Macbook Pro - can't decided!

Jay_2

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Mar 20, 2006
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I have a 2009 15" Dell XPS laptop that is starting to show its age, it has been a fantastic laptop but its a bit heavy and the core 2 CPU struggles a bit these days.

I am thinking of giving this to the wife and getting a new laptop, I am looking at the "basic" 13" macbook pro, i5, 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM. But I am really wondering is its worth the money? In the UK a macbook pro with the above spec is over $1500 I could get a decent windows 8.1 laptop with the same spec for half the price.
 
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With a mac it is a luxury product. You are paying for more than just the hard ware specs. You are paying for a typical better quality hardware, and a more solidly engineered design. People buy BMW or Mercedes Benz because it is a better quality car, even if a Ford taurus is cheaper and has the same performance numbers.
 
I have the rMBP in my sig. I fucking love it and feel it's one of the best purchases I've ever made. And this is my first Mac, so not a fan boy. They are just a thing of beauty. Super fast, solid, high quality build, and OS X is a dream once you get used to it. And the ability to send/recieve texts and make/get calls right on my macbook is fucking awesome. It just works. Honestly, if I wasn't a gamer, I'd sell my gaming PC and get an iMac.
 
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Whatever you decide, I'd at least recommend upgrading the SSD. 128GB isn't much these days and you'll quickly find yourself relying on NAS / DAS for additional space.

Just my $.02
 
I'd suggest going with quality, it may look expensive now but in long run surely it will be hassle free. Go with MAC !
 
I've been buying MBPs for years and never have regretted it. My current machine is the 13" retina MBP. I love its portability. So light and compact. The only improvement I'd like to see is a dedicated GPU instead of the integrated graphics.

If you get an MBP or MBA, spend the $$ to get a AppleCare extended warranty. Yes, it's another couple hundred bucks, but if your Mac ever needs any kind of service you'll be so glad you have it.
 
I've been buying MBPs for years and never have regretted it. My current machine is the 13" retina MBP. I love its portability. So light and compact. The only improvement I'd like to see is a dedicated GPU instead of the integrated graphics.

If you get an MBP or MBA, spend the $$ to get a AppleCare extended warranty. Yes, it's another couple hundred bucks, but if your Mac ever needs any kind of service you'll be so glad you have it.

Aaand, on that note, I went back to a 15" loaded rMBP. The 13" just made me miss my 15". That was short lived...

Apple loves me and my wallet I bet.
 
I've been buying MBPs for years and never have regretted it.
I've purchased two MBPs and a number of other laptops. I've regretted the non-Apple purchases. My Asus overheated like mad, my Toshiba fell apart, my HP fried itself instead of shutting down, and my Dell... Was a Dell. No further description needed. My wife got a Lenovo because I was cheap. It's honestly held up decently, but I HATE using that thing. Poor design to the trackpad. Very poor.

If I were to get a laptop today, it would be a (base model) Apple. Even if I needed a strictly Windows box. I'd just buy an Apple and get rid of OSX. Their laptop stuff really is worth the premium.
 
The trackpad experience is hands down the best thing IMHO when it comes to an apple notebook over an HP/Dell/Lenovo etc. I have to use an HP Elitebook for work and the experience always falls short and I just hook up a mouse. That's probably why it stays at work and my 13" retina rules my life outside.
 
Along with the build quality, you're also paying for the customer service.

Whatever you feel it's worth being able to walk into any Apple store and get your device repaired or replaced (sometimes even outside of warranty and sometimes due to user caused damage) while you enjoy a few hours walking around the mall.
 
Owner of the current 11 inch MacBook Air (120SSD + 8GB of memory) and the thing is fantastic. WoW + 25-man raids works wonderfully. Civ-After Earth works great. NFS to my NAS over wifi is flawless. :D
 
I think it is based on how you gonna to use your laptop. If it is for portability, definitely go with MBA. For performance, I strongly recommend MBP. I currently use a rMBP. On the other hand, have you ever thought about chromebook?
 
Owner of the current 11 inch MacBook Air (120SSD + 8GB of memory) and the thing is fantastic. WoW + 25-man raids works wonderfully. Civ-After Earth works great. NFS to my NAS over wifi is flawless. :D

I'm glad you're enjoying your laptop, but can you elaborate on what "wonderful" translates to exactly? I tried WoW on a 13" rMBP and the experience was less than decent, and that was on Windows (boot camp). Different strokes!
 
I'm glad you're enjoying your laptop, but can you elaborate on what "wonderful" translates to exactly? I tried WoW on a 13" rMBP and the experience was less than decent, and that was on Windows (boot camp). Different strokes!
you're comparing a 2560-by-1600 resolution to a 1366 x 768 resolution so of course there is going to be a significant difference in performance...and that's putting it mildly
 
you're comparing a 2560-by-1600 resolution to a 1366 x 768 resolution so of course there is going to be a significant difference in performance...and that's putting it mildly

Well, even Half Life only ran OK on medium @ 1280x800, so I'm not sure how well WoW would run. The 15" would probably be the better choice if gaming is important at all.
 
you're comparing a 2560-by-1600 resolution to a 1366 x 768 resolution so of course there is going to be a significant difference in performance...and that's putting it mildly

It's not that I was comparing such distant settings, I should have clarified. It was a much lower resolution and with the settings not too far past medium. Not a snowball's chance would I consider running on the max resolution, when I know it'd be futile.

I'm thinking he's basically just scraping by in terms of "tolerable by the masses", though it's really subjective. I was just curious.
 
I bought my macbook pro last February after my Dell died and I needed a replacement and I definitely recommend it, I use mine daily at school and work. Retina display and separate onboard video card are great for gaming, steam has a large selection of Mac games. I'm a cs major and it seems like the windows people have a little easier time getting software running but I wouldn't trade my macbook for anything else and I recommend applecare especially if you have an apple store in your area.
 
Does it have to be new?

I recently picked up a 2012 MBPr 15" with the GPU and about a year of apple care for about half of what they run new. i.e. 2012 MBPr, 15" retina, 16gbram, i7, 256ssd, 650m, and apple care $1300.

Few things:
  • Try one before you buy it. While the hardware was AMAZING on the MBPr, I just couldn't get use to OSX
  • if you buy one used, be aware of the cycle count on the battery. A good indication of use and what kind of battery life you can expect.
  • try to grab one with apple care. In the three months I had mine, I had to have the main-board replaced. Would have set me back $300 if not for apple care.

I will echo what everyone else said. The hardware truly is fantastic. An Apple laptop is the only way to have perfect hardware and os interplay since they were specifically designed for each other. However, even with the great hardware I realized that a mac wasn't for me. I had to figure out really what was I using my laptop for and not what I imagined I would use it for.
Within two years I went from a HP Envy 15 --> Sony Vaio Z2 --> Surface Pro --> 15" MBPr --> MSI GS60 --> Asus UX31A.
The reason for the constant shuffling was figuring out what I needed and how I used it. My favorite laptop was probably the MBPr out the bunch. I was fixated on the idea that I needed a powerful laptop to game on. But In the end, i realized I dont game on the go much and I didn't need a $1400 laptop to do what I can accomplish with a $500 one.
 
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I'm glad you're enjoying your laptop, but can you elaborate on what "wonderful" translates to exactly? I tried WoW on a 13" rMBP and the experience was less than decent, and that was on Windows (boot camp). Different strokes!

I've raided on my late 2013 13" rMBP in OSX [i7/iris, 16GB, SSD.] Gets hot as hell and the fans spin up, but that's to be expected when you game on a small laptop. I dropped the res to .. 1600x1000? I can't remember the exact numbers, but on Fair settings, that got me about 50FPS in Org right before WoD on a crowded server.
 
I disagree and I own a Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro. Before Tim Cook this may or may not have been true. For one the aluminum case was better quality than the new plastic cylinder style case of the New Mac Pro. Also the processors have improved, but it Apple is still a generation behind the PC. Another thing is that Apple no longer allows you to upgrade the memory in the Mac Book because now they require you to buy as much RAM as you want or need at the time of the original purchase, since the memory is now embedded. They force you to use flash based storage as your main storage for your OS and programs. Last but not least with the minimum amount of storage capacity of the flash based SSD's, which I believe may also be embedded your forced to store your files on icloud and lose control of your own files even if it does help protect them and is incredibly convenient this may not be acceptable to other people. However, I got hand to apple for allowing you to use local and cloud storage as well as allowing you to delete what's on the cloud. Another thing is that apple has deemed internal RAID unnecessary for desktop's who are they to dictate this considering they never supported beyond RAID 5 or 0+1 internally. Finally lets not forget Apple never supported or supplied it's computer with Blu-ray or HD-DVD although I kind of understand the reason for HD-DVD because perhap's it had to do with Microsoft supporting it. However, I don't understand why Apple never supported Blu-ray and has now completely eliminated optical drives from it's products and the option of adding them even with the addition of BD-XL and with whatever future optical media has considering optical media has its advantages. Those advantages are that its cheaper than flash and it's ROM, so the data doesn't does become corrupted by viruses as easily because it can only be written to once at the time of the original recording. Sure external optical drives can be used, but I don't like being forced to use flash or external drives now. Especially when there is no good reason reason for it considering optical storage is not officially dead yet. One more thing Apple charges as much for a 15" laptop as a 17" laptop PC and this is BS. I don't care if the 15" now supports a resolution of 1920x1080 when your on the go and you only have the main screen it's no fun working with a monitor that small. As for those that thought 17" laptops where to big, if you don't want a 17" don't buy one and don't demand that the rest of us use your preferences. If apple wanted to supply 15" Macbook laptops with higher resolution displays they should have done this with the 17" and made the 17" 2560x1650 or 2560x1440. One last thing Apple forces you to use DVD on your Mac Book and stated to me that if you damage any components while upgrading to Blu-ray you void your warranty, so when I told them I thought I stripped the screws they only offered to replace the drive with a new DVD drive for about $100.
 
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With a mac it is a luxury product. You are paying for more than just the hard ware specs. You are paying for a typical better quality hardware, and a more solidly engineered design. People buy BMW or Mercedes Benz because it is a better quality car, even if a Ford taurus is cheaper and has the same performance numbers.

I meant to quote this with the following:

I disagree and I own a Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro. Before Tim Cook this may or may not have been true. For one the aluminum case was better quality than the new plastic cylinder style case of the New Mac Pro. Also the processors have improved, but it Apple is still a generation behind the PC. Another thing is that Apple no longer allows you to upgrade the memory in the Mac Book because now they require you to buy as much RAM as you want or need at the time of the original purchase, since the memory is now embedded. They force you to use flash based storage as your main storage for your OS and programs. Last but not least with the minimum amount of storage capacity of the flash based SSD's, which I believe may also be embedded your forced to store your files on icloud and lose control of your own files even if it does help protect them and is incredibly convenient this may not be acceptable to other people. However, I got hand to apple for allowing you to use local and cloud storage as well as allowing you to delete what's on the cloud. Another thing is that apple has deemed internal RAID unnecessary for desktop's who are they to dictate this considering they never supported beyond RAID 5 or 0+1 internally. Finally lets not forget Apple never supported or supplied it's computer with Blu-ray or HD-DVD although I kind of understand the reason for HD-DVD because perhap's it had to do with Microsoft supporting it. However, I don't understand why Apple never supported Blu-ray and has now completely eliminated optical drives from it's products and the option of adding them even with the addition of BD-XL and with whatever future optical media has considering optical media has its advantages. Those advantages are that its cheaper than flash and it's ROM, so the data doesn't does become corrupted by viruses as easily because it can only be written to once at the time of the original recording. Sure external optical drives can be used, but I don't like being forced to use flash or external drives now. Especially when there is no good reason reason for it considering optical storage is not officially dead yet. One more thing Apple charges as much for a 15" laptop as a 17" laptop PC and this is BS. I don't care if the 15" now supports a resolution of 1920x1080 when your on the go and you only have the main screen it's no fun working with a monitor that small. As for those that thought 17" laptops where to big, if you don't want a 17" don't buy one and don't demand that the rest of us use your preferences. If apple wanted to supply 15" Macbook laptops with higher resolution displays they should have done this with the 17" and made the 17" 2560x1650 or 2560x1440. One last thing Apple forces you to use DVD on your Mac Book and stated to me that if you damage any components while upgrading to Blu-ray you void your warranty, so when I told them I thought I stripped the screws they only offered to replace the drive with a new DVD drive for about $100.
 
I meant to quote this with the following:

I disagree and I own a Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro. Before Tim Cook this may or may not have been true. For one the aluminum case was better quality than the new plastic cylinder style case of the New Mac Pro. Also the processors have improved, but it Apple is still a generation behind the PC.

Another thing is that Apple no longer allows you to upgrade the memory in the Mac Book because now they require you to buy as much RAM as you want or need at the time of the original purchase, since the memory is now embedded. They force you to use flash based storage as your main storage for your OS and programs.

Last but not least with the minimum amount of storage capacity of the flash based SSD's, which I believe may also be embedded your forced to store your files on icloud and lose control of your own files even if it does help protect them and is incredibly convenient this may not be acceptable to other people. However, I got hand to apple for allowing you to use local and cloud storage as well as allowing you to delete what's on the cloud.

Another thing is that apple has deemed internal RAID unnecessary for desktop's who are they to dictate this considering they never supported beyond RAID 5 or 0+1 internally.

Finally lets not forget Apple never supported or supplied it's computer with Blu-ray or HD-DVD although I kind of understand the reason for HD-DVD because perhap's it had to do with Microsoft supporting it. However, I don't understand why Apple never supported Blu-ray and has now completely eliminated optical drives from it's products and the option of adding them even with the addition of BD-XL and with whatever future optical media has considering optical media has its advantages. Those advantages are that its cheaper than flash and it's ROM, so the data doesn't does become corrupted by viruses as easily because it can only be written to once at the time of the original recording. Sure external optical drives can be used, but I don't like being forced to use flash or external drives now. Especially when there is no good reason reason for it considering optical storage is not officially dead yet.

One more thing Apple charges as much for a 15" laptop as a 17" laptop PC and this is BS. I don't care if the 15" now supports a resolution of 1920x1080 when your on the go and you only have the main screen it's no fun working with a monitor that small. As for those that thought 17" laptops where to big, if you don't want a 17" don't buy one and don't demand that the rest of us use your preferences. If apple wanted to supply 15" Macbook laptops with higher resolution displays they should have done this with the 17" and made the 17" 2560x1650 or 2560x1440.

One last thing Apple forces you to use DVD on your Mac Book and stated to me that if you damage any components while upgrading to Blu-ray you void your warranty, so when I told them I thought I stripped the screws they only offered to replace the drive with a new DVD drive for about $100.

Broken up into paragraphs so people can read it. :p

To touch on the points as mentioned:

The Mac Pro's casing is aluminum, not plastic! It's just shiny. Trust me, I've held it.

Apple started limiting aftermarket memory upgrades back with the original MacBook Air in 2008, when Jobs was still around. The non-upgradeable memory is dictated by the form factor, not so much malice on Apple's part. An increasing number of PC manufacturers do this too, simply because Ultrabooks and other super-compact systems don't leave much room for upgradeable memory.

Same for SSDs. Apple isn't trying to "force" you to use iCloud or other cloud services. It wants thinner, faster laptops, and it determined that SSDs had enough room to store the content for most of its customers. Again, lots of PC makers are following Apple's lead here; if you've ever used an SSD-based PC, you'll know how much an SSD improves your overall performance.

You can do RAID on Macs if you're willing to set it up... and remember, this is the company that developed Fusion Drive, which pairs a full SSD (not just a cache) with a spinning hard drive.

Apple didn't support Blu-ray for a few publicly stated reasons. Jobs called it a "bag of hurt" because of the onerous copy protection it requires on an OS level. And optical drives as a whole... well, was Apple really wrong? They add a lot of bulk to a laptop, and these days they're only really useful for watching movies on an airplane without good Wi-Fi; you need a hard drive or the cloud (preferably both) to do proper backups, Netflix/iTunes/Google Play/Vudu will cover your movies, and music CDs are on the way out. This isn't even accounting for 4K video, which can easily outgrow current Blu-ray discs. Optical storage may not be completely dead, but it's dying -- why cling to soon-to-be-obsolete technology when you can embrace the future?

That "17-inch PC" you mention is also likely a hunk of junk next to a 15-inch MacBook Pro, sorry to ay. Not that it won't have some advantages (graphics and sheer storage capacity may be better), but it'll be thicker, heavier, use slower storage, last much less time on battery and carry an inferior display. Also, Apple isn't going to super-high resolutions just for usable screen area -- it's doing that so that the quality of what you see on screen goes up.

And to top things off: yes, every laptop manufacturer on the planet wants you to use the official parts meant for the computer, because that's all they can support. You just don't have the right to complain when you damage your machine (even if it's just the screws) while attempting an entirely unsupported upgrade. If you fried your car's electronics trying to install an aftermarket audio system, you wouldn't insist that the car manufacturer fix this for free, would you?
 
MacBook pro or air are very well built laptops and fast. The screen is amazing on the retina.

I tried and tried with the MacBook retina to keep it. It's an almost perfect machine. It would be perfect If it didn't have this major issue in my eyes.

The issue is that it looses frame rates a lot. It's very annoying and if u don't care about seeing laggy animations then go ahead and get it. Also depends on what app u have opened. Sometimes this causes more lag. The MacBook is fast but the animations are not.

I tried multiple retina MacBooks and all had this laggy issue. It's like playing a video game on a computer that can't handle it well when the fps drop low and it stutters or lags. I couldn't get used to it and it frustrates me to where I had to sell or return them.

Now the MacBook air not as powerful but still fast is a lot better. It does not have the retina display but it's for the most per a smooth experience. The speakers may not be as good either but still good.

Basically if the lag will bother u don't get it until they fix the issue or they may never fix it? The retina display might be too much for the graphics cards in the retinas.

It's up to u tho. The MacBook is a great laptop but the lag bothered me too much to keep it and enjoy that nice display.
 
MacBook pro or air are very well built laptops and fast. The screen is amazing on the retina.

I tried and tried with the MacBook retina to keep it. It's an almost perfect machine. It would be perfect If it didn't have this major issue in my eyes.

The issue is that it looses frame rates a lot. It's very annoying and if u don't care about seeing laggy animations then go ahead and get it. Also depends on what app u have opened. Sometimes this causes more lag. The MacBook is fast but the animations are not.

I tried multiple retina MacBooks and all had this laggy issue. It's like playing a video game on a computer that can't handle it well when the fps drop low and it stutters or lags. I couldn't get used to it and it frustrates me to where I had to sell or return them.

Which models were these? I have a 13-inch MBP from late 2013, and it's pretty smooth in just about everything.
 
I've got the 13" Retina (late 2013) and agree that it can lag with some animation. The one criticism I have is its integrated graphics. Of course, everything else about this model is outstanding. The trade-off with some lackluster graphics is more than worth it for my uses (work, writing, internet, writing, e-mail/text, writing... and more writing).

If I were to have an MBP as my sole or main computer, I'd go with the 15" Retina and its dedicated GPU. As a secondary computer or road warrior laptop, I don't think you can do better than the 13" Retina.
 
I had the 2014 rmbp. I tried 3 different ones. They all have lag. It's not bad all the time but do es get bad sometimes. I Skype a lot and when using that u can see a notable difference. Also Google chrome and Mozilla don't work very well. Safari works well tho.

It's a great laptop but I just couldn't deal with that.
U can google like MacBook retina lag and u will find many people have the issue so I'm pretty sure all of them do it but some people don't notice it as much as others. I did try the big iMac 27inch and it didn't seem to lag like the retina pros but that one does have a better gpu in it. Not sure about the pro with the 750m tho. I still heard it has lag issues. So hopefully a software and not hardware issue.

I'm actually thinking about getting the MacBook air bc it's mostly smooth.

It's either poor optimization of OS X, underpowered gpu, or undercloking of gpu and whatever else to conserve battery life and reduce heat that is causing it I believe.

Hopefully they will fix it soon or at least will with a new updated pro.
 
Did you try the 13" (integrated graphics) or 15" (Nvidia 750M) Retina? There's a huge difference in graphics performance between the two models.
 
Tried the 13 but heard the 750m 15 inch still has lagging issues.

Either way I don't think they should be laggy fort the price and since its apple.
 
No surprise at all about graphics lag with the 13", as I noted above with my own experience. Only way to know for certain about possible lag with the 15" is to try it. I wouldn't base my purchase decision on what I heard about lag or anything else.
 
Yes for sure. Go to best buy and check them out. U can always return it easily if ui get it from best buy if u don't like it.

I tried the display 15 inch and got lag but not sure if it was the 750m version didn't see that it was.
 
I don't have any "lag" on my 2013 rMBP, with the 5200IGP.
 
Broken up into paragraphs so people can read it. :p

To touch on the points as mentioned:

The Mac Pro's casing is aluminum, not plastic! It's just shiny. Trust me, I've held it.

Apple started limiting aftermarket memory upgrades back with the original MacBook Air in 2008, when Jobs was still around. The non-upgradeable memory is dictated by the form factor, not so much malice on Apple's part. An increasing number of PC manufacturers do this too, simply because Ultrabooks and other super-compact systems don't leave much room for upgradeable memory.

Same for SSDs. Apple isn't trying to "force" you to use iCloud or other cloud services. It wants thinner, faster laptops, and it determined that SSDs had enough room to store the content for most of its customers. Again, lots of PC makers are following Apple's lead here; if you've ever used an SSD-based PC, you'll know how much an SSD improves your overall performance.

You can do RAID on Macs if you're willing to set it up... and remember, this is the company that developed Fusion Drive, which pairs a full SSD (not just a cache) with a spinning hard drive.

Apple didn't support Blu-ray for a few publicly stated reasons. Jobs called it a "bag of hurt" because of the onerous copy protection it requires on an OS level. And optical drives as a whole... well, was Apple really wrong? They add a lot of bulk to a laptop, and these days they're only really useful for watching movies on an airplane without good Wi-Fi; you need a hard drive or the cloud (preferably both) to do proper backups, Netflix/iTunes/Google Play/Vudu will cover your movies, and music CDs are on the way out. This isn't even accounting for 4K video, which can easily outgrow current Blu-ray discs. Optical storage may not be completely dead, but it's dying -- why cling to soon-to-be-obsolete technology when you can embrace the future?

That "17-inch PC" you mention is also likely a hunk of junk next to a 15-inch MacBook Pro, sorry to ay. Not that it won't have some advantages (graphics and sheer storage capacity may be better), but it'll be thicker, heavier, use slower storage, last much less time on battery and carry an inferior display. Also, Apple isn't going to super-high resolutions just for usable screen area -- it's doing that so that the quality of what you see on screen goes up.

And to top things off: yes, every laptop manufacturer on the planet wants you to use the official parts meant for the computer, because that's all they can support. You just don't have the right to complain when you damage your machine (even if it's just the screws) while attempting an entirely unsupported upgrade. If you fried your car's electronics trying to install an aftermarket audio system, you wouldn't insist that the car manufacturer fix this for free, would you?

I'm not saying it's inferior because I possibly stripped the screws, which I didn't and my dad even told me I didn't, since I was just using too big of a screw driver and needed a watch or jewelers screw driver set. However, a watch or jewelers screw driver set can be hard to find, so I just used his and got the DVD drive out. Turns out though that the blu-ray drive didn't meet the clearance requirement and couldn't stay in if I wanted to get the cover back on. Now I need a 9.5" BDXL drive. As for the display taking up more battery life I don't consider it that big of a deal because I still get better battery life than my Asus G74S-3D, but even if this is important to some people I want the bigger screen and larger work space when on the go and yes I realize this may not be more important to everyone else. I would also like to point out that the 2012 Macbook pro's only support half the maximum amount that high-end Laptop PC's and workstations support and that saying something. Another thing I would like to point out about the optical drive is that it's not standard because Apple is catering to people who don't maintain there own computer's and if they do then they should know the hassle of having proprietary parts because Apple somehow gets to dictate what you can put in you Apple computer when the brand of optical drive or dimension shouldn't have to be an issue if they could just be required to be slot loading. As I stated though Optical technology is not dead and has still has many advantages besides your opinion that they are only good for watching moves because they are cheaper and more reliable than external mechanical hard drives or tapes because they are ROM, although slower and may have a shorter life span due to corrosion. However, at least you can't accidentally cause an optical disc to fail because you wrote to much to it like tape, hard drives, and flash memory or write to much to it that shorten it's life span like flash. I understand though that flash will replace optical though because it more durable and easier to make though, but until then I want to be able to continue to use it or upgrade to it and that one of my points. As for splitting this into paragraph's this a forum not a word processor, so please spare me the greef of manually doing that.
 
As for splitting this into paragraph's this a forum not a word processor, so please spare me the greef of manually doing that.
This IS a forum, as you have so kindly pointed out. That means that the primary form of communication is text. Text should be broken into paragraphs for easy reading. It's like those people who say, "This isn't an english essay. I'll use text-speak if I want." No. Just, no. If it's worth writing, it's worth writing correctly. It should take only seconds to break your thoughts into legible paragraphs. Please take those seconds, for all of our sanity.

A few other notes:
1) A "jeweler's" screwdriver set is available at every Walmart, Home Depot, Sears, Lowes, Kmart, Target, etc. in the US. They're typically $10 or less for a set. It's worth picking up a set if you're digging around inside a computer often.

2) The optical drive is not standard because Apple needed to create non-standard components in order to fit the form factor desired. If you look at other ultra-slim computers, you'll notice that they typically do not have a "standard" laptop drive in there, either. I put standard in quotes because there's actually not a standard that I'm aware of for slim drives. I couldn't swap out the Dell DVD drive on my work machine with an HP one when it died. Instead, work had to buy a new drive!

3) Optical technology isn't "dead", but it is damned close, and has been since before BluRays were out. Flash media has been (in my professional opinion) a superior storage method for any non-WORM data for a while. (And even for that data, there's a large number of use cases where flash > optical!)
 
As for splitting this into paragraph's this a forum not a word processor, so please spare me the greef of manually doing that.

It's the other way around, friend. Spare us the grief of having to deal with your walls of text if you expect anyone to read them. A couple line breaks go a long way.
 
This IS a forum, as you have so kindly pointed out. That means that the primary form of communication is text. Text should be broken into paragraphs for easy reading. It's like those people who say, "This isn't an english essay. I'll use text-speak if I want." No. Just, no. If it's worth writing, it's worth writing correctly. It should take only seconds to break your thoughts into legible paragraphs. Please take those seconds, for all of our sanity.

A few other notes:
1) A "jeweler's" screwdriver set is available at every Walmart, Home Depot, Sears, Lowes, Kmart, Target, etc. in the US. They're typically $10 or less for a set. It's worth picking up a set if you're digging around inside a computer often.

2) The optical drive is not standard because Apple needed to create non-standard components in order to fit the form factor desired. If you look at other ultra-slim computers, you'll notice that they typically do not have a "standard" laptop drive in there, either. I put standard in quotes because there's actually not a standard that I'm aware of for slim drives. I couldn't swap out the Dell DVD drive on my work machine with an HP one when it died. Instead, work had to buy a new drive!

3) Optical technology isn't "dead", but it is damned close, and has been since before BluRays were out. Flash media has been (in my professional opinion) a superior storage method for any non-WORM data for a while. (And even for that data, there's a large number of use cases where flash > optical!)

I went to Walmart, Home Depot and Lowes for a jeweler's screw driver set and no one had any idea were they were located and neither did I because it didn't seem obvious. Maybe I'll try the other places though next time.
 
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Was the OP's queston answered. If not not try Dell's M6800 mobile workstation line or System 76. There's also a mobile workstation line by HP and MSI, but I didn't like HP's because the configurations seemed to be hinting that the Max memory supported was 16 GB instead of 32 GB. As for MSI you may not like their systems it you want Quadro and more security.
 
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