Need help on making up my mind

[FitTT]

I'm looking to buy a new computer. I have a three year old Imac G5 20 inch 2.1ghz with a 500gb hard drive, 1.5gigs of ram, lots of software including adobe, and office. I am looking to buy a macbook pro or another imac and sell my imac. I am leaning alot more towards the macbook pro 2.5ghz with 2gigs of ram, and the 512 mb graphics card, to run bootcamp and some highend xp games. I think I can get 500 for my imac on ebay, and put it towards the 2200 price of the macbook pro.

[Werner]

Originally Posted by FitTT

I'm looking to buy a new computer. I have a three year old Imac G5 20 inch 2.1ghz with a 500gb hard drive, 1.5gigs of ram, lots of software including adobe, and office. I am looking to buy a macbook pro or another imac and sell my imac. I am leaning alot more towards the macbook pro 2.5ghz with 2gigs of ram, and the 512 mb graphics card, to run bootcamp and some highend xp games. I think I can get 500 for my imac on ebay, and put it towards the 2200 price of the macbook pro.

What do you want us to say?

[FitTT]

Lol forgot to add the question Just wanted to know whether my idea is a good one or should I look at other options.

[otispunkmeyer]

i have a 2.4Ghz mbp with 4 gig of ram (buy the standard 2gb version then visit crucial for the upgrade, its much cheaper)

i do love the machine, and its silky smooth, though i do think the hdd holds it back, so if you can plump for the 7200rpm drive that'd be the best choice. lots of people are swapping their drives for the WD scorpio drives that are 320gb and 7200rpm. you gotta get one without a G-sensor tho, to avoid complications with the MBP's own G-sensor. so much power for a machine just over an inch thick.

the newer penryn chips arent that much faster GHz wise, but they have a much more sensible L2 cache layout, its sshared rather than seperate for each core.

the 8600gt isnt up to much, but i've successfully managed to play things like COD4 and UT3 demo with some decent settings and at native resolution of 1440x900 (15.4 incher). having said that, if you get the 17inch model i think the card will struggle to play games like that at native resolutions, even 1680x1050 (standard res for the 17) and it will especially struggle if you spec the HD display for the 17inch (1920x1200 res)

if you want more graphics power, get a Mac Pro or one of the newer Imac's .... i think the 24 incher comes with a 8800GT which is very good.

i must say though that ive had numerous problems with my MBP, and it seems that apple laptops on the whole suffer from more maladies than the Imac or mac pro models. whether its just the nature of their usage or that build quality isnt all that...the MBP's seem to have more than a fair share of problems.

having said that, things should be ok if you buy now. the Santa Rosa platform has been around for just over a year now, Montineva (sp?) is just around the corner, but honestly i reckon the first gen Montineva machines will bring with them a whole host of new problems.

i must also point out, while im here, the problem surrounding the G84/G86 graphics chips (this includes the 8600GT graphics chips in every note book, not just apple, and the 8400 series too). it appears, these chips will definately have a much higher than normal failure rate.

due to a bad material being used to build these chips, its rumoured that every single mobile G84/g86 chip will suffer premature failure due to heat cycling. the material just wasnt up to snuff. ive seen plenty of reports of people turning on one day to find no video output on the display or via the DVI out. most of these people regularly play games or do heavy cad work.... activities that put the graphics under heavy, cyclic stresses.

its supposed to affect the desktop parts as well, however their cooling solutions are much more robust. cooling in laptops is not so generous.

apple nor nvidia have come forward with an official response, thought dell and HP released updates that basically switch the cooling fans on constantly. nvidia are claiming it only affects a certain batch of cards. but other sources claim otherwise. eitherway like i said.... no official word from apple or nvidia and no response as to how the problem may be dealt with.

just a heads up, perhaps the later machines will be just fine.

if you go for the MBP i would definitely recommend buying apple care, just incase you get any issues. but please dont take that as a "you will have problems with the machine", theres probably a good chance that everything will be fine.

i also recommend a secondary monitor .... its amazing.

and if you get an imac..... the only option is the 24incher, its amazing.

[otispunkmeyer]

also, the MBP chassis is quite old now, many people are expecting a redesign soon.... though apple are supremely tight lipped about that.

[kyoru]

I have the 2.4GHZ MBP and I love it, I had to exchange it quite a few times for this annoying whine issue in XP. If you work mobile then yeah get teh MBP, otherwise get the MBP, I'd rather have a larger screen.