New Retina MacBook for Medical School?

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ta8901

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Hi Guys,

I am looking to replace my 2011 MacBook Pro as I prepare for medical school this fall. I was looking into the 2015 Retina MBP with 128GB SSD (base) or the base 2015 MacBook, which comes with 256 GB of storage. The MacBook is a pretty controversial choice as it has a mobile CPU, has only 1 port, that too USB-C which isn't standard. However, I rarely (if ever) plug stuff into my laptop and value portability and battery life.

What do you guys think? As medical students, how do you typically use your computer? I'm anticipating lots of streaming, reading PDFs/Powerpoint course packs, and writing research papers but thats about it. The safe option here is the MBP but I really, really like the design of the new MacBook. Appreciate any input!
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I'm looking into the 13 inch Macbook Air with 4GB and 128GB of storage (around $850 after student discount). Would anyone recommend this for med school? I personally think that the MBP is a bit too expensive, but I've heard that it offers more bang for your buck.
 
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Glad I opted for the Pro myself. Much faster overall, and all the extra ports have proven quite worthwhile. Granted, I do a lot with my laptop and am on it constantly.
 
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I just recently upgraded from my old 2010 MBP to the new 2014 MBP with retina display, and would highly recommend it.

My medical school actually has some strict computing requirements and wouldn't let us have the MacBook with only the USB-C adapter. (We take our exams on our own personal computers and run the exam software through them etc, could have something to do with it).
So whatever you go with, just make sure it will work for your school!
 
When I started I got the retina display MBP. Before that I was pretty anti-apple, but wanted to get something that would be reliable, even if I had to shell out more cash.

I think they're decent products, but they're not infallible. I had to have my monitor replaced after multiple attempts at them trying to fix it, occasionally it will freeze, some apps don't function properly all the time based on how long my computer has been on, and my keyboard doesn't light up anymore. Obviously these aren't the worst things ever that could happen, but I just expected that after paying 2k+ on a laptop that it would be perfect, which it isn't.

It lightweight which I love and I really appreciate the fact that when I've had to use it for exams at school I've never had an issue. Besides that, I don't feel like I'm using some superior source of technology that makes me want to gawk at it all the time. I think the adage is true about Macs that they're definitely solid and reliable, but if you actually spend some time researching what you need and current deals, you can probably always get a windows/other laptop with comparable specs for cheaper.
 
I just got a macbook pro retina, 2015. I thought about all three MacBooks. And the refurbished models. The air is the wrong investment this year. I wanted to like it and never really cared about screens until I looked at the 2 right next to each other. The black glass to edge retina screen is just so much more pleasing to look at. And this is my one machine in addition to my iPhone 6 plus. So the viewing experience, I decided, was important after all. Also the new model has the new track pad and the really fast storage in addition to faster base specs. It's only a little bit more for the pro. And I'll likely keep this thing till it falls apart, so, I think it's worth it for a little more upfront. I think the air will be archaic in 2 years in terms of viewing experience.

The portability of the macbook is alluring. As is the super quiet, super cool, fanless hard drive design. I lay on the couch with my laptop on my chest a lot, so quiet and cool is alluring. And I don't require a lot of processing power so I wanted to like this machine. But I just didn't like the feel of the keys. And for the price I wanted to be able to use the computer for 5 years or more if I want to. I just don't think the processor on the macbook can provide that kind of longevity. I also don't require any connectivity to speak of but...you can't even power the machine while plugging in something...that's too design heavy over practical for me.

And the macbook pro is not that heavy. It's not a difference maker for me. For a one machine type of guy, like me, the macbook pro is therefore the obvious choice.

I love this thing.
 
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Mad Jack said:
Glad I opted for the Pro myself. Much faster overall, and all the extra ports have proven quite worthwhile. Granted, I do a lot with my laptop and am on it constantly.
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I'm curious what you do that is so computationally expensive and requires all that extra processing power .. because currently, even the weakest processor in their lineup can more than handle the typical med student tasts of internet, onenote, ppt, word, excel, pdf, and netflix
 
masaraksh said:
I'm curious what you do that is so computationally expensive and requires all that extra processing power .. because currently, even the weakest processor in their lineup can more than handle the typical med student tasts of internet, onenote, ppt, word, excel, pdf, and netflix
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League dude, League.
 
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unnumzaan said:
Lol, I think masaraksh was referring to soccer/futball
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Wtf is soccer
teemo_doll_by_mess_anime_artist-d6syiv3.jpg
 
Am I the only one that thinks the new MacBook is a complete waste of money? Even if you don't need the extra power of the Retina Pro 13, the base model is only ~$10 more! Also I'm not sold on the whole one port thing just yet.
 
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ta8901 said:
Hi Guys,

I am looking to replace my 2011 MacBook Pro as I prepare for medical school this fall. I was looking into the 2015 Retina MBP with 128GB SSD (base) or the base 2015 MacBook, which comes with 256 GB of storage. The MacBook is a pretty controversial choice as it has a mobile CPU, has only 1 port, that too USB-C which isn't standard. However, I rarely (if ever) plug stuff into my laptop and value portability and battery life.

What do you guys think? As medical students, how do you typically use your computer? I'm anticipating lots of streaming, reading PDFs/Powerpoint course packs, and writing research papers but thats about it. The safe option here is the MBP but I really, really like the design of the new MacBook. Appreciate any input!
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If I remember correctly, the MBP and the new MB are similarly priced. With that said, the MBP has a better processor and a better potential for games (which you may or may not care about). I think any Mac/PC with retina display would be sufficient. I don't think the size difference will be of any concern. You will mainly be using it for lectures year 1-2. The weight difference is negligible. You cant really go wrong with either of them tbh.
 
I went with the MBP. I wanted to make sure I fulfilled the school's requirements (neither the macbook nor the air exceeded the 2.4 GHz min in their base models) and I also don't plan on replacing it for the next four+ years. My last MBP got me from 2008 til today. I went with the 15" MBP because the school rec'd a 14" screen; I honestly don't know what I will need the quad core processor for instead of the dual core available on the 13s, but I would much rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Yes it was more expensive, but I have no regrets.
 
emraldragon said:
I went with the MBP. I wanted to make sure I fulfilled the school's requirements (neither the macbook nor the air exceeded the 2.4 GHz min in their base models) and I also don't plan on replacing it for the next four+ years. My last MBP got me from 2008 til today. I went with the 15" MBP because the school rec'd a 14" screen; I honestly don't know what I will need the quad core processor for instead of the dual core available on the 13s, but I would much rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Yes it was more expensive, but I have no regrets.
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My school has processor 'requirements' too but they seem heavily outdated... for example they have something like a 2.3 ghz Pentium processor requirement, and a 1.1Ghz Core M will run circles around that!!

I just need my computer to be last all day, be portable as possible, and stream my lectures without a hitch. I'm in love with the new macbook's form factor but the more I think about it, the less practical it sounds; I want a computer that can last 4 years easy and I don't think the rMB can do that. Still, I can only afford the base price and 128GB SSD on the base Pro seems very tight. decisions, decisions....
 
ta8901 said:
My school has processor 'requirements' too but they seem heavily outdated... for example they have something like a 2.3 ghz Pentium processor requirement, and a 1.1Ghz Core M will run circles around that!!

I just need my computer to be last all day, be portable as possible, and stream my lectures without a hitch. I'm in love with the new macbook's form factor but the more I think about it, the less practical it sounds; I want a computer that can last 4 years easy and I don't think the rMB can do that. Still, I can only afford the base price and 128GB SSD on the base Pro seems very tight. decisions, decisions....
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I know that you can request a special extra technology disbursement on student loans. I depleted most of my savings and I am working up until the last minute to make sure I have enough money to feed myself til the loans are disbursed. My school just said 2.4 GHz, it didn't specify a particular chip. I considered calling them on it because they deliberately said that most computers made these days had higher GHz. I temporarily tried out a PC bought in fall of 2013 and it was the best tech I could afford at that point and it was only a i7 quadcore but was listed at 2.2 GHz. I think you're right that the chip speeds and generations have a significant effect that 'requirements' are not taking into account.
 
ta8901 said:
My school has processor 'requirements' too but they seem heavily outdated... for example they have something like a 2.3 ghz Pentium processor requirement, and a 1.1Ghz Core M will run circles around that!!

I just need my computer to be last all day, be portable as possible, and stream my lectures without a hitch. I'm in love with the new macbook's form factor but the more I think about it, the less practical it sounds; I want a computer that can last 4 years easy and I don't think the rMB can do that. Still, I can only afford the base price and 128GB SSD on the base Pro seems very tight. decisions, decisions....
Click to expand...
I'm also in the market for a new macbook. I've been doing a lot of research and MANY people online recommend going through Apple's refurbished store. Everyone says Apple's refurbishment process is second to none and the only difference you'll notice is that it ships in a plain white box as opposed to the new box. All the refurbish purchases come with the baseline one-year warranty and are all eligible for Applecare.

I'm looking at a rMBP, 8GB, 256 GB storage for $1099.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro/13
 
nm825 said:
I'm also in the market for a new macbook. I've been doing a lot of research and MANY people online recommend going through Apple's refurbished store. Everyone says Apple's refurbishment process is second to none and the only difference you'll notice is that it ships in a plain white box as opposed to the new box. All the refurbish purchases come with the baseline one-year warranty and are all eligible for Applecare.

I'm looking at a rMBP, 8GB, 256 GB storage for $1099.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macbook_pro/13
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My 2008 model was refurb. I agree and highly recommend this route.
 
went at looked at both in store. The macbook is awesome, for real, but I think I will be going with the 256GB Retina Pro. Its just too may compromises at this point for it to be a reliable machine for the next 4 years. Plus I found the 12" screen to be a little bit too small

Will probably be pulling the trigger tomorrow!
 
Does anyone know if the Apple back to school promotion is likely to start tomorrow like it has in the past? I'd really like that $100 Apple Store gift card
 
^yep thats what I heard. But I am getting a better deal at Best Buy ($100 off plus 10% off using a movers coupon). I might get another 10% if I open a BB Credit Card too.
 
ta8901 said:
^yep thats what I heard. But I am getting a better deal at Best Buy ($100 off plus 10% off using a movers coupon). I might get another 10% if I open a BB Credit Card too.
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That's awesome.
 
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you can buy that 10% off coupon on e-bay for around 5$ FYI.
 
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Also if you're into online cash back things registering through Upromise gets you 1% cash back from Apple, 5% back from MacMall (certified Apple reseller that often has better prices plus no sales tax)
 
I'm definitely going to go MacBook Pro, but idk if I should go 13" screen or 15". if it were up to me I'd save the extra money and go 13", but some people say things like 15" is recommended for exams/boards etc.? my school has no requirement on screen size stated. any tips?
 
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I have a 15" rMBP from late 2012. I really like it, but I think I also would have been very happy with the 13", though I opted for the 15" because it was only like $200 more expensive and twice as powerful.

The 13" is now significantly cheaper, so if I were to have bought a new laptop today, I would have gone with the 13". My next laptop will unquestionably be a 13", as I now value portability over power (within reason).

Disclaimer: I'm not yet a medical student, so take this with a grain of salt
 
I think I would take a 13" over a 15" any day of the week. A 15" retina display is beautiful but far too cumbersome to carry around. If you are going to have a few textbooks, a laptop, maybe a tablet and headphones and chargers all in your backpack the pounds add up quickly. Plus the footprint of the 15" is quite a bit bigger than the 13" and can be tough to use in lecture halls and such. There is absolutely no need for us med students to use such a powerful machine, it's like buying a F1 car to go to the grocery store. And it is really quite a bit more expensive

But then again, if you really like having the bigger screen (some people do), then go for it. But 13.3" is fine and is what most students i've seen have anyway.
 
Quite a few mac users on this thread, I was hoping for some advice. I bought a MBP back in 2011 and it runs...fine-ish (very noticeable slowdown if on for more than a few hours) and I have more than enough free memory, but do you guys think it'll hold up through med school? I'm trying to decide between upgrading to a new macbook pro, or going for a bare bones macbook air (or maybe an ipad) and leaving my old pro at home.
 
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ta8901 said:
^yep thats what I heard. But I am getting a better deal at Best Buy ($100 off plus 10% off using a movers coupon). I might get another 10% if I open a BB Credit Card too.
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Are you sure that you can stack the 2 deals together?
 
soccerman93 said:
Quite a few mac users on this thread, I was hoping for some advice. I bought a MBP back in 2011 and it runs...fine-ish (very noticeable slowdown if on for more than a few hours) and I have more than enough free memory, but do you guys think it'll hold up through med school? I'm trying to decide between upgrading to a new macbook pro, or going for a bare bones macbook air (or maybe an ipad) and leaving my old pro at home.
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If you're worried about stability, try to replace the hard disk drive with a solid state drive. I did that to my late 2012 MBP 15 inch and it runs MUCH better than previously. If you really want to get fancy, you can replace the optical drive with an extra hard drive to up your storage. I never used my CD drive so that was the rational behind my switch.

EDIT: I suppose I should define what I mean by better: It boots in <10 seconds, runs extremely quietly, and rarely heats up to the point where the fans turn on. There is one caveat with the dual SSD/HDD combo however. The battery life is noticeably lower with two drives, but if you keep a charger handy its not a pitfall.
 
soccerman93 said:
Quite a few mac users on this thread, I was hoping for some advice. I bought a MBP back in 2011 and it runs...fine-ish (very noticeable slowdown if on for more than a few hours) and I have more than enough free memory, but do you guys think it'll hold up through med school? I'm trying to decide between upgrading to a new macbook pro, or going for a bare bones macbook air (or maybe an ipad) and leaving my old pro at home.
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^Im in the exact same situation. I bought an early 2011 MBP that has served faithfully through my 4 years of undergrad...and I was (up until last week) debating whether to keep it (as it works well, although slower than when I bought it) or replace it with a new 13 inch rMBP.

For me, I am not considering MBA as we take our tests on our laptops and I prefer having a higher-res screen. I decided to go with 13 rMBP as it is capable of running a dual monitor display at home which is how I anticipate myself studying (gotta love that extra screen real-estate). The only question for me is whether to get a refurbished 2014 rMBP model for a discount or go with the new 2015 model with force touch.....decisions...decisions...decisions....
 
if you had to pick between:

8GB RAM (over 4GB)

OR

256GB SSD (over 128GB SSD)

which would you pick?
 
baxt1412 said:
if you had to pick between:

8GB RAM (over 4GB)

OR

256GB SSD (over 128GB SSD)

which would you pick?
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Hmm. I would probably go with the RAM. You can always get a small cheap external if you truly need more hard drive space.
 
emraldragon said:
Hmm. I would probably go with the RAM. You can always get a small cheap external if you truly need more hard drive space.
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Ditto, especially if it's a computer where you can't upgrade it yourself.
 
emraldragon said:
Hmm. I would probably go with the RAM. You can always get a small cheap external if you truly need more hard drive space.
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kind of what i was thinking. plus between my phone (storage for photos) and pandora (no need to download music really) i won't have a ton of stuff to store. i have a bunch of music now, but haven't used iTunes or my old iPod in probably a year or more so I could condense my music library way down.
 
Are you guys dual-booting with windows and using Microsoft office that way, or just using the mac version? I've always had a PC so I can't decide and I don't know if the mac version is adequate for using things like PowerPoint etc...
 
mynameissss said:
Are you guys dual-booting with windows and using Microsoft office that way, or just using the mac version? I've always had a PC so I can't decide and I don't know if the mac version is adequate for using things like PowerPoint etc...
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our school has some sort of guideline against dual booting i think. maybe they just mean that the testing software wont work on a dual boot OS, but will work on the original OS that came on the machine? idk for sure.

our school also will not be compatible with windows 10, just FWIW... so any windows users may want to make sure their school will be compatible if they are/are considering upgrading
 
I just purchased my MacBook Pro! 256GB SSD w/ 8GB RAM. Original price $1499 but I got it for around 1200 using the 10% off movers coupon and the 100$ student discount. They will tell you it won't work, ask them to try and it will. I had about another 200$ in gift cards and started a best buy card and got another 10% in rewards back. So all in all I saved about $550! I highly recommend you guys go this route if you are trying to buy a Mac laptop right now.

As for Pro vs Air/MacBook, I am SO glad i got this. The screen is wonderful!
 
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Any modern laptop should be adequate. Choose what computer you like and don't worry too much about the specific med school applications.

The most intensive things I ever used my laptop for in the two years I've been through to this point were watching occasional lecture videos (I almost always went to class, though) and viewing digital histology slides. I do not feel like either of these should even come close to taxing any common, new, modern computer. I probably taxed my computer way more while multitasking for leisure than anything I ever did during med school. Having youtube playing in the background while cruising forums and looking at wikipedia articles about cachaça is probably more intense than 99% of what you'll be using your computer for in med school, to be honest with you.
 
ta8901 said:
I just purchased my MacBook Pro! 256GB SSD w/ 8GB RAM. Original price $1499 but I got it for around 1200 using the 10% off movers coupon and the 100$ student discount. They will tell you it won't work, ask them to try and it will. I had about another 200$ in gift cards and started a best buy card and got another 10% in rewards back. So all in all I saved about $550! I highly recommend you guys go this route if you are trying to buy a Mac laptop right now.

As for Pro vs Air/MacBook, I am SO glad i got this. The screen is wonderful!
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When did you purchase the MBP? I am interesting in stacking the 2 offers together, but I learned that Best Buy has stopped allowed doing so since 6/7/15.
 
I just did it 2 days ago. The price has fallen by another 150 today cuz of 4th of July, so this is the absolute best time to buy
 
ta8901 said:
I just did it 2 days ago. The price has fallen by another 150 today cuz of 4th of July, so this is the absolute best time to buy
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Interesting. BB claims that their system no longer recognizes two coupons together. Do you still remember the sequence of scanning the coupons? I will go there and try my luck today.
 
I have a 2010 MacBook Pro. I was going to get a new one but it looks like there may be a total redesign of them along with getting the new sky lake class of processors. So I'm probably going to just upgrade my ram to 8gb and buy a 256 solid state drive and use that until the fall when the new ones come out. These upgrades will also help the resale value when I go to sell my old mbp on eBay. It's extremely easy to make these changes. If you know how to use a screw driver and how to push and take out toast out of a pop up toaster you can do this upgrade in about 5 min. For anyone in a similar situation...
 
slopes23 said:
I have a 2010 MacBook Pro. I was going to get a new one but it looks like there may be a total redesign of them along with getting the new sky lake class of processors. So I'm probably going to just upgrade my ram to 8gb and buy a 256 solid state drive and use that until the fall when the new ones come out. These upgrades will also help the resale value when I go to sell my old mbp on eBay. It's extremely easy to make these changes. If you know how to use a screw driver and how to push and take out toast out of a pop up toaster you can do this upgrade in about 5 min. For anyone in a similar situation...
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Are you talking about this fall? Because they just released new macs in March, I wouldn't expect another refresh until at least next spring.
 
bobaoversoda said:
Are you talking about this fall? Because they just released new macs in March, I wouldn't expect another refresh until at least next spring.
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Yeah I am. I was thinking the same as you but most of the forums (actual tech forums) seems to believe we can expect a major redesign in the third quarter (meaning fall).

They say that the release in spring offered minimal upgrades and represented a minor upgrade and that they didn't upgrade the CPU to haswell or broadwell (I forget which is the new one). They believe this skip is likely due to apple waiting to put the skylake chips in because they represent a much more significant leap forward in tech and will likely accompany a major redesign.... Obviously there is no way to know but my minor upgrades should keep my 2010 MBP running fast and easy for a good while until the new laptop does come out. They haven't done a major redesign of the MBP in a long time so it's definitely due. In my mind if you can avoid it, it's better to hold off and wait.

But then again that's also because I like having the newest tech.
YMMV
 
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