MacBook vs MacBook Pro for .NET development and other stuff

Question

I am about to buy a notebook and I am between the MB or the MBPro any recomendation?

Other Stuff is Presentations and Word Processing

Answer 1

Are you going to be doing your development inside a virtual machine?

Even if you aren't, I'd go with the Macbook Pro for the beefier specs.

Answer 2

I have both and have used both for .Net development - here would be my pros for both:

Macbook:

Good Size for portability

MBP:

• Nicer Keyboard
• Bigger Screen Better
• Graphics

I guess it comes down to resolution in the end for me. Both are fast and nice to use. I prefer a bit more real estate for coding, but if you can hook an MB to an external monitor for day to day use then it's probably ideal (for coding) given the lesser price. Depends what "other stuff" is - games or anything video related, then the MBP with it's non onboard graphics would be the winner.

Answer 3

13 inch screen is OK for word processing and surfing the net but it's just NOT enough real-estate for development work.

That means a 15 or 17 inch Pro.

My 2 cents.

Answer 4

I use VMWare Fusion to run Visual Studio and I ended up having to sell my Macbook and get a Macbook Pro. The performance requirements (especially when debugging an ASP.net app) were too much (my Macbook could only handle 2GB of ram and had a 2.0 C2D). With my Macbook Pro (2.5 C2D 4 GB of ram) I can forget I even have my development environment running in another space. If you are doing .Net work professionally I would highly recommend going with the MBP.

Answer 5

Some specifics:

The MB has a 13" screen with a max resolution of 1280x800.

The 15" MBP supports 1440x900, while the 17" MBP has options for either 1680x1050 or 1920x1200.

I currently use a Latitude D620 which also maxes out at 1440x900. I used to have a laptop that supported 1920x1200 and after several months I really miss the higher resolution for dev work.

I would recommend at least 1680x1050. Though it's worth noting that the 17" MBP with the 1680x1050 screen uses a CCFL backlight and gets slightly worse battery life than the LED backlit screens.

Answer 6

Wait about a month for the new MB and MBP to come out, you won't be disapointed!

-Update: Your wait is nearly over; Apple will unveil the new models October 14th at 10:00!

Answer 7

I have a macbook. I love it, but I'd like to be able to do 4GB of ram (I have an older one, the new ones can do this I think). 2GB means I can run 1 VM, and sometimes, I need VS.NET AND AD/Exchange/SQL etc, so 2-3 VM's at a time.

With an external monitor / kbd / mouse, it's fantastic, and portable too.

If I was just doing dev on it, full time, I think I'd get a pro with 4GB. But if you need to move it a lot (eg you travel - I use mine for offloading our cameras when travelling - infact, I'm in LAX about to get on a 14 hour flight from LA to New Zealand right now), the macbook is REALLY hard to beat.

Answer 8

I love my macbook. For me, it runs Vista/VS2008/Code Rush just fine using bootcamp. I haven't run the Vista partition in OS X with vmware yet...I just haven't needed to with my work/workflow. Even so, other vm images(XP, ubuntu, etc) run perfectly well with it. My specs are a 2.x GHz proc with 4 Gb RAM.

Most of the time I'm running it with a 20" external LCD from Dell with an external mouse and key board. Vmware images are run off of a usb drive. It just rocks.

If you plan on working off of the laptop by itself without external mouse/kb/monitor more than 60% of the time, than the macbook pro with it's larger keyboard and monitor would be better suited.

It really is too bad that Apple doesn't have a showcase MB/MBP with Windows running in the Apple stores. I know from a business perspective that they shouldn't, but it would show everyone what versatile machines they have.

Answer 9

I recently moved from a MB to MBP, and the difference is huge. The MB was just not powerful enough to use a primary development machine, but my MBP is. (Java, btw, but that would not matter I think.) There are thee key things that make the MBP significantly better over the MB:

• 4GB of RAM upgrade (vs. 2GB on the MB)
• 7,200 RPM drive upgrade (vs. 5,400 only on the MB)
• The 15" screen

These things matter!

Answer 10

I've a 17" 1stGen MacbookPro (C1D, 2Gb ram, 120Gb HD, 1680x1050) and run VMware Fusion on it, with 16-20Gb VMs which I keep on various 2.5" Firewire external drives. It's an awesome road machine, and has repaid me every penny I ever spent on it, in spades. The battery life is excellent (once the machine settles down from booting and I'm mostly just coding/IDE work, I can get 3 hours out of a full charge - not bad on a 2-year-old battery). I have a spare battery too for those days when the mains sockets on the trains/in the coffee shops are hard to come by.

My gripes would be weight - at 17", anything you look at will be heavier of course - and the one most relevant for you I think, screen resolution. I develop apps that run at 1024x768 for point-of-sale systems (Delphi, not VS) and I find that the vertical resolution of 1050 makes this a pain to work on 768 screens at times. I would imagine that VS at 900 would be limiting too. Whenever I can, I plug into an external monitor and leave things like the browser/mail app/ref docs running on the laptop screen.

One other concern might be the keyboard - you should definitely spend some time with both before you make a decision, as the keyboards on these 2 models are quite different beasts and each has it's strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, it's worth noting that the product range traditionally gets 'refreshed' in October and you might find in 3-4 weeks time that you would get more machine for your price point - well worth hanging-on for a little longer if you can, just to see what comes out.

Hope that helps!

Answer 11

I find the MB relatively expensive. The cost-benefit ratio isn't right, unless you're prepared to pay for the fancy design. While the MBP is even more expensive, its price is on par with comparable professional notebooks so I find the cost-benefit ratio much better.

Additionally, I find 15" too small for development in Visual Studio but that's just me.

Answer 12

MBP, it allows more memory, I find that is the most important thing for any development environment, I never seem to be able to have enough.

Answer 13

Crikey, I'm doing some on a MacBook Air!!!!

Most annoying aspect? On my (UK) keyboard there is no # key!

Answer 14

If battery life is the most important thing, then the Macbook is the winner.

My Black Macbook (C2D 2.0, 2GB, 120GB) can last close to 3.5 - 4 hours compared to my wife's Mackbook Pro (C2D 2.4, 2GB, 120GB, LED Backlight) which gets 2.5 to 3 hours on similar tasks.

Answer 15

The keyboard on the MacBook is clearly superior to the MacBook Pro. I have both, but I like the other aspects of the MBP, so I bought this thin external bluetooth keyboard from Apple. Firewire 800 port is also nice when you have external disks running MacOS (since windows must be installed on the internal). Enough said.

Answer 16

I do all my development on my macbook and enjoy its portability. It can handle all the coding and uses a lot of power but the only drawback is the screen. if you are going to developing i would go with a bigger screen MBP preferably a 17" but if you cannot afford it stick with the 15" MBP. MB are great but I tend to use the spaces feature very often since i have a debugger running on one space and the IDE running on the other. regarding speed both do the job if you are coding or working with photoshop. For developing purposes i would go with a MBP 15" the graphics and speed are great and the size is portable and doesn't weigh much.

Answer 17

i love my macbook