Which Imac and Macbook pro?

daz103

daz103

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I have basically got a mixture of loan and grant to cover the cost of these, but am not sure which one to go for.

Basically I am looking at the 15" macbook pro and the 27" Imac. However I am not sure what specs to go for.

The macbook pro will be used as a general laptop as well as in the field editing and storage, so I was thinking of the 2.4ghz i5 with 4gb Ram and 320gb hd. would this be powerful enough to run Lightroom 3 without too much problem?

The Imac will be used as my main editing computer and will some heavy pro use, hopefully. Now I wasn't sure about this one, whether I should go for the i5 or i7, I know it mostly a case of get what you can afford, but is the difference noticeable. Also is it worth going for 8GB instead of 4GB of RAM?

Just need some help choosing.
 
More RAM is definitely worthwhile but just get it from Crucial as it's much cheaper than Apple.

I went for the i5 and no regrets - if you want it to fly you could also get an SSD - still fairly pricy though.
 
buy the highest hardware spec you can afford.
 
I have a 15" MBP with 4 Gb of memory and that runs Lightroom fine. Photoshop runs OK as well.

I also have an i5 Imac with 8Gb of RAM . There is a rue of thumb I seem to remember that I was once told that you need about 2Gb of RAM per core, so 8Gb is about right. However you could go with 4 Gb on the iMac initially and then upgrade if necessary.

Lightroom is not over hungry for RAM, however if you are using Photoshop with bigish files the extra RAM can be useful
 
I would consider the following:

iMac- i7 - 16 GB Ram - 2TB HDD - 256 GB SSD - £3354

or

13 inch MBP 2.4 GHz C2 Duo - 8 GB Ram - 128 SSD - Apple 27" monitor- £2218

or

15 inch MBP 2.4 GHz i5 - 8 GB Ram - 128 SSD - Apple 27" monitor- £2958

and - in any event at least 3 external HDD:

eg. LaCie Rugged 500 GB - £129.95 or Hitachi G-Drive 2 GB £249.95

(All prices are from the Apple Website)

I would also advise you to consider other monitors eg. Eizo Coloredge, etc.

Before buying anything Mac you need to look here:
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/


This monitor is worth considering::D
http://www.nativedigital.co.uk/shop/product.php/744/eizo-coloredge-cg232-22-5---display
 
Go for the i7 with 8Gb ram for your main machine. The best upgrade on the MBP is to have the high screen spec. Suggested it to the guy working next to me & wish I had it available when I purchased mine 12 months ago
 
When I refreshed my notebook last month, I went with the i7 MBP with hi rez antiglare screen. The antiglare screen is so much better than the glass one. Just go into any Mac store and see for yourself.

I put a 500 gig 7200 RPM drive in myself. They are under £50, and easy to put in.

As far as lightroom 3 is concerned, it works great, but then it worked great on my old notebook (2.2 gig MBP from early 2007) so you should not have a problem.
 
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