MacBook Pro 13" or 15"

[FisH_SLaYer24]

So I am headed of to the University of Wisconsin River Falls in the Fall of 2012 and I have been in search of a new laptop. I have narrowed my choices down to two different notebooks: Apple MacBook Pro 13" 2.9 GHz, with a Dual-Core Intel Core i7 processor, 8gb of memory, and a 750gb hard drive versus an Apple MacBook Pro 15" 2.3 GHz, with a Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor, 4gb of memory, and a 500gb hard drive.

I am having a hard time deciding on which computer would be a better investment for me. The 13" comes with more memory and a bigger/faster hard drive, but you get a bigger screen and you step up to a quad core processor with that $300 price increase.

Is the $300 extra dollars worth the extra features you recieve with the 15" MacBook Pro, or will the 13" MacBook Pro be just as nice of a computer? If any of you have any personal experience with either of these computers, all of the input is greatly appreciated and much needed.

Thanks,

Chris

[upnorth]

All depends on what apps you are going to run on the machine and what kind of ram requirements they have. Most case a 500GB drive would be fine.

But a quick look and you can upgrade the drive and ram on the 15.4 inch to 8GB ram and 750Gb drive but the jump in price was substantial.

I would lean towards the 15.4 but it does depend on what you are going to be running on it.

[Skeeter21i]

You could go with the 13" and add an external monitor. I run a year and a half old 13" Macbook Pro with a 25" monitor connected to it when I'm in the office.

[Dragonsm]

Either choice is a good one.

My wife has the 13" pro with 4 gb of ram and zero issues or hangups. I also run microsoft office on her laptop and it works great when I am not on a pc along with other items. (I keep toying with installing windows OS in bootcamp for some simulators and stuff that I have that is strictly for windows and see how it does....)

Size wise, I like her 13"....sometimes the 15"+ gets a little "big" to carry around. However, sometimes I do wish I had the slightly larger monitor when viewing things online...but for her she loves the size and didn't want anything larger.

I have also hooked it up to tv's for a larger monitor and works well.

RAM for the most part is pretty inexpensive and if you so choose to go with the 15"....it's something that can always be added in the future.

Thing I like the most about the macbook pro is the aluminum milled shell. Very durable.

Good luck with school in the fall....go into a best buy and play around with them a bit and view some stuff on the screens and make your decision off of that.

Steve

[Whoaru99]

I would contact the school to see what their hardware recommendations are for the courses you're taking.