After much soul searching and weighing up the pros and cons I have decided to join the Mac Club. Will you accept me
However, I have read many conflicting reviews, guides and "Top tips to which mac to own" and I am still unsure as to what would suit me best.
I see this as a long term purchase, So I'd like it to serve me for 3-7 years if it can, But I am unsure as to what "Spec" I can get that will
A) Serve my immediate needs
B) Be high spec enough to serve those needs for years to come
C) Is not a £4000 Mac Pro.
To give you an idea into the max of my budget, I am looking at the high end Macbook-Pro, Top tier Imac, and ( Maybe ) the entry level Mac Pro. The below specs are all specifications Could afford IF that is what I need to stretch to at max Approximately £2300 brand new, but I highly doubt it. If I have to add £100 more to the machines, I'll have to say no. I am also a great supporter of refurbished machines and I know they can easily take £400-£800 off the price of a brand new machine, So I will also be shopping there!
Imac
27 Inch Screen.
3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x4GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7400rpm
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5
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But of course, Could I settle for a dual core I5 processor with 8GB of ram?...That will bring the price down by quite a bit!
MacBook Pro
17 Inch screen.
2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 RPM
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Resolution Antiglare Widescreen Display
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But again, I've been a believer that with laptops, the price to performance ratio is ridiculous, Spend £500 and get a kick ass desktop, Spend £500 on a laptop and get a machine that is not so good...Is the same true with the build quality of the mac book pro?
Mac Pro
One 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem”
8 GB (4 x 2 GB)
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
One 18x SuperDrive
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So on paper, I am getting less than the other 2 machines are offering, but is this machine so much better than the other two in terms of performance?
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Now, I am aware that the above specifications are incredibly high! And I just want to say again that I am posting the above spec to say "this is what I can afford"
Now...here is the part I tell you what I will use these machines for and hopefully you will slap me down and say "NO, Your buying a tank to swat a fly! Buy this instead"
- The normal web browsing, Keynote, Pages, ect.
- A couple of 3D games ( One of my secret sins ) but I don't care about the look of the games, At present I just have all graphic settings to minimum or off, so this is NOT a requirement.
- Editing both SD and HD video. Varying from 2-8 minutes of final export to 1-4 hours of edited content.
- Rendering video files and logo sequences from after effects that are 1920x1080 size. And they have quite a lot of built in FX with them.
- Live presentation at events and conferences, I've got software that uses the machine to display content from 32" plasmas to 10ft projector screens.
- A happy home for my Iphone to synch up to.
If your still reading after all that, Thank you for doing that and if you would be able to submit a reply, I would be even more thankful!
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