dichroic | Computer geekery – advice sought (Reply)

I plan to buy a new laptop before I leave here. Computers and electronics are much cheaper here than in the Netherlands; they’re a little more expensive than in the US (well, upper-end stuff is; local brands or things like mini-PCs are probably cheaper here) but, well, it’s one way to get something I need and spend down my bank account here without paying international transfer fees.

What I want is a 15″ MacBook Pro to replace my old ditto. It’s only about three years old, which is normally the prime of life for a Mac, but I’m starting to hit capacity if I want to download more than one season of TV shows (which is a problem if you want to buy by the season and watch more than one show), given the number of Kindle books and music I also have on here. Plus the new one has a better display – this one is noticeably less sharp. What I plan to do on it is mostly write, browse the internet, and probably, while alone in the Netherlands with few English channels, watch TV bought from iTunes. 15″ is what I have now, and it’s a good size: not too big for portability, not annoying small for home use. I guess I’ll be uploading all my photos there, since I won’t have access to Ted’s computer – though I’m not sure if I’ll take the good camera (8.1 MPix) or leave it with him and take the compact (um, 5 Mpix, I think). What I probably will not be doing is playing computer games – at most I suppose I could take our Guitar Hero controller, but that’s not a terribly graphic-intensive game compared to some. More likely I’ll leave even that here (and take my actual guitar).

Available parameters on the 15″ MacBook Pro are:
2.53GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
4GB memory
250GB, 320GB, or 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor with 256MB or 512MB GDDR3 memory (select models)
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor

I’m thinking what I probably should get is the biggest hard drive (I want to keep this one longer!) and the 2.66 gig processor – does this seem optimal, or is there any reason to get a faster one? And is there any reason for me to get better than the basic graphics processor?

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.