Okay so I'm looking at a new laptop to go to uni with and I decided on Mac, for their battery and portability with speed and the OS, But I am in a bit of a pickle, I am stuck between the mac air and pro retina, I will be paying this on finance, and the pro is £2 extra p/m but is the pro worth cutting out the battery for pure power, also would I be okay with 8gb ram or should I bump up to 16gb. Which is £9 over the air.
I will be getting a 128gb version, and external HDD for storage, I will be doing java mostly with maybe HTML, Python and other things, also I will be putting some very light games on it like FTL, kerbal space program etc.
So with that in mind do you recommend the pro over the air?
Join the club, got a Macbook Pro (for my MSc)(Mid 2014) Retina. Seeing as I was only going to be using it for programming, I left it pretty much stock. (before any one asks, mainly sprung for it because of the battery life to performance)
The cost of the Air is extremely elevated due to the fact that its a "thin" laptop (its only 1mm skinnier than the 13" Pro Retina) and has much lower specs than the pro. It also ends up costing more if you spec it the same as a base line pro.
If you are in uni already, see if you can verify yourself with UniDAYS as this will allow you to have educational discounts (which are 14% in the UK)
Okay thanks! And would you go for 16gb or 8gb given the option, I want it to last a long time, at least 6 years, but as said mainly programming, and no I can't use unidays I'm going open uni, not a brick one :(
You should still be able to get on Unidays with Open University. Anyway, 16GB maybe worth springing if you intend to use the machine for a long time (you know just for added future proofing) but you should be alright with just 8GB.
I would recommend the baseline 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina, with the 2.6Ghz Intel Core i5, but upgrade the SSD to a 256GB. The 256GB is faster than the 128GB SSD and obviously has more storage. I have this exact laptop (except mine is slightly older and has a 2.4Ghz i5) for college and my Python programming class, and it works like a charm, great battery life, and high res screen is easier on the eyes for long programming sessions.
With OS X or Linux, you won't need more than 8GB of RAM, trust me.
I should also mention that you will have to install a custom boot loader (such as REFIND) to dual boot OS X and Linux, but its a pretty straightforward process. Otherwise, you obviously use the built in Bootcamp for dual booting OS X and Windows.
Okay thanks, I would get the 256GB model, but I cant really afford that much per month (£57) so I may stick with the 128GB, any work will be stored onto a external drive :), just need the SSD for apps
I would also recommend getting the MacBook Pro. I have a 15” MacBook Pro Retina, and I do a ton of Java development on it. I would definitely upgrade to 16 GB of RAM if you can. If you have to make a choice, sacrifice storage for more RAM. You can always build/buy a NAS for extra storage, but you will not be able to upgrade your RAM. If you have to simultaneously run an App Server, client app, NetBeans/Eclipse, a database, Maven, and JUnit you will be glad you have the extra RAM.
Unless you are doing something hardcore, you can always run Linux in a VM, so I would not worry about dual booting, unless you want to.
well it will be used for light gaming, light web browsing and uni stuff, so I dont expect to be running super heavy stuff, any server/vm stuff I have a desktop for :)
If you can afford it I would recommend 16GB. It will give you much more flexibility to run multiple VM's for testing things out or just running more programs at once.
Upgrading the RAM would be worth it for sure. As someone who is using a MacBook Pro from programming I like to test my code on Windows and Linux environments thus I run a lot of virtual machines.. This can be challenging sometimes for I run out of RAM for them when running more than one.
This is probably the best deal out there right now, if you can afford to only have 8GB. $1500 for a true quad core i7, 8GB of ram, 256gb SSD, and that gorgeous display.
I know your mind is already set on the mbp but check the Dell sputnik project. Its an xps 13 that is certified to run Linux. I do my coding in Linux and the fun part of it is the sandbox feeling. Mold your own work environment around you and follow the fast shifting IT world in stead of locking yourself into OS X. But that's my humble opinion :) I've had a mbp and ran Arch on it after 5 months and never went back! (Yes i derped around a lot but it made me a better programmer, admin, It guy in the end...)