Eeeek?! Which 13" macbook??

[Karlos Santos]

My mates white Macbook cracked whilst just sitting in its case and she only used it for Office 2008. She isnt a DJ.

They dont call them Crackbooks for nothing.

[V-Hoff]

Man, I would wait a bit before buying a new MBP now...

It have been some rumors that they would have a small upgrade before the end of the year, can you wait a bit more?

Other then that I would buy the entry level MBP and replace the HDD for a SSD bought elsewhere. Keep the HDD, buy a case and have a external drive for movies, pictures cause you might need it because of having only 256gb SSD.
If you really need to have all your files with you, I would consider use a Optibay and replace your Optical Drive with an HDD, just be careful to look to one that would not overheat your computer (I've getting some feedback on 7200rpm ones overheating as the main HD, not sure if they will been the second HD).

[geminimech]

"An aluminum case won't save a head from chunking a platter if you drop it off a desk."
what does that even mean???

?

A hard drive. Even though most newer laptops, macbooks included, detect sudden movement and park the hard drive heads prior to blammo, I wouldn't always count on that from being able to save your drive from destruction. An aluminum body won't prevent that from occurring any less than a polycarbonate one would. It also wouldn't prevent you from losing a logic board if you spilled beer on it, or the lcd from cracking if you dropped it, etc. About the only things the aluminum unibody does better than the polycarbonate, is empty your wallet quicker, and dissipate heat better. So get the most upgraded one that you can afford. Adding more RAM, and a better hard drive is inexpensive and easy to do.

[geminimech]

My mates white Macbook cracked whilst just sitting in its case and she only used it for Office 2008. She isnt a DJ.

They dont call them Crackbooks for nothing.

The newer ones are made a bit better, and less prone to breaking. They actually resemble very much the aluminum unibody, just made from polycarbonate obviously. Also any of that is covered under apple care, which is definitely worth it if you can drop the extra dough.

[Karlos Santos]

The issue with the polycarb is that the front casing cracks and Apple Care will take care of it sure, but that leaves you without a Mac to do gigs.

If its pre October 2009 i wouldnt touch it. The models after October have different casing as you mentioned.

The next full revision of the Macbook Pro range is due Feb 2012.

[mostapha]

your correct the next chips will be further versions of current chips but hardly worth a reason to wait when considering just running Traktor IMO. if was production work or video work then i'd say maybe wait. but not for DJ'ing really

Yeah…it's not even necessary for audio production and recording.

First…depending on the software, it doesn't make a difference. Pro Tools can still only use one CPU core, for example. I'm pretty sure they're never going to update it so people will keep buying the HD Accel cards.

Second…my early 2011 low-end 13" MBP (2.3 i5 dual core, 4gb ram, aftermarket 128GB Mercury SSD) can run Traktor, Maschine, and Logic together at once with 4 stereo channels going from Traktor -> Logic and 16 stereo channels going from Maschine -> Logic and everything midi sync'd…with the Internal sound card set for a total latency of like 10-12ms (Traktor was at like 64 samples, Maschine was at 256, Logic was at 64)…with wifi and bluetooth on, no system tweaks, and Chrome still running with several windows open.

Any modern Mac will run just about any modern DJ or Production software…run out of ram, just bounce some tracks to audio.

"An aluminum case won't save a head from chunking a platter if you drop it off a desk."
what does that even mean???

The aluminium case won't save a hard drive from a hard enough impact. Which is true.

Buy an SSD.