basic MBP with Intel x25-m or level 2 MBP?

Simple question:

I am thinking of getting the 8600 MBP with 2gb, the basic hard drive, etc. Then replacing the hard drive with the 80gb intel x25-m and selling the the original. This would come out to a few dollars more than the 2.53gb macbook with 4gb and the 320gb hard drive.

I don't need a lot of space because i have multiple terabytes of external media collection hard drives.

Do you think I have the right idea? Doesn't the 2.4 consume less watts than the 2.53 as well? This would be better for battery life, which I care about.

Cheers.

 

The battery difference between the 2.4 and 2.53 is hardly anything noticable. I've owned both and trust me there is no difference.

If I were you I would get the new unibody MBP. It is much better than the 8600 generation, which I also owned as well.

If I were you, I would get the 2.4 unibody MBP, plus that SSD you were talking about. It might be a little more, but you won't regret it.

 

Sorry, I thought the 2.4 for the unibody was the p8600. Musts be confused. Both models I was talking about are unibody.

 

The new unibody MBP comes with the Intel P8600 processor and an nVidia 9600M GT.

 

no you're definitely right. the processor is the p8600. others may be confused because they see "8600" and think of the gpu, since the previous gen. graphics was based on the 8600gt chip.

 

Get the unibody macbook, and if you have cash in the future the x-25m. I just picked up the x-25m, and it's incredible. The intel drives don't support bootcamp, but it's a whole new level of responsiveness.

-jb

 

Do we need special drivers to run SSD HDD?

Never heard about it

 

Nope just plug and play dude! Takes all of five minutes to be honest, the new unibody macs are extremely easy to upgrade. Make sure you have a torx-6 otherwise you might strip the screws.

Ssd is the future for sure, boot times alone are worth the purchase. You won't need drivers for OSX or Windows, install like a normal HD and enjoy the next gen speed.

-jb

 

BTW,I found that x25 on ebay for ~400$ is that a fair price?

 

I know. BTW Thanx. But I i don't understand what you mean by bootcamp drivers?

Maybe AHCI ?

 

I was thinking more, maybe I should go for the 17 inch MBP and forget about SSD for now.

I am a law student and have been carrying around an Asus z70v for four years. It weighs six pounds and now I need the ac adapter all the time because of the battery wasting. So the weight is essentially the same as the 17inch MBP with the SWEET battery and amazing 1920x1200 RGB LED screen.

That way I could get the matte screen if I decided to. I would have to forget about SSD for now, but I think I am ok with that. Prices will be dropping a lot in the next two years anyways.

 

The intel x25-m (80gb) is now $399.99 on amazon.com

I should have waited 1 month since I paid $499.99 from amazon. Oh well worth every penny!

 

Oh sorry Bigspin, i meant you will not be able to enable bootcamp to access windows partitions. When i said intel drives i meant the hard drives themselves, not drivers for bootcamp. I've been following the issue in hope for a solution. At this point all we can hope for is apple to update the EFI so it can see the Intel drive. You will only get so far through the install process before it tries to boot the drive and fails.

There is currently no work around for this , people have even tried to clone their old drives with boot camp to no avail.I wish AHCI would resolve the issue but it's not that simple according to other forums. If I find out more information on a working solution to bootcamp for X-25m, there will def be a post from me.

Xirurg: I paid 400 bucks for my intel x-25m, plus Amazon has free shipping and a great return policy. It may drop again in coming months but figure i already went all out for the MAC
The Vertex drives coming out from OCZ have my interest, but we won't know how well the new controller works until the new reviews.

-jb

 

So basically that mean no bootcamp with SSD drives?

 

No, even more annoying is that it's for the intel x-25m hah .. It appears that the relatively new titans on newegg do not suffer from this problem. You would think such a flagship product would not suffer from these kind of issues so early in it's release. It's not like this is the only drive with issues, the OCZ Core series that use the Jmicron controller for example have stuttering problems.

Honestly for the matt screen option alone the 17' Unibody is very tempting. Even for another 100 bucks i would have added the option for the 15' unibody MBP if it was available. I hear the 17' gets some serious battery life, if your willing to compromise for some extra weight. Let us know which one you pick, i'd like to know if the 17' /w matt screen is as sharp as it looks

-jb

 

JMicron based SSD's are just waste of money. I'm looking forward to Intel. However I need bootcamp to play games so I'm going to wait a little.

BTW thanx for the tip I never know abut this issue.