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Archive 2015 · Go Buy A Used Mac

  
 
ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Go Buy A Used Mac


I just bought a used MBP from 2011 with an i7 and 16gb of memory and 500gb SSD.

The i7 scored 10k on Geekbench 3 64bit and the SSD reads at nearly 500mb/s.

Because it's an older model the ram is upgradeable, that's why it has 16gb. Finding one of the newer MacBooks used with 16GB is pretty tough, because the Apple tax on the soldered memory is outrageous.

This MBP also has a dedicated GPU, which is hard to find on the newer MBP's. Right now Apple only offers one MBP with a dedicated GPU and it's their most expensive one of course.

I threw a ton of D810 wedding files into the four year old MBP and it performed just a tad slower than my 3.5ghz i7 in my big iMac.

Now I am missing out on USB3 but by giving it up I have a CD/DVD slot and firewire 800. Maybe not the best trade, but I'll live. Unlike some of the laptops, I have gigabit ethernet too.

Anyway, unless you feel you need the retina screen, the used MBP's are a great value. You can find them for less than $1000 and they're very capable machines.



Mar 21, 2015 at 12:33 AM
Phiegze1
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Go Buy A Used Mac


Doest it have an express card slot? Add a 34mm USB 3.0 card.
It works on my 2009 MBP



Mar 21, 2015 at 02:05 AM
butchM
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Go Buy A Used Mac


If your MBP has Thunderbolt ... you can take a look at the Kanex USB 3 adapter ... great for adding a single port when traveling:

http://www.kanex.com/thunderbolt-gigabit-ethernet

Or if you are using the MBP as a main workstation in home or office ... the OWC Thunderbolt dock lets you attach a whole bunch of peripherals with a single TB cable:

https://eshop.macsales.com/preorder/OWC-Thunderbolt2-Dock/



Mar 21, 2015 at 10:30 AM
ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Go Buy A Used Mac


Awesome, thanks guys!


Mar 21, 2015 at 11:14 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Go Buy A Used Mac


The thunderbolt 1 dock may still be on sale. It has fewer USB ports but you can add a hub. You will not get maximum performance between USB devices being used simultaneously but it's still faster than USB 2.

Also, you can remove the DVD recorder from the MBP and replace it with another SSD. I recommend you use an SSD that does not rely on TRIM to maintain maximum performance but I should say that my particular early 2011 17" MBP eats OWC SSDs for breakfast - I've had several replaced but at least OWC are great to deal with.

Finally, you may not need a retina screen but the 17" screen is rather poor for photo work. It is not IPS; dark colours vary a lot from top to bottom of the screen because of the slight difference in viewing angle; and it does not cover the full sRGB let alone anything bigger. Bright reds wash out very easily. Despite the separate graphics card it cannot drive a 4k screen.

- Alan



Mar 22, 2015 at 08:37 PM
jbregar
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Go Buy A Used Mac


The 15" Retina MacBook Pro upper-model has come with 16GB of RAM for two revisions now. They're not rare at all and if there is an "Apple Tax" on the memory, it's built into the price of the machine. The upcharge for the higher-spec model is $500... which buys you discrete graphics (which is also not "hard to find"), a small bump in processor speed, twice the RAM and twice the SSD space. That's not a terrible deal for those upgrades.

As for the cost to upgrade to 16GB and the "Apple Tax" the 16GB upgrade on the 13" Retina is $200. OWC charges $172 for a 16GB upgrade for the 2012 non-Retina MBPs. So, the "Apple Tax" is $28. Not exactly highway robbery there.

I'm also not sure why people feel the older machines' socketed RAM is such a big benefit... all of these machines max out at 16GB... not like you're going to go higher on the socketed models as they don't support more.

I do agree that if your budget is around $1000, an older MBP might be a better deal than something new(er), but there are more benefits to the newer MBP than just the retina screen and USB3... much faster processors, much faster SSDs (my rMBP's PCIe SSD hits very close to 1GB/s transfer), much better/faster discrete and integrated graphics, ability to drive 4K screens, ability to drive multiple externals (3+internal on the 15"),Thunderbolt 2, much longer battery life (especially vs. an older used machine), thinner and lighter, HDMI.

The retina MacBook Pros are also IPS displays... while the previous machines were the top-end for TN panels, they were still TN panels.



Mar 24, 2015 at 10:38 AM
roosteresque
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Go Buy A Used Mac


jbregar wrote:
...much faster processors, much faster SSDs (my rMBP's PCIe SSD hits very close to 1GB/s transfer)...


There is a an attempt to paint all SSDs with the same brush. Although the cheapest of SSDs will feel multiple times faster than a 5400RPM drive, installing an SSD in place of a SuperDrive will max out at 3Gbps (375MB/s) as Apple made that interface SATA2 or SATA1 for even older models. Check your SATA ports and you'll probably see that the hard drive interface is SATA3 and the I/O maxes out at 6Gbps (750MB/s). And all SSDs transmit slower once they begin to fill up.

A clean late model Macbook Air hits faster than 1.2GB/s across a four lane PCIe SSD. They're not exactly cheap, but imagine your productivity when dealing with large files.



Mar 24, 2015 at 11:00 AM
ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Go Buy A Used Mac


jbregar wrote:
The 15" Retina MacBook Pro upper-model has come with 16GB of RAM for two revisions now. They're not rare at all and if there is an "Apple Tax" on the memory, it's built into the price of the machine. The upcharge for the higher-spec model is $500... which buys you discrete graphics (which is also not "hard to find"), a small bump in processor speed, twice the RAM and twice the SSD space. That's not a terrible deal for those upgrades.

As for the cost to upgrade to 16GB and the "Apple Tax" the 16GB upgrade on the 13" Retina is
...Show more

You hit the nail on the head when you said the word budget. I got a lot of computer for less than $1000! The point really is, if you want a decent quad core MBP you don't need to save and save. You can jump in now and buy a used one and have a very capable machine for very little money.

Regarding the memory, if you shop for a used rMBP you'll rarely find one with 16gb. And you can't upgrade the memory since it's soldered in. The older models can be upgraded to 16 regardless of what they have inside. That's a real advantage. When shopping for a used MBP I'd give up a retina for more ram. But that's just me.

Regarding the discrete GPU, my only point was, if you buy a new MBP there's literally only one model with a dedicated graphics card. I think it starts at $2500 or $2700. Not very pro IMO. Maybe those Intel GPU's are better than I realize.

And sure the retina screen is a million times better. But the older screen helped create plenty of award winning photos in 2011 So it's not the best, but it's adequate. It will definitely get the job done.



Mar 24, 2015 at 12:00 PM
aubsxc
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Go Buy A Used Mac


roosteresque wrote:
A clean late model Macbook Air hits faster than 1.2GB/s across a four lane PCIe SSD. They're not exactly cheap, but imagine your productivity when dealing with large files.


Photoshop and Lightroom are not bottlenecked by disk I/O with a decent SSD (500 MB/s plus reads and writes) running on a PCH bus. There is no advantage to having PCIe based solid state storage over regular SATA 3 storage at 6 Gbps for regular desktop users. Out of my own curiosity, I built a RAID 0 array using 4x Intel 730 480GB drives that hit around 1.7 GB/s sustained reads in benchmarks and it made no difference to processing times in Lr/PS, or for that matter, to pretty much anything I did at the OS level with regular productivity software. So unless you are editing multiple streams of 4K video or serving databases to dozens of users, the bandwidth offered by a vanilla PCH based SATA 3 port is more than good enough.



Mar 24, 2015 at 02:27 PM
roosteresque
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Go Buy A Used Mac


aubsxc wrote:
Photoshop and Lightroom are not bottlenecked by disk I/O with a decent SSD (500 MB/s plus reads and writes) running on a PCH bus. There is no advantage to having PCIe based solid state storage over regular SATA 3 storage at 6 Gbps for regular desktop users. Out of my own curiosity, I built a RAID 0 array using 4x Intel 730 480GB drives that hit around 1.7 GB/s sustained reads in benchmarks and it made no difference to processing times in Lr/PS, or for that matter, to pretty much anything I did at the OS level with regular productivity
...Show more

That's right that processing Lightroom adjustments and Photoshop rely on the CPU and should be taking advantage of a discrete GPU. But there are the multi gig files that retouchers have that consume 16GB RAM and then their machines rely on the scratch disk. The even larger files that compositors and landscape stitchers handle. It might not sound like much time but add all the few minutes lost here and there by going cheap could add up to another paid project you couldn't take because you were still editing files from the last project, your kid's baseball game, happy hour with the guys. I guess what I'm saying is buy the fastest tool you can afford so you can go back to living and creating great images.



Mar 24, 2015 at 07:08 PM
butchM
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Go Buy A Used Mac


roosteresque wrote:
That's right that processing Lightroom adjustments and Photoshop rely on the CPU and should be taking advantage of a discrete GPU. But there are the multi gig files that retouchers have that consume 16GB RAM and then their machines rely on the scratch disk. The even larger files that compositors and landscape stitchers handle. It might not sound like much time but add all the few minutes lost here and there by going cheap could add up to another paid project you couldn't take because you were still editing files from the last project, your kid's baseball game, happy hour
...Show more

There are extremes in every workflow where the personal computer is the centerpiece. I would wager the number of retouchers that find they are maxed out at 16GB RAM and need all that extra horsepower ... or ... are actually losing paid projects or miss out on an adult beverage with the guys because their hardware may be considered less than adequate by some are in the extreme minority of Lr/Ps users ... even full time pros.

I'm all for acquiring the best equipment you can afford ... but we have to be realistic and balanced in our assessments as well. For the average professional photographer, there is a big difference between what we desire and what we actually need.



Mar 24, 2015 at 07:33 PM
ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Go Buy A Used Mac


Educate me on GPU's a little bit here, haha. I'm all for discrete, but if the Intel GPU's run 4k no problem, and my old discrete GPU cannot, then it stands to reason that the built in Intel GPU's are pretty powerful.


Mar 25, 2015 at 11:52 AM
MazeRunner
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Go Buy A Used Mac


Hmm, so what's the best bang-for-buck model you guys would think would work for someone who needs a machine to edit LR+web browsing on the go, with very minor PS work?

Would the 13" be enough? Or a 15/15.4" would be recommended?

And is the Retina display worth the extra $$?

(Sorry, I've been a lifelong PC user who is considering a MB for on-the-go work.)

Oh, and for LR catalogs, can I edit on a MB + then just copy paste it onto a flash drive to my PC + open with LR on PC with no issues?

Feel free to convert me to Apple with good answers.



Mar 26, 2015 at 01:33 AM
Paul Mo
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Go Buy A Used Mac


butchM wrote:
There are extremes in every workflow where the personal computer is the centerpiece. I would wager the number of retouchers that find they are maxed out at 16GB RAM and need all that extra horsepower ... or ... are actually losing paid projects or miss out on an adult beverage with the guys because their hardware may be considered less than adequate by some are in the extreme minority of Lr/Ps users ... even full time pros.



Indeed. I have 16GB and have never seen my system use more than around 10-11GB - for my work that is.



Mar 26, 2015 at 02:58 AM
silvermesa1
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Go Buy A Used Mac


"You hit the nail on the head when you said the word budget. I got a lot of computer for less than $1000! The point really is, if you want a decent quad core MBP you don't need to save and save. You can jump in now and buy a used one and have a very capable machine for very little money."

I have enjoyed the original posters post and can relate to saving money up for a new computer vs buying a preowned unit now and getting use out of it while continuing to save for a newer model. Probably depreciation would only be a few hundred per year and you can enjoy it now and earn money with it now,if you do this professionally.

I'll admit since this post, I've been looking at models a few years old.

Hope you enjoy your laptop!



Mar 30, 2015 at 11:52 AM
runamuck
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Go Buy A Used Mac


I put an Iomega PCMCIA USB 3 adapter in my Dell and the thing works perfectly.


Mar 30, 2015 at 01:01 PM
ohsnaphappy
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Go Buy A Used Mac


If you guys need more convincing I talk about my experience buying a used Mac on my podcast!! I try not to get too techy, so I don't cover all the tech specs in the world, but just thought I'd share with you guys!

You can listen on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/01-vsco-keys-used-macbooks/id981964309?i=338930488&mt=2

Or Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/benjamin-black-podcast/01-vsco-keys-used-macbooks-george-ezra

Wait, is self-promotion bad? Haha!



Apr 01, 2015 at 11:57 PM





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