Friday, October 25, 2013

Review of 15-inch MacBook Pro (late 2013, Haswell)

My review of 15-inch MacBook Pro (late 2013, Haswell) is here

3 comments:

  1. Hi Roy !
    I have read your review with a lot of interest and I think that you may advise me regarding my buying decision between MBP 15 Retina low end model (2.0GHz, 8G RAM, 256G SSD) and high end (2.3GHz, 16G RAM, 512SSD).
    You have to know that the machine will be used by my daughter who has just entered into a Design / Visual Communication university in Milano, Italy, and it will run Adobe Creative Suite software (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign,…) and possibly other specific software for graphic projects.
    Another question is: which of the 2 models will be more noisy and have hotter surface temperature ?
    As you may not have compare the 2 models, is yours noisy and too hot ?
    Thanks in advance for your answer.
    Richard B

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  2. Hi Richard. FYI, I only noticed and heat (warmth) and noise when I am running a demanding 3D game (Nvidia GT 950M would be the culprit); otherwise, for running most (if not all) apps will not induce noticeable temperature.

    Because of the presence of GT 950M, I would guess it is the high-end model that "could" run hotter, but only under the gaming circumstance I described above. It is possible that the 2.0 GHz model may last slightly longer for the battery life, however that may not be completely true either as the faster CPU won't have to work as long. Also, with 16 GB RAM it may not have to "swap", causing less I/O with the SSD storage (which uses up power, albeit little).

    At this point, I would think your decision should be mostly based on the price difference. I would think that either model would work for her, but the 16 GB RAM may be beneficial longer-term, as cameras/images have ever increasing resolution and the 8 GB model would slow down further.

    Please let me know if you have more questions that I can answer.

    Roy

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    Replies
    1. Thanks very much for your detailed feedback Roy !

      As you said, considering that 2000 USD is quite an investment for a laptop, I will choose the even more expensive high-end model, which, if well treated (you never know with my daughter...), should not become obsolete before minimum 5 years hopefully.

      At that time my daughter might be earning some money and should also be more conscious of her needs regarding computer equipment… Which means that the eventual replacement of her MBP would be her problem…

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