MacBook Pro - is it powerful enough?

Buck

Buck

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Adrian
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Hi all

I've a chance to get a second hand MBP 13' (just over 12months old and has ext. warranty)

The spec is as below. Will this be powerful enough to run something like Lightroom3 and Photoshop Elements?

13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
2.26Ghz processor
4GB memory
160GB hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card

Does the 13' screen make it difficult to work with LR3/PSE?

Are there any other things to check/look out for?

Finally is £650 a good price for such a spec?!
Thanks
 
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I run CS2+3 and LR3 on a 2.4ghz with 4GB with no worries - that spec you're looking at will be fine.

I'd probably store my images externally though to keep the machine running smooth and to avoid filling the hd up. If you cam get a FireWire drive (if that machine takes FW) they do have a speed advantage over USB but if you opt for USB then you shouldnt have any probs
 
Thanks both

I currently store my photos on a NAS drive and an external RAID drive so that'd stay the same.

Good to hear that the spec'd be OK - I'm keen to try the Mac as a change to my PC!
 
Barely, depending on the files you put in it.

Lightroom gets choppy on my 2.4Ghz Core 2 laptop, and that's just with 12MP D5000 files, and photoshop is nowhere near usable - I do everything on my desktop.
 
Hi Matt

I shoot in Raw now so my files are in the 20MB size!

Wonder if I'd be better going for an iMac then?
 
If you're planning to do anything more than very light retouching, or you don't want to resize them all before you process them, then yes.

Either that or get a pc, I spend all my time either on the internet or in adobe programs so the OS doesn't matter to me for the most part; though I love rainmeter etc. and also money, so I stick to PC, but I'm not a fanboy by any stretch :D
 
the os is great and is not too difficult to get used to after a pc the hdd in that model is upgradeable but dont go to apple for one any sata one will fit even if you dont get the original discs the os from apple is only 25£ !!!!!! an adapter 15£ will let you plug in any monitor ......get a magic trackpad if you find the built in one too small they are 45£ the multi touch on the built in one and external one is a fantastic idea 13 is not too small to work with and the cpu and ram will let you run cs5 with out a problem
 
I have several Macs but the two I most use are

Macbook Pro 17" 1920x1200 matte screen. 500Gb HD. 4Gb Ram 2.6GHz

&

Mac Pro Quad Xeon 3GHz, 3x1Tb, 10Gb, X1900

Now I run the same software on both computers ie CS5, LR3, Safari, MS Office etc and to be honest there is no discernible difference between either of them running any of it as everything happens pretty much straight away. The only real differences are the HD sub system is quicker on the Pro and liquify is instant on the pro!

Is the Macbook pro good enough? Oh yes :)

Oh and that is a good price plus your macbook pro is slightly quicker than mine :)
 
It looks OK to me. But you will want to get a good IPS 24'' or at least 20'' monitor to go with it.
I use 3+ yr old 2.4ghz core 2 duo 15'' 4GB RAM mbp with external screen and it is perfectly adequate. It takes 16MP 1DsII files quite well. The only thing that slows it down is the stupid time machine - so switch that off when processing large files.

A PC? No thanks! "Same spec" models run much slower due to the need for anti-this and anti-that, viruses, spyware, crapware and by far not-the-best-OS-in-the-world (I could word it a bit better). In fact, has anyone seen a 3+yr old win-top that is still usable and worth £700-800 on the used market?

iMac? I really don't like 2 things about it. You will be throwing away an expensive screen when upgrading, and well, the screen has very annoying super-reflective glass layer on it (can be removed with suction cups and a bit of force apparently).
I much prefer using proper non-glossy Dell IPS monitors. Replace that with NEC if money is no issue.
 
Ksanti said:
Barely, depending on the files you put in it.

Lightroom gets choppy on my 2.4Ghz Core 2 laptop, and that's just with 12MP D5000 files, and photoshop is nowhere near usable - I do everything on my desktop.
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I'd do an erase and reinstall if you're starting to lose performance. On a 2.4ghz machine with decent RAM you should only find stuttering of any kind due to slow connection or overloading USB connection to an external drive; mine was going a bit funny recently so backed up, erased and reinstalled 10.5.8 (excuse to spring clean :)) and now everything runs like a dream.

To the OP, that 2.26ghz machine you're looking at probably has one achilles heel and that's thee size of the screen, although it's not bad (probably the best on the market at that size). I have more than enough room on a 15.4", especially with the wonderful F3 button (tiling?) - a second screen is a good idea though if you want more room.

A 20mb file is nowt - I run 100-150mb layered PS files on mine without any hassle. Yep, heavy-duty rendering of filters takes a while depending on how much I want it to do, but doing illustrations has never fazed this machine yet. TBH, my old 1.25ghz G4 eMac could run those files in PS fine - a 20mb raw file shoudn't be a problem :)


daugirdas said:
....The only thing that slows it down is the stupid time machine - so switch that off when processing large files. .....
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Agreed. Probably the defining feature of later OSs and very useful, but a pain when you're right in the middle of batch processing 100 files :D
 
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sigh someone had to do it i guess..

daugirdas said:
A PC? No thanks! "Same spec" models run much slower due to the need for anti-this and anti-that, viruses, spyware, crapware and by far not-the-best-OS-in-the-world (I could word it a bit better). In fact, has anyone seen a 3+yr old win-top that is still usable and worth £700-800 on the used market?
Click to expand...

avast av uses a whole 3mb memory.. shocking amount of system slowdown..

and 7 is just as good as snow leopard.
 
I'm sure it'll be fine as others have said, you can pick up an apple 20" widescreen display to go with it for about £180 on ebay. I've had my macbook pro for three years now, it came with 2.2ghz intel core 2 duo, 2gb ram and a 160gb HD. It used to run raw files fine but for my third year uni project I used a phase one p45+ (40mp) so upgraded the ram to 4gb and hardrive to 500gb. It was a tiny bit slow editing the files in PS but thats to be expected really, once it had the file open for a while it seemed fine, using the healing brush with no lag. The PS files ended up being around 1gb for one photo, so if my three year old macbook pro can run those, I don't think you'll have too many worries.
Once you go mac you'll never go back ;)
 
I wouldn't bother. On a mac screen estate is all about photo editing. 13'' is tiny seeing as most photo editors go or a 27 iMac!

IMO buy a 21'' i3 iMac 500gb an 4gb for £800 IF you can find a student to buy it for you on discount. I nearly bought a 13 and so so glad I didn't! 21 is epic
 
thanks all - some good food for thought

Couple of follow up questions: -

- I currently run a Dell laptop which is a core duo processor 2.60 Ghz - is the 2.66 in the MAc a direct comparison i.e. marginally faster or due to the OS will it be quite different?

- If I was to have an additional screen how does this connect to the Mac - is it the same '15-pin D Connector'

Thanks again
 
Buck said:
thanks all - some good food for thought

Couple of follow up questions: -

- I currently run a Dell laptop which is a core duo processor 2.60 Ghz - is the 2.66 in the MAc a direct comparison i.e. marginally faster or due to the OS will it be quite different?

- If I was to have an additional screen how does this connect to the Mac - is it the same '15-pin D Connector'

Thanks again
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cpu is the same but will seem faster as the os is better and not as much bloat as windows (and before you all start i use both) cant remember what connector you have on the mbp but if it is a mini connector then an adapter from apple is about 15£
 
I have a 13" Macbook Pro, and Lightroom 3 is fine with smaller RAW files (from 30D/G1)....but struggles with the bigger files from my 5D2.

I've upgraded the hard drive to a 512MB 7200RPM model and it is a big improvement (well worth the 70 quid to DIY)

MacOSX or Windows 7....you won't notice any difference on the same hardware in terms of performance. Swings and roundabouts, anyone telling you one is better than the other is talking out of their arse, use whatever you feel comfortable with.

As for screen size....13" is fine in Lightroom with the menus set to auto-hide. If you don't need something portable though, you'd be silly to restrict yourself to 13".
 
That spec is fine I should think. I use aperture rather than Lightroom but that runs fine on a 2.1ghz core 2 duo and 4gigs. I plug in an external samsung monitor for heavy editing sessions as mine macbook is on 11" screen. FWIW I use a similar spec desktop PC at work running Windows 7 and my Mac is faster at doing everything, without exception.
 
I don't run windows with any bloatware, as I'm not technologically retarded it's all shut down, of course that's far too difficult for many mac users...

I can see that people like using apple products, even if it's just brand lust, but even then, the whole "easy to use" argument doesn't stand up to me - either one will take a couple of weeks to learn the ins and outs of from fresh, and once you're in windows it's a LOT easier to do what you want when a mac would simply not let you, for me, rainmeter mainly.

The choppiness may actually come from me always running through the USB (no SD card on my laptop and too many files to import them all pre-processing) so you may be fine.

That said, it will definitely struggle in any advanced editing in photoshop, regardless of where the images are coming from, so if you see that happening either save up a bit more, or get an imac if you can :)
 
grudie said:
cpu is the same but will seem faster as the os is better and not as much bloat as windows (and before you all start i use both) cant remember what connector you have on the mbp but if it is a mini connector then an adapter from apple is about 15£
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Sorry, but has already been pointed out it won't be faster because of the OS. The oft quoted 'bloat' isn't there any more. A good av program will use single figure mb and not impact at all. The op's question re CPU, it will only really differ if they are different generations. Generally newer ones will be faster.
 
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