Excahnging IMac For MacBook Pro

[Lord MJ]

I'm looking into getting a new laptop and I want to get a Macbook Pro. My old Laptop is getting close to going in the crapper...

I also have an Imac though and after thinking about it for a while, the Macbook Pro is a powerful enough machine that I don't need both the Imac and Macbook pro.

My Imac currently is 20 inch, 320GB HD, 2 gigs of ram (actually upgraded it to 4gb but plan to use that ram for my macbook), Radeon Graphics card 128mb, 2.0 ghz intel core 2 duo. It's about 1.5 years old. I was wondering about how much I could expect for such a machine?

I would hope at least $800

I'm looking to get the lowest level Macbook pro except I plan to upgrade the hard drive to 320 gigs, and take the 4gb from my Imac and replace the 2gb of ram that comes with it. Will I get the same performance with this new Macbook than I do with the Imac? I'm planning on getting a 20'' or 24'' monitor to attach to it.

[phongn]

Check eBay for market prices, but $800 is probably more than you can expect. A quick glance showed a 2.66GHz iMac going for ~$760 with seven hours left.

The MBP is pretty fast (I have one for work); the biggest performance problem would probably be hard drive speed (get a 7200RPM one if you can). The RAM is unlikely to be compatible (IIRC, your iMac uses DDR2 and current MBPs use DDR3). Mine came with mini-DisplayPort to VGA and a mDP-DVI adapters and that should be enough to drive all but the highest-resolution monitors.

[General Zod]

PC hardware depreciates in value rapidly. You can expect a common mac system that's a few years old to fetch at least $300-400 less (if not more) than what you originally paid for it after owning it for more than a year depending on how popular the system in question is.

[Lord MJ]

Check eBay for market prices, but $800 is probably more than you can expect. A quick glance showed a 2.66GHz iMac going for ~$760 with seven hours left.

The MBP is pretty fast (I have one for work); the biggest performance problem would probably be hard drive speed (get a 7200RPM one if you can). The RAM is unlikely to be compatible (IIRC, your iMac uses DDR2 and current MBPs use DDR3). Mine came with mini-DisplayPort to VGA and a mDP-DVI adapters and that should be enough to drive all but the highest-resolution monitors.

Dismayed About the Price I can get for my Imac (should've just went ahead and bought a macbook pro a year ago..) but I do believe Imacs and MBP use the same ram, well at least when I purchased my 4 gb of ram it said it was compatible with both. I purchased the ram 4 months ago. If push comes to shove I'll just sell the iMac with the ram in place and buy new ram.

[Lord MJ]

Was also wondering about just getting the $999 macbook and souping up the RAM and Harddrive and getting a monitor instead of getting a new machine. Even if I get the expensive Apple display, that will still be cheaper than a Macbook pro, I'm looking for comparable performance to my current iMac, anything beyond that is really unnecessary for me so any cost savings will be helpful.

[phongn]

Dismayed About the Price I can get for my Imac (should've just went ahead and bought a macbook pro a year ago..) but I do believe Imacs and MBP use the same ram, well at least when I purchased my 4 gb of ram it said it was compatible with both. I purchased the ram 4 months ago. If push comes to shove I'll just sell the iMac with the ram in place and buy new ram.

An older-generation MBP used DDR2, but the present-generation uses DDR3. Check "About This Mac" - if it says DDR3 you're good to go, if it says DDR2 you're in trouble.

Was also wondering about just getting the $999 macbook and souping up the RAM and Harddrive and getting a monitor instead of getting a new machine. Even if I get the expensive Apple display, that will still be cheaper than a Macbook pro, I'm looking for comparable performance to my current iMac, anything beyond that is really unnecessary for me so any cost savings will be helpful.

An iMac is build on laptop components (except for the monitor) and it'll just as performant as one. The MacBook is pretty good (both the old white one and the new aluminum one) but I don't recall if it comes with the Mini-DisplayPort adapters. Fortunately, they are inexpensive.

[Lord MJ]

Almost missed the fact that the Macbook doesn't have a firewire port

I have a MyBook usb 2.0 and firewire external drive. If for whatever reason I have to use the external drive as my boot drive will usb 2.0 port work or does it have to be firewire?

[phongn]

Almost missed the fact that the Macbook doesn't have a firewire port

The white MacBook is still for sale, still pretty powerful and has FireWire.

I have a MyBook usb 2.0 and firewire external drive. If for whatever reason I have to use the external drive as my boot drive will usb 2.0 port work or does it have to be firewire?

Yes.

[Lord MJ]

Can anyone recommend got monitors that will work well with a MacBook?

[phongn]

Can anyone recommend got monitors that will work well with a MacBook?

Any monitor with a maximum resolution of 1920x1200 or less will work. Check the LCD Thread for specific recommendations.

[Lord MJ]

When I get my MBP I want to be able to encrypt the hard drive and have my OS install on the encrypted drive. How difficult is this to accomplish?

[phongn]

When I get my MBP I want to be able to encrypt the hard drive and have my OS install on the encrypted drive. How difficult is this to accomplish?

PGP WDE, Checkpoint FDE and SecureDoc are Mac solutions for full-disk encryption.

[Feil]

It looks like you have a fairly powerful laptop already. I checked the price tag of the macbook pro - around 1900 dollars new. If you're planning to buy a monitor anyway (suggesting your primary use is on top of a desk), I suggest building yourself a desktop and just installing your preferred operating system(s) on it. You should be able to fit a top of the line machine snugly into the price difference between the buy price on the new laptop and the sell price on the old one.