MBP Upgrade or Buy New

[masterchef341]

Its a question of sufficient performance vs the money you got on your hands
I doubt you ll see dramatical difference in performance from ssd and especially added ram (it shouldnt add much past 4gb atm).

I think the performance of the SSD (if you can install OS X onto the SSD) will be dramatic. The ram, probably not. Try just the SSD first.

[Lieto]

ye... hard to say though based on the said tasks
"I primarily use it for school and also setting up my virtual hacking lab that I am using to learn penetration testing".

I am for instance either gaming, or opening some large graphic file and working with it for few days. So SSD doesnt really offer much to me. Depending on the tasks it might be very noticeable. On the other hand simple browsing and movie watching shouldnt be putting much load on the system anyway, so i would say that SSD offers all around better experience with generic tasks but it doesnt help where it really matters with calculations, graphics, some other heavy load etc.

[joer80]

SSD will load heavy graphics into memory faster.

[Lieto]

it will, if i you open different files over and over. If you dont it will just load once and remain in the memory. At least thats how i understand it

[shriek11]

Are there HDD cloning programs for Mac? I know there is time machine, but it doesn't clone the recovery partition.

[ValkerieFire]

I would strongly recommend the Crucial M4, especially if you can get the 256gb version which has been as cheap as $200 new lately. It is a very fast and reliable drive.

[s2odin]

Are there HDD cloning programs for Mac? I know there is time machine, but it doesn't clone the recovery partition.

SuperDuper!

[S.SubZero]

For the record, I can speak from personal experience here.

I just (yesterday) went from a 2009 MBP 17" (2.66ghz C2D) to a current-gen Core i7 2.4ghz MBP 17". Ya know.. it's *not* significant faster in general use. Browsing, working in apps, whatever. I mean the C2D was kind of overkill for the tasks I do, so that stuff hasn't changed much. The one distinct improvement I did make, was I got the Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid drive for it, which I notice has improved load times all across the board vs. the old machine (which had a Seagate 7200rpm 500GB drive).

The Intel HD3000 is definitely better than the 9400M, that's for certain. However, it's still slower than the 9600M GT which I always used anyway, so I once again disabled auto switching and only use the ATI.

Otherwise, it's basically the exact same experience.

[Nibert]

I am trying to decide if I want to sell the desktop for about 1200 or 1300 and possible get a gaming laptop. I just don't know if I want to make that kind of move or not. Regardless the mac is great for everything but gaming. I am just trying to bump it up.

With the hacking labs it is mostly just running 2 or 3 vm's at a time to work on penetration testing etc. Other than that I do some development but none of it is really taxing. I think the only game loaded on it is warcraft and it is tolerable, not sure if D3 will load and or play at all on it.

[masterchef341]

it will, if i you open different files over and over. If you dont it will just load once and remain in the memory. At least thats how i understand it

There are many other files that need to be loaded from your hard drive, even if you aren't loading them manually. The entire operating system is stored on the hard drive.