MacBook vs. MacBook Pro

[hyper_giraffe]

I'm a college photographer looking to buy a new Mac. I've been checking out both the Macbook and the MacBook Pro (13 or 15 inch), but am not super computer literate. At the moment I'm looking to run just CS5 and perhaps FinalCut Pro. Is there any advice people can give me on what to look for? Also: the $600+ difference between the 13 and 15 inch worth it? Thanks much.

[Ken Bennett]

If you are a student you can get a small discount on the Apple Store web site by clicking the Education link. The 13 inch Macbook Pro is $1099 on that site -- well worth the extra $150 over the Macbook. The extra RAM is critical for Photoshop and FCP, and the metal body is better (I've had both.) For your uses, a larger hard drive is worth the cost, too, as it will be faster. Also, check the refurb units on the Apple store web site, they might be slightly less expensive than the education prices.

You might read some of the pages at http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html -- lots of great information there.

The extra screen real estate of the 15 inch is good, but it's still not really large. If you want a larger screen for editing, an external monitor is less expensive.

Finally, you might not want to buy this week. It is widely expected that they will release new models next week. Then the current models may be available as refurbs for a better price.

[Bob Smith]

The lack of a Firewire port in a Macbook is the deal breaker for me.  Firewire is a more efficient and reliable interface when used for a hard drive that needs lots of fast read/write cycles (like a Lightroom catalog... or any other database for that matter)

I'm a long time commercial shooter.  This past year I "downgraded" to a 13" MacBook Pro.  Previously I had several 17" Powerbooks and MacBook Pros.  I bought a refurb 13" model from the Apple store.  I maxed out the ram to 8 GB.  Installed a 1TB hard drive (a little slower but I wanted one large drive and no externals).  I have a total of less than $1600 in this system.  I have nice large monitors that I plug into at my main working locations.  This is by far the most favorite setup I've had.  It's not a computing powerhouse but it's no slouch either.  And it's compact and light enough that It goes EVERYWHERE with me.  This system is used primarily for Lightroom with a 150k image catalog; and CS5

Bob Smith

[JonathanBenoit]

The lack of a Firewire port in a Macbook is the deal breaker for me.  Firewire is a more efficient and reliable interface when used for a hard drive that needs lots of fast read/write cycles (like a Lightroom catalog... or any other database for that matter)

I'm a long time commercial shooter.  This past year I "downgraded" to a 13" MacBook Pro.  Previously I had several 17" Powerbooks and MacBook Pros.  I bought a refurb 13" model from the Apple store.  I maxed out the ram to 8 GB.  Installed a 1TB hard drive (a little slower but I wanted one large drive and no externals).  I have a total of less than $1600 in this system.  I have nice large monitors that I plug into at my main working locations.  This is by far the most favorite setup I've had.  It's not a computing powerhouse but it's no slouch either.  And it's compact and light enough that It goes EVERYWHERE with me.  This system is used primarily for Lightroom with a 150k image catalog; and CS5

Bob Smith

There is a firewire port in slightly older apple macbooks.

It may work for Bob, but I wouldnt put any extra money into a large internal hard drive. A 250GB is more than enough. If your drive fails you are in deep trouble. Put money into external RAID storage if you are only using a macbook/macbook pro. Also if you can afford a Solid State Drive such as an 120GB OWC  SSD, then this would be a much better drive for speed.
RAM is key. The more the better.
The processors in all of these macbooks aren't far off from each other. If I were you and on a budget, I'd get a used barebones macbook within a couple old. Then just max out the RAM, swap out the hard drive with an SSD drive and get a Buffalo 1TB drive station and set it up to be RAID redundant. You might be able to keep everything under $1200 and it will be a much better solution than if you were to buy only a new macbook 13.

[Bob Smith]

It may work for Bob, but I wouldnt put any extra money into a large internal hard drive. A 250GB is more than enough.

For you maybe  .  My "working files" folder and Lightroom catalog typically consumes about 500GB (depending on how fast things get moved into the server based archives).  I need a bit for system, lots of apps and basic business docs (another 100GB).  Then plenty of free space for working room

I have many frequent full backups.  I'm not worried about a hard drive failure (have endured plenty).  I have a second slightly older backup Macbook pro that is mirrored daily with my main working unit... and two servers with multi drive towers for holding archives and more backups.

I don't have link handy at the moment but there's an outfit selling an upgrade that allows putting a second hard drive in place of the optical drive (and then using that USB connected when needed).  I'm considering putting a fast hard drive in that slot for system/programs.  That would speed the system up slightly and only cost me the presence of the optical drive which I rarely use.

Bob

[JonathanBenoit]

For you maybe  .  My "working files" folder and Lightroom catalog typically consumes about 500GB (depending on how fast things get moved into the server based archives).  I need a bit for system, lots of apps and basic business docs (another 100GB).  Then plenty of free space for working room

I have many frequent full backups.  I'm not worried about a hard drive failure (have endured plenty).  I have a second slightly older backup Macbook pro that is mirrored daily with my main working unit... and two servers with multi drive towers for holding archives and more backups.

I don't have link handy at the moment but there's an outfit selling an upgrade that allows putting a second hard drive in place of the optical drive (and then using that USB connected when needed).  I'm considering putting a fast hard drive in that slot for system/programs.  That would speed the system up slightly and only cost me the presence of the optical drive which I rarely use.

Bob

Yea, I do work slower than most photographers. A full day always produces less than 100 files. I always think of a laptop as a secondary computer though. Just a temporary storage. Once edited, transferred to archived storage solution. Just my way of thinking... It bothers me to have multiple copies of the same image. I am confident that my RAID storage is more than sufficient. Having to backup from one hard drive to another on a regular basis shouldn't be acceptable. Why do we do it?

[Roy]

I am confident that my RAID storage is more than sufficient. Having to backup from one hard drive to another on a regular basis shouldn't be acceptable. Why do we do it?

To have a secure backup. RAID does not protect against fire, natural disaster, theft, user error, equipment failure, .... RAID only protects against the failure of a hard drive.

[Bob Smith]

Yea, I do work slower than most photographers. A full day always produces less than 100 files. I always think of a laptop as a secondary computer though. Just a temporary storage. Once edited, transferred to archived storage solution. Just my way of thinking...

That's my way of thinking too... it just rarely seems to actually work out that way.  Inevitably I have assignments that linger for months before they are fully finished.  Most of my assignments are low volume but it doesn't take many high volume jobs to eat up space when shooting with today's high pixel count dslrs.  My personal work involves a lot of stitched pano work.  Multiple 16bit tiffs waiting for stitching eats up piles of space.  And I want those at my fingertips until I'm through with all of the editing.  Real work gets in the way and those files may linger for months before finally archiving them.  Or with commercial work I may wait weeks/months for a client to finish all the details of a given project.

My various backup are automated and most happen while I'm sleeping.  Once setup its requires little to no action on my part to make them happen.  I have an old G5 with five 2 TB drives internally.  It comes on in the middle of the night and backs up everything on my network, then sends me an email to let me know what it did what errors were encountered.  It even keeps bootable backups of my most critical drives.  Then it shuts itself down when finished.  This is all courtesy of Chronsync... about a $50 program when you include network connectivity. 

RAIDs are great when you need to insure that data remains constantly available as much as possible.  I use them for a couple of small web servers that I run.  But don't fool yourself into thinking it's much of a backup. It doesn't insure you against the simplest of human errors; file corruption gets instantly mirrored to what used to be a good copy on your second drive; power issues can easily wipe out everything (just saw this recently); fire, flood, theft etc still wipes out everything....

Bob Smith

[lightstand]

I had the 13" loved the size hated the glossy moved to the 15" with the matte screen and as much as I think laptops should be portable I would highly recommend looking at the matte screen. 

[Roy]

I agree with Bob Smith. The 13 inch MBPro is significantly smaller and lighter than the 15" model. For me that's a big plus. Not happy with the glossy 13' screen sometimes, but at other times it looks very nice. I would always do serious editing with an external monitor and you can buy a decent monitor, better than the screen on a 15" macbook pro, for the difference in price between the 13" model and the 15" model.

Do upgrade to 8 GB memory and to a 500 GB 7200 rpm hard drive. Don't order those upgrades from Apple as Apple charges way too much. They are not complicated for a user to perform or you can have your local shop do them. Enjoy.