I’m in the market for a mac book pro and was wondering if i could ask a few questions -
Ram - I’ve read you can buy your own and install it yourself. However the mac book pros i’m looking at all come with minimum 4gb, i would assume 4gb is more than enough for just using this is a my gig computer?
I also noticed that some macbook pros processors say '2.53Ghz intel core i5 (or some say i7) - I run a Kontrol S4 and the spec requirement says ‘intel Core 2 Duo processors’. Are these ‘i5/i7’ processors going to be ok for the S4?
I was also wondering if i could ask a couple of other questions -
-Solid state drive or regular drive? I only ask because i understand solid state drives are rock solid and don’t spin to retrive data - and i thought that in a club maybe it would be a bad thing to have a regular drive incase the vibrations should cause it any problems?
Screen - Glossy or anti-glare?
Screen size - 13" or 15" - i was looking at a them in the store today and the 15" almost seemed a little too big dare i say it, the 13" looked great, but maybe that bit of extra screen size will be a big benefit when in a club on traktor.
four gigs is plenty for DJ’ing. If you want to get into production where you may be running VST’s and multilpe programs then bumping it might be worth consideration. Installing your own is easy.
Those will be fine
For the most part regular drives are fine, but solid state will be faster and generally more solid. You can install a drive in the spot the DVD drive is in and have the best of both worlds. There’s some talk about longevity of the SSD drives, but I have no real experience with it so can’t really comment on it.
Anti-glare
I struggled with this as well, but ended up with 15 in the end.
Agreed. All good answers here. Given the choice I would go Solid State for the performance and (at least initial) durability. They do however come at a hefty premium and you might consider what else you could get for money (this is assuming that saving a few quid is out of the question). I would always drop the extra $$$ on a faster CPU as it’s (generally) the least upgradable aspect of any system given potential motherboard changes and hardware conflicts should you want to change down the road.
Just wanted to confirm that upgrading the RAM on a MacBook Pro does make a difference. Mine came with 4GB of DDR3 originally. After I upgraded the RAM to 8GB I did see a big performance increase. Although, as photojojo said, it’s not going to be noticeable if Traktor is all you are using. Only makes sense for more system intensive applications like a DAW with a bunch of VST plugins.
Definitely anti-glare, if you have a choice. The glossy one is a pain.
I have a mixed opinion of my glossy screen. I like the look of it from a pure vanity sense, and things do look great on it in the right light. But of course, that’s just it. Bright sunlight and you’re fucked.
Thanks guys, that’s been a great help. I really appreciated the advice.
What I’m torn between now is buying one from apple, eBay, or I believe apple do ‘service built’ or something, where they sell ones for a bit cheaper.
I haven’t looked into that yet, am I right in thinking these ones are mac book pros that people have had had problems with and apple have rebuilt them?
eBay clearly has it’s own risks, if I can save a few hundred by getting one on eBay I might do that.
I was wondering with the hard drive, is that user-replaceable? I was thinking I could get the smallest size drive then buy my own SSD and put that in it’s place.
Any thoughts on all the above are more than welcome
Dno anything about you of course lol, but if you’re at school or in uni then you can get a 15% discount. You also get 3 years’ applecare for a LOT less than it normally costs, but if you plan on opening it up and replacing the hard drive then you’ll void that anyway
Ah ok thanks, I might do that, I just think an SSD would be safer when playing at gigs because of vibrations. Maybe I’m worrying too much over that and a regular drive would be fine.
Ah yes I’ve heard about these upgrades, apparently the processors are called ‘sandy balls’ lol so I was told anyway.
I really could do with one in the next few weeks though so waiting for a few months isn’t really an option unfortunately. Thanks for the tip off though.
