The 13″ MacBook Pro is a fine machine. I would encourage you to get the faster processing chip and eventually max out the RAM. Upgrading to a small SSD is a good use of your money too if you are comfortable storing the majority of your data on external drives. If you prefer internal storage for your data then I would stick to the Serial ATA drive.

–
David Marx

It has been more than a year since this post has been posted. I hope I would get a reply. I am planning to switch from Windows to Mac.

I have never used a Mac other than playing with it for couple minutes on the local bestbuy store. I am planning to get a MBP 13″ MC700LL/A (2.3GHz) model because I need something lightweight for what I am going to use it for. The Air version is not going to work for me.

I read some of your post that you would recommend a 15″ MBP for CS5, but the 15″ is way over my price range. I am going to use this 13″ MBP for designing network topology using MS Visio 2010 and for terminal use for configuring routers/switches, and some CS5 painting and picture editing.

My question is, since Mac does not have Visio available, I have to run a virtual machine (Windows7) to run my Visio. How much performance impact would a virtual machine on a 13″ MBP while I am running some other applications? I am thinking to use Parallels.

Also, how many routers I can run using the GNS3 on this MBP 13″? I am going to need this for mobile practicing/studies.

About the CS5 performance, I know that Photoshop have this feature for GPU acceleration. Since the 13″ MBP does not a dedicated GPU, would I be able to do my digital painting and picture editing on a nice speed. If you’re going to scale it from 1 (worse) to 10 (best) what would be the performance of CS5 based on what I am going to use it for.

I also found some videos of the speed of CS5 on 13″ MBP, but they just shown the speed of opening CS5, but not using with filters and some heavy CS5 jobs.

Thanks

P.s.
I will be upgrading this 13″ to 8GB RAM
Do I need to get a Mac RAM or a regular SO-DIMM would do the job?

You will see a difference in Lightroom particularly when it comes to the speed of rendering previews, importing, and exporting images. Some other features, like the local adjustment brush, can be processor intensive.

Solid State Digital (SSD) drives are faster than traditional (spinning) hard drives in most scenarios. The question, however, is whether or not they are yet worth the price premium. For most applications, the answer is no. You say that you have two 500GB external flash drives. I believe you are mistaken. A “flash” drive is another name for an SSD drive. 500GB SSD drives are running over $1000 each today. An external 500GB SSD drive with USB 2.0 would offer no advantage over a traditional hard drive (which would be priced closer to $80) since the USB 2.0 connection would greatly limit the communication speed.

SSD is a great candidate for an internal primary drive on a computer, if you have the money, but is in no way necessary. It can make starting up and shutting down the computer a faster task and can provider faster launch times for applications. Right now, SSD is not an economical answer for our image storage needs. That will change in the next 5-10 years, of course.

-Scott

Will I see much difference when using Lightroom? Or is this very dependent on how many images I have in my library?

Also, I have read countless posts stating SSD would be very beneficial when handling images. I have a couple of 500Gb external flash drives. Will these provide similar performance or is the USB 2.0 port a complete choke?

Mark

You will see a major performance difference between the dual and quad core processors when you start doing photo stitching and HDR work. Each of these processes are math intensive. The more processors the more math the computer can do per second. If travel is top-priority then the 13″ MacBook Pro makes more sense but if you are really looking for a powerhouse computer then the 15″ is the way to go.

–
David Marx

I’m in a similar position to Laura; MBP 13″ 2.7 vs MBP 15″ 2.0Ghz. The 15″ is a $400 increment.

I’ll be using it for general personal computing and photo editing. I mainly use Lightroom 3, but would like to get into photo stitching and HDR in the near future too (not sure which application though).

I’m going to get a >22″ monitor for home irrespective of whether I get the 13″ or 15″. I do travel a resonably amount, so I like the 13″ size more.

Will the lack of dedicated graphics card with the 13″ impact on performance for photo editing? I’ve received mixed reports on this. I hear Lightroom does not utilise a dedicated card, but Photoshop does.

In addition, will I see a major difference between the dual core 13″ and quad core 15″?

Thanks for your help.

Mark

I think you will be happy enough with the
Apple 13-inch MacBook Pro for this sort of work. I strongly suggest getting the faster processor and eventually maxing out the ram too.

–
David Marx

P.S. If you use this link to the
Apple Store Online for your purchase then we get 2% commission. That revenue helps to keep our site up and running!

I have trouble working on programs such as Lightroom on a small screen like that on the 13″. Depending on what you’re upgrading from, however, you should notice a huge performance improvement with any of the machines you listed.

My favorite machine is the fastest 15″ MacBook Pro available, but all of the machines you listed are capable of running Lightroom and Photoshop CS5.

Check out the selection here. RAM and hard drive speed are two places where one can make a big difference without spending too much extra. 4GB of RAM is the bare minimum with 8GB being better. Purchase your new RAM from a company other than Apple to save money and install it yourself. It’s not too tough. I like Other World Computing, but there are other nice choices, too.

Also, if you can get the 7200 RPM hard drive (rather than the 5400 RPM model), it’s well worth it. The SSD drives are great, as well, but still a bit pricey.

-Scott