MacBook Pro Buying Help

[Esherido]

Ok, I'm thinking about buying a refurbished MacBook Pro off the Apple website and I just wanted a few pointers from the Mac'ers here. (This will be the first Mac that I own.)

1) How are refurbished Macs, especially MBPs.
2) Is this a stupid idea? (Be honest.)
3) I've check the MacRumors buying guide and it seems like it's a good time to buy. Any conflicting views?
4) I have Photoshop CS2 full for Windows and I don't want to have to buy CS2/3 for the Mac. What other good options are there? Parallels Fusion, WINE? I'm kind of a dolt in this area.

Thanks! :D

[Esherido]

Forgot to mention this, but I'll be using it mainly for development and some design work.

[ramie]

2) Is this a stupid idea? (Be honest.)no, the mac is lovely system to work on, the UI can take a little getting used to if your 100% windows but nothing that will annoy you too much.


3) I've check the MacRumors buying guide and it seems like it's a good time to buy. Any conflicting views?I've read rumors that Q3 2008 there will be announcement regarding these, I'm not sure how valid they are, but it's enough to keep me from buying an MBP at the moment (and I really want one)...

[Esherido]

@ramie: Thanks for the input, but I really don't want to wait that long. Besides, if they did something in Q3 2008, it would totally go against their release cycle.

[Theros]

@ramie: Thanks for the input, but I really don't want to wait that long. Besides, if they did something in Q3 2008, it would totally go against their release cycle.

I remember we discussed this in that other notebook buying thread...Refurbished isn't "used" per-say, so I guess it shouldn't be a downer to buying one of those, however of course that that with a grain of salt. Also, here's an important tip. No matter the product cycles, if you need a laptop, and need it now, then why wait. There's no point in waiting 5-8 months if you need it now.

[Esherido]

That was kind of my reasoning, besides, now seems like a pretty good time to me, and my opinion is always right. :D

So does anyone have any opinions or experiences about/with VMware Fusion running CS2? :q:

[fasterthanlight™]

Refurbs come with the apple warranty still, so even if things go wrong, you'll be fine.

BUY THE FREAKING EXTENDED APPLE CARE THOUGH

NEVER. NEVER. buy an apple machine with out the extended warranty, believe me, i've avoided ~$1000 repair bills more than once.

No matter where the MBP is in its product life cycle, you're buying a refurb, so ...... unless you want to wait and wait and wait some more until refurbs of new models come out, then buy now.

Note: apple tends to decrease the price of every new model, so keep that in mind too


ALSO, do not run photoshop in anything but BootCamp


Trying to run two os's at once AND photoshop..... thats just silly


*edit: isn't bootcamp still a free app? whats the story with that? anyone know?

*edit^2: You know..... photoshop runs sooo smoothly and fast when it is native, and you can find student deals on the adobe site, or if you're not a student, get someone who is and buy it through their school.... its worth investigating

[Esherido]

^ I was going to buy AppleCare, and you just cemented it in. :D

Just to clear up, you're saying that trying to run Photoshop through VMware fusion is an absolute no-no? :q: I'm pretty new to this whole virtualization thing. I really want this to be a development platform, something that I can run multiple OS's on and get development done anywhere instead of being tied to my desktop. Since I don't do any big design that often, running Photoshop is not that big of a thing.

EDIT: By the way, thanks a bunch for all of your opinions and help everyone!

[fasterthanlight™]

Ok think about it this way,

OS X takes a certain amount of resources just to run, that could be said for any OS.

Now, when you are running a "virtual" os, you're essentially running two os's at once, now, the "virtual" os is limited in its performance, simply because its .... running alongside OS X.

Trying to run Photoshop in a virtual os, is possible, but the performance would be hindered ..... a lot .

BootCamp allows you to shut down, and choose which OS to boot into, so if you install XP (or Vista... ugh) its the same as having a normal PC box, in that all your computers resources are dedicated to running JUST XP


You can run VMware and accomplish every other task you have your heart set on as a development platform, but Photoshop is too damn big...

[BS]

Do not install Vista in Parralells. Not Fun.

[fasterthanlight™]

Hahahhaha, yea, best just to avoid vista all together, no matter what you end up doing lol

[Esherido]

Ok think about it this way,

OS X takes a certain amount of resources just to run, that could be said for any OS.

Now, when you are running a "virtual" os, you're essentially running two os's at once, now, the "virtual" os is limited in its performance, simply because its .... running alongside OS X.

Trying to run Photoshop in a virtual os, is possible, but the performance would be hindered ..... a lot .

BootCamp allows you to shut down, and choose which OS to boot into, so if you install XP (or Vista... ugh) its the same as having a normal PC box, in that all your computers resources are dedicated to running JUST XPYeah, I already knew that much about virtualization. I understand the memory requirements and all that stuff. I was just wondering if CS2 had any real big bugs with VMware Fusion or Parallels Desktop. I also wanted to run Microsoft Office if it was possible. I know I'm going to buy Fusion or Desktop, I was just wondering which one I should get and if I should bother trying to install CS2 or just give up.

[BS]

I was on a 6 hour plane ride and decided to try it. Worst Plane ride of my life.

[Esherido]

Try what, Vista on Parallels?

[BS]

Yeah I tried installing it, über fail. Ubuntu runs really well on Parralels.

[snickelfritz]

Max the RAM on the MBP; 4GB is not overkill for a development/graphics system.
This is IMO, more important the CPU clock frequency.
OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/MacBook/Pro/Core2/) is a great place to get high quality Mac memory at reasonable prices.
I agree about the Applecare; always buy it with any system that includes a display.

[fasterthanlight™]

Yea, don't buy the RAM from apple,

crucial (http://www.crucial.com) is another very good source for cheap ram

[Esherido]

^ I was going to get more from Crucial when I needed it. @snickel, 4 gigs seems I bit much right now. I'm not sure if I want to spend that much anyway. If the price on RAM goes down, will an MBP support an upgrade above 4 gigs, say 6 or 8 gigs total? :q:

[fasterthanlight™]

No, the system architecture won't support it,


crucial has very good prices, considering,


and since you want to run windows, etc, you're going to need 4GB

[Theros]

Not quite related...but I once ran Photoshop in VMware Sever on my Ubuntu install on my laptop... It actually worked pretty well...but I just ended up installing it on my Vista partition and deleted my VMware version. You do really notice a difference, in terms of performance though.

[Adam]

I run Photoshop and Flash etc through VMware on my iMac and I have no issues at all - about two months running without problems. Just my two cents.

[jokun]

No, the system architecture won't support it,


crucial has very good prices, considering,


and since you want to run windows, etc, you're going to need 4GB

I just checked Crucial, since I might be getting a macbook pretty soon. Only about $100-110 for the 4bg ram upgrade. OWC had it for about $10 less. Both much lower than Apple's memory upgrade. Moving up from 2 to 4gb with Apple is $180. Not to mention the fact that once you bought the Crucial memory you'd have 2 1gb sticks to re-sell elsewhere.

[Esherido]

^^ Thanks Adam! :D

Does Parallels Desktop 3.0 run about the same, or are there noticeable differences between the two?

[evildrummer]

I'm buying a MBP hopefully in August but am working on a new iMac at work. We use parallels but if you want to run photoshop in it anywhere NEAR usable and fluid you need 4GB ram. It is usable for site mockups but if your doing any really intense work in it like huge digital art pieces or designs then it's a no no.

Macs are definately better for dev, before getting one at work (I used to use a PC at work anyway) I had never used one, took me about a solid day of work to get used to but after that it's great. Although I still do crazy fingers when I want to copy something. So used to putting small finger on control and index finger on C, I do the same thing on macs... but having the command key just below C makes me end up with huge finger ache.

[fasterthanlight™]

It is usable for site mockups but if your doing any really intense work in it like huge digital art pieces or designs then it's a no no.indeed, and thats where bootcamp steps up to the plate

Also, Esherido, if you're browsing the apple refurb store with your eye on one particular item, buy it soon because those things go like ..... well.... fast.... things, and stuff.

[Stratification]

Also make sure that you get the hard drive space you want. Replacing a hard drive on a MacBook Pro is not for the faint of heart. As far as refurbished, nearly every Apple product I've purchased has been refurbished, with great results. It seems like they get a little extra attention before being sent out than the new purchases do.

[fasterthanlight™]

Yea but you can never account for what happened in the past that you can not see .....

But, Warranties!! WOoo!!

[Esherido]

Thanks for all the input guys. I'll hopefully be buying soon. I can't wait to get my hands on Coda. (BTW, which do you prefer, Textmate or Coda. Because after busting $2,500, I can't exactly go wild with the IDE purchasing.

[Stratification]

Try it out, it's got a trial I believe. I personally haven't used either though. The little site work I do ends up in Dreamweaver since it came with CS3.

[evildrummer]

I LOVE textmate way more than coda, I like some principles of Coda like having everything in one package but I think having everything separate is just as easy and nice. And with bundles textmate gets VERY powerful.

[ramie]

Both have their strengths, coda is more complete for client side web dev, but has a few annoying little quirks, textmate rules on the command line and really earns it's keep with bundles. Get both of them, you wont be disappointed and will find real uses for both, if you want an all in one solution go for coda first tho.

Coda - lightweight ide
Textmate - editor (IMO)

[fasterthanlight™]

Coda is how I make money in life.

There are little bits of awesome about Coda that most people don't know about....

but either way they both have trial versions.

I enjoy Coda the most because all I do is remotely edit, so having access to the actual file heirarchy RIGHT next to my coding window is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooo handy.

Built in terminal is the bee's knees too.

I haven't used it in a while, but I remember being annoyed by TextMate's remote editing process.

Not to mention, Coda's 30 day trial is based on time, so like, if you only use Coda 2 hours one day, it only counts the two hours you've used against the 30 days, I had my 30 day trial run out in just over two months.

For being just under twice the price of Textmate, Coda has several pluses over textmate (except for bundles) and I feel like the interface is nicer, and oriented towards clientside development, as was mentioned ..

Most back end developers edit through vi with terminal.....

[Esherido]

I purchased it (Refurbished 15" MBP) this afternoon and it's on the way! Now to find those old "Ok I got a Mac, what do I do?" threads.

[indiasfinest]

Bootcamp is free, you need your own copy of XP though

[Esherido]

^ I'm actually gonna go with VMware Fusion, though I'll install Bootcamp if I have to.