For £500? Hell No, I wouldn't get a spec like that for twice the money

It's a Medion laptop, seeing as you are looking at a Sony you obviously aren't limited to OS

I can comfortable do photo editing and 3d graphic design with it using Photoshop or Lightwave (or 3ds max etc) as it's very capable

I got the 13" Macbook Pro in the summer and can't fault it, easily the best laptop I've owned.

The Core i7 is a quad core processor, with hyperthreading. The Core 2 Duos in the others are dual core processors, so on 2 cores, no hyperthreading. That means the Core i7 can do up to 8 things simultaneously, the C2Ds only 2.

The Core i7 is also much more efficient than the C2D, so doesn't need to run as fast for the same performance. Add together the efficiency and the multi-threading abilities and the Core i7 will walk all over the C2D in many instances. It also has a turbo mode, where, if you have a single process running, it will shut down the other cores and boost the speed of the core doing the work, improving the performance of that single thread.


The processor, ram, hard drives etc. are identical. They come from the same production line from the same suppliers! It is how Apple combine them and the design of the end product that adds the superiority.

The 9400 isn't a gaming chip. It will struggle with most old 3D games and any modern 3D games won't really be playable, or only playable at the lowest resolution with most of the effects turned off.

For serious gaming, you should be looking at 9800 or the GTX260/280 mobile chips (or the AMD 5000 series equivalents).

The Vista story was true, when Vista was released in 2007. Apple spent a lot of time getting their Windows drivers right, whilst other manufacturers were slow getting decent drivers to market.

Today there isn't any real difference, if you get a decent notebook from a different manufacturer. If they have the same processor, similar RAM, video and HD, then the performance will be much the same.

I have a Toshiba Tecra 15", a MacBook Pro 13" and a 17" HP ProBook. The latter cost less than half what the MacBook and the Tecra cost! And you can tell (it was only €660). The case flexes, it feels cheap and its performance isn't as good. The 13" MBP cost me €1300 (4GB model), as did the Tecra (15" 1680x1050 display, 4GB RAM) and they are both excellent. Both are quick both use the same processor and, to be honest, there isn't really a performance diference.

I prefer the display on the Tecra - you can see a decent amount of text and the Post a Reply form on this site fits on-screen without having to scroll!, but the case build quality and the screen on the MacBook are better, the aluminium case and the bright screen behind glass are excellent, even if it has a lower resolution and I end up seeing myself in the screen a lot, instead of what is on the screen.

For gaming, I would go with a dedicated video chip, not the 9400 chipset graphic in the 13" MacBook Pro, but you need to buy the top end 15" MBP or the 17" MBP, which is way outside of your budget, to get a dedicated graphics chip and even then, it is a bottom of the range, outdated chip, which isn't really up to playing modern games.

That said, the OS X version of WoW is designed to run on lesser graphic chips, so it might not be such an issue. Don't know about EVE online.

If you are planning on playing Windows games, then I wouldn't get the MacBook Pro! For a start, you will have to factor in the cost of a copy of Windows on top of the price of the MacBook and you will find much more "game" capable hardware for less money. The case quality won't be as good, but its game performance will be better than a MacBook and you will still have change...

If you weren't gaming, I'd say go with the MacBook, without thinking about it, but with the gaming requirement, I would say get a laptop with a dedicated graphics chip!


It would be worse...

^That's a quote. Boom boom. Actually no, I haven't I wasn't sure if I needed more details or not, but I don't think I do. I'll sort it out on Monday. Apologies.

I would say it depends on on how future-proof you want it/how serious your gaming desires are. I have yet to see the GTX260M chip or above in anything below about £1000 (If anyone can correct me on that, I will suddenly need to go shopping urgently!) My laptop has an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600, not what you call quick these days, but it handles Call of Duty 4 MW at 1200*800 (my max resolution) with most settings on high. WoW would be no problem for it, and EVE online recommend (as opposed to minimum) a 256MB ATI 3000 series equivelent. At 1366*768 (or nearby) most games will be playable even at high settings on a mid-range option like a 9600GT or the HD4570, and I'm not sure you can get much better than that for this price range. I believe the more powerful cards only really become worthwhile at large desktop resolutions.

The thing to bear in mind is that if you go for a MacBook Pro, you can install Windows. If you use BootCamp and an application like Parallels, this gives you the option to boot into Windows, or run Windows within the Mac OS X environment. If you are that way inclined, it’s well worth the investment to get this kind of flexibility.

Thanks for that Phantom. So, in summary, a 9600GT or a AMD 3000 series or better?

But I still wouldn't recommend chipset-only graphics for games playing.

Absolutely, unless you only want to play Pacman!

The 9400M seems to manage L4D just fine.

It's a Valve game though

The Valve engine is massively CPU based

I could manage CS: S on a X300 with a decent pc, didnt work with a celeron and a X1900XT though

Well you did place it in the meeting place! (8-p) PC Hardware would have been a better forum if you didn't want things to stray in the slightest.

Saw an interesting set of benchmarks for the mobile processors, comparing the Core i7 1.7 and 2.0Ghz against Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo T9n00, Turion and Atom processors.

The performance difference, whether single thread or multi-thread are staggering (Cinbebench rendering)...

It is in a mag at home, I'll try and type it up when I get home.

I wouldn't get a 13 inch screen if my requirements were image editing and gaming