School Req MBP i7

[HDK_Ent]

Ok, first and foremost, im a 100% dedicated PC user, absolutely DISPISE MACS! *now before you think im going to be mac bashing in this thread, hear me out!*

I have an i7 rig built accordingly from the i7 thread on the LE windows forum.

300 Dverb test, and has worked beautifully for me, BUT, as fate will have it, i'm enrolling in a school that requires a mac book pro to be issued/purchased for school work and home work.

now here is my dilemma, ive had my i7 for 4 months, and I've JUST kicked out all the bugs and [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] in it, and it is stable.

now i start school june 1st and will be getting my school issued or personally purchased *using tuition money,* MBP i7 shortly there after.

what i'd like to know, is

A.) whether or not i can upgrade them to my liking, i do ALOT of music production, and i intend on pushing this mac to the breaking point.

B.) what kind of parts will i need to get/use.

I know generally, that, ill be upgrading the HD and RAM, since ive heard that those are really the only thing keeping it from running at OPTIMUM performance.

i intended on using a firewire *external HD*and using a HD enclosure with adapters to plug in a 003. id need 2 mini adapter to vga/dvi adapters, which is fine.

The ram, i'd prefer to be 8 gbs, but would prefer not to spend $400 on 4 gbs of mid quality ram.

SO FAR, these are my ideas as far as upgrades go.

lacie d2 quadra, MAYBE if i can figure out another solution, ill use that as ive heard lacie drives are not the best drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...GB%20SATA%20II

as my main os drive for my mbp, any other recommendations?


if i can get my MBP to run as good as my i7 rig, ill end up selling the i7 rig and keeping the mbp with xp on it, with 32 grand in debt i can use the extra 1000 dollars from my i7 rig to pay off some of my debt early.

[nst7]

I recommend you get ram and hard drives from here:

macsales.com

[soundboy35]

I think the ram max in the MBPro's is 4 gig.
Forget anything made by LaCie...lol

[tamasdragon]

Get some external drive, which has oxford chipset, imho no lacie, if you want to be safe.

The new macbook pro's are able to handle 8 gigs of ram, but you can do many things with 4, and later you can still upgrade.

[Dism]

Get the lowest amount of RAM Apple offers, upgrade it yourself with aftermarket RAM. You can do the same with the internal drive, though it can be a bit tricky to get to it in the MBP, but I have done it myself with my own. Nevertheless, an easy to way to save money on your Mac.

As far as parts go... you can find out in System Profiler for the most part... if not, a quick Google of your MBP's model number should give you what you're looking for. But... the parts should be easily obtained from your local computer shop. Macs have pretty well the same parts these days, on the inside, but I consider the premium to certainly be in the design.

Honestly, I felt the same way as you before I bought my Mac... but now, my PC has been rather neglected for a good couple of years, and my 2 year old Macbook Pro is still flyin along. I still haven't even installed Windows on it, since application support has certainly been picking up over the years. Unless you want to do some serious gaming... there's not much Windows can do that OSX can't these days.