re: 160GB vs 250GB hard drive

[detze001]

re: 160GB vs 250GB hard drive

Hi,
I am going to buy a new MBP and switch from a PC. My student price is $1074 for the 160GB hard drive 2gb ram and C2D 2.26GHZ model and $1399 for the 250GB hard drive, 4gb ram and 2.53GHZ model. I would not like to have to spend the extra $325 if I can get away with it. However, I would like to use Parallels to run a program called SAS (4gb of install space) on Windows. Can I get away with the 160GB hard drive model or do I basically have to get the 250GB hard drive one?.... Is it true that mac software uses hard drive space more efficiently?... (I currently use 85GB of my hard drive and that is pretty packed). Thanks for the help.

 

[clayneal]

Well you could do the ram and hdd up-grades yourself for around $200 so what you are really asking is should you spend $125 for the processor and to that I always say buy all the processor you can afford !


Hope it helps

Clay

 

[bellerobot]

I can say, it is worth to have the 250GB hard drive, 4gb ram and 2.53GHZ model. you need parallel so you need 4G RAM. I have only 2G RAM, and it stuck me sometime. About CPU, the faster the better. Like the above said, if you can afford, buy the best option you can.

 

[Janus 006]

Get 4 GB ram at least. Your hard drive requirement will depend on what you use your computer for. But external drives are really cheap these days, so I would settle for 160 GB.

Or, just get with the times, drop SAS, and use R (j/k, you probably have to use SAS for some course; but sometimes they'll let you get away with another stats program).

Also, you should look into computer labs on campus. Oftentimes, you can use remote desktop to access a Windows machine in a lab and use SAS that way. Not as convenient, maybe, but a workaround if you want to save money.

 

[detze001]

or...

perhaps I will just keep my PC for SAS and use the MBP for everything else. I don't mind R (I have it too) but I like the ease of SAS.

 

[quin]

Get the RAM upgrade. It costs anywhere from $110-125 for 4GB set if you buy it yourself (although, prices of RAM fluctuate). I 'm in the middle of trying to upgrade my Macbook Pro 13. Much cheaper to upgrade the HDD yourself. Just bought a Hitachi Travelstar SATA 2.5 500GB 7200rpm for $100. Haven't got the time to clone and install yet.

 

[osxx]

But for a little over 320.00 you get a faster processor double the ram and bigger hard drive and although you could do the ram and hard drive yourself your stuck with the processor and if you add all this up plus your time the 1399. doesn't sound bad.

 

[detze001]

I really don't care too much about super high performance, I just really want to know if I can reliably run parallels w/ Windows 7 on the base MBP (2gb,160gb,2.26ghz)

 

[alexsd123]

You should get the 2.26, upgrade to a 7200 RPM 500 GB HD and 4 GB of RAM.

It will be cheaper than the 2.53, have a faster HD and the same amount of RAM.

With 4 GB of RAM it should run very smoothly in Windows 7 (although it runs pretty smooth at only 1 GB of RAM).