Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Macbook Pro 2010 or 2011 choices

May 30, 2011 7:23AM PDT

<span id="INSERTION_MARKER"> Hi there, I've got two choices. Based on our budget and best performance, which do you think is better for a photographer and web designer's laptop?
<span id="INSERTION_MARKER">

<span id="INSERTION_MARKER">Macbook Pro 2010 (refurb)
13" screen
2.66ghz Core 2 Duo
8GB memory
240GB OWC Extreme Pro SSD

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Generally speaking
May 30, 2011 7:47AM PDT

Generally speaking, the Core i5 is going to mop the floor with a Core 2 Duo for this kind of thing. So unless you know for a fact that the photo editing programs you're going to be using are heavy into using the graphics card for operations, the better architecture of the i5 will win the day easily.

And while it's true that a SSD would be a bit faster, SSDs still haven't quite reached the same longevity level of HDDs. Photo editing would probably chew through those write cycles very quickly.

I do also question the wisdom of doing any kind of regular photo editing on a laptop. It's just not a good idea. Too much heat with nowhere to go, which ultimately ends up slowly roasting the internal components causing them to fail much earlier.

- Collapse -
Answer
i5 is faster and ssd you can get elsewhere
Jun 24, 2011 2:24PM PDT
- Collapse -
Answer
thanks for the replies
Jun 24, 2011 10:01PM PDT

You all were right, the price difference was not great enough to justify the gap in processor speed and refurb status. I went with a 13" Macbook Pro Core i5 and sprung for the OWC SSD. Blazing fast little laptop.