Arstechnica has a nice, balanced look at which Apple notebook to buy when you’re making your next purchase. They compare only the $1299 Macbook and the $1999 Macbook Pro. Arguably, you could do a more in depth look at it by comaring more models, but I think the approach is a fair one, that keeps the article from being weighed down with statistics.
For my two cents, I have recently purchased a Macbook Pro, and thus far am 110% satisfied with it. To sum up the conclusions the article reachs for those of you that don’t want to read it on your own, basically the conclusion is that if you already own a primary Mac desktop, then the Macbook is a your notebook, but if you want your purchase to be your primary system then you want to go Macbook Pro.
I would have to agree with that. My MBP has completely replaced my desktop machine, but I don’t think a Macbook would have done that on its own.
Click Here to check out the full article.
5 thoughts on “Macbook vs. Macbook Pro – Which is the better value?”
I’ve been working on a MacBook for the past 4 weeks or so, because the MBP is at the Apple Centre (broken heatpipes) and I really want it back. We can pick it up tomorrow (they sent it to the wrong location last week.. *sigh*) and I’m really happy with that.
It’s not that the MB doesn’t work, but since it’s my primary workstation (I have two different companies and at one of them [where I spend most of my time] all I have is the MBP) it’s just not good enough. The 512MB RAM doesn’t help either..
Friends don’t let friends compute with 512MB RAM.
With 1-2GB RAM, the MacBook performs most tasks as fast as the MacBook Pro. Graphics-intense apps, of course, are much better on a MacBook Pro. For everything else, a properly configured MacBook is awesome.
Yeah, but try working in a few non-native apps for awhile on a MB. I worked on one before getting my MBP – it wasn’t that much fun. The fans ran constantly, and Illustrator by itself was enough to slow up the whole machine.
My MBP pro however – I can run Illustrator CS2, Flash 8, Fireworks 8, Parallels & a couple of browsers without noticable lag (I can’t wait for CS3 though).
The MB is a great lappy, but the article mentioned above sums it up perfectly: it’s a desktop supplement, not a replacement. My MBP has been a freakin’ amazing machine. I love it. And with Parallels, it easily replaces more than one desktop.
I should add that the MB had 2GB of Ram – just like my MBP.
512 is not nearly enough anymore for design pruposes i agree