and 9 years time, even last year's MacBook Air will likely be faster than yours. However it would be strange to buy a new machine once in 9 years which is only slightly faster than the old one, don't you agree?..

Regardless, current processors have this thing called TurboBoost. It's when processor works on a much higher frequency than specified for a short time and then it is throttled to the regular frequency because otherwise it will start overheating. For example lowest 2016 non-Touchbar 13" MBP has regular frequency 2 GHz but can boost to 3.1 GHz and highest 2016 Touchbar 15" MBP has regular frequency 2.6 GHz and can boost to 3.8 GHz.

Think of the ways you use the apps you listed. Is your resource intensive work (like processing images or videos) long (>5 min) or short? If it's short short time boost might be enough for you and regular frequency is more than enough to surf web or do other simple things.

Overall considering your claim you want a cheap replacement, I'd look at MBP 2015 with as much discount as you can get (me myself I would even look at used MBP 2015 with AppleCare - it would be even more cost effective). I doubt you'll find anything you can't live without in MBP 2016. As for 13" vs 15" - depends on how much power you're ready to sacrifice for portability. Both will work just fine for non-resource intensive work like processing video or big photos. And for resource intensive work it's only a matter of time it will take to process and battery life if you're on the go.

MacBook 12" (not Pro, not Air, the MacBook) is also an option but it might lack the power you need.

If you choose to buy new MacBook directly from Apple always remember you can return it in 14 days (double check it but is likely true) so it's ok to buy underpowered and then return it and buy better one.

Also remember that these days everything in MacBook is either proprietary (aka you can't get replacement from common market and install it yourself, you will have to seek it either from another MacBook or from Apple for crazy price) or soldered to the motherboard. You will have to buy as many SSD and RAM as you will need for the whole life of your machine at the time of purchase, you more or less can't upgrade this in the future.

 

[therealseebs]

any recent machine will be *way* more powerful; it'll be faster, pretty much no matter what. I'd definitely go for 16GB.

I will warn you that, at least for me, every single 15" or smaller MBP has been a painful downgrade in display quality compared to the 17" machines. They don't do antiglare displays, at all, ever, anymore. That's gone.

But CPU will be faster, and a modern machine would have an SSD. (Might be less space than you're used to.)

If you get a 2015 model, consider the dGPU... And note that Apple won't sell it to you. If you want that, you have to buy from a third party from remaining stock they happen to have. Note also that memory and disk/SSD are no longer upgradeable. 2015s, you can sort of get aftermarket drives, but they're not very fast, and you can't use generic standard ones because Apple didn't use the industry standard interface. 2016, it's just soldered in.

Quad core is only going to matter much for things that are longer-term batch processing, or for doing things while a task is running in another app. It's still noticeable a lot of the time, because the machine has ongoing background tasks. That said, even a dual-core is still going to be a ton faster than you're used to, just because the core 2 duo was, well, a long time ago.

 

[tryrtryrtryrt]

Also I won't advise going MacBook Air way because its display is non-Retina, has lowest resolution, it hasn't been updated (pretty much contains old processor) etc.
[doublepost=1484082017][/doublepost]

I will warn you that, at least for me, every single 15" or smaller MBP has been a painful downgrade in display quality compared to the 17" machines. They don't do antiglare displays, at all, ever, anymore. That's gone.

so much this.

 

[kayzee]

AFAISee you haven't specified if you've upgraded it to SSD or not. If it's still with HDD, I would advise upgrading to some cheap SSD first without changing the machine and wait until MBP 2017 is out. If it's already with SSD... Considering there are at least 6 generations of processors between your MBP and current MBPs and 9 years time, even last year's MacBook Air will likely be faster than yours. However it would be strange to buy a new machine once in 9 years which is only slightly faster than the old one, don't you agree?..

yea i agree think this will be the best bang for my buck...
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/F...-22ghz-quad-core-intel-i7-with-retina-display

what do you think?

 

[therealseebs]

so much this.

Honestly, even if everything else about the MBPs were meeting my needs, I might well have given up on them just because I really, really, hate glossy screens. I can tolerate them for stuff like a phone where I'm not spending multiple hours trying to work on the display, but for a primary display? antiglare plz.

 

[tryrtryrtryrt]

yea i agree think this will be the best bang for my buck...
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/F...-22ghz-quad-core-intel-i7-with-retina-display

what do you think?

Well, it's only 100$ cheaper than non-refurbished on Amazon or BestBuy. It has only 256GB SSD, consider if it's enough for you. And go to Apple Store and try 13" with TouchBar - it costs same 1799$, maybe you'd like it better.