New Quad-core 27" iMac or new Quad core MacBook Pro + 27" Cinema Display?

Alright, so I've been toying with the idea of replacing my 27" iMac with a MacBook Pro plus the 27" Cinema Display in order to have "the best of both worlds". The obvious advantage is to be able to have a laptop when I need it and since Apple came out with the last Cinema Display refresh, I can throw together a pseudo-iMac in the 27" display which is the exact same display that is on the 27" iMac.

The recent refresh of the MacBookPro's with its quad-core i7's have made this choice a whole lot easier and being that the new iMac's have almost exactly the same AMD Mobile Radeon 6000 series in them makes them even more on par with one another.

There is yet another reason that would make this combination even more attractive. With the iMac, I literally cannot upgrade it or change any of its configuration after I receive it other than RAM. This is not true for the MacBook Pro's. Almost everything is easily accessible and the Cinema Display would look as good as the iMac.

What do you guys think? It will cost me a few hundred bucks extra, because the one MBP that I've always wanted is the 17". Who knows, maybe I'll go with the entry level 15" instead, seeing that they are ALL quad-Core i5's and i7's now and that goes not only for the 15" and 17" MBP's, but also all of the 21.5" and 27" iMac's. No more dual core CPU's and no more Core i3's, although I must say, the Core i3 with HyperThreading enabled and with that, running 4 virtual cores with two at up to 3.2GHz is just about right for me. I could use just a hair more horse power.

Excited to hear your opinions and expertise.

Thanks, guys, I really appreciate it and two weeks after the last post to this thread, I'm still holding out and may continue to do so until at least June 6 when WWDC '11 is set to start off. In addition, let me put out a couple more thoughts:

Would it be wise to buy a used 30" Cinema Display on Craigslist and how much do you think that I should spend if I were to go that route? Before you answer, I understand that most will not have warranty and there are probably plenty out there that are from 2006 and I'm not so sure that I should buy a 5-YEAR old monitor that may have seen heavy use under ANY circumstances, no matter how attractive the price may be. Decisions, decisions. WHat say ye?

Thanks for the advice, Marvin. I've decided against the 30" ACD. I'm amazed at how much people on Craigslist, for example, want for their 3-5 year old displays, but ok, it did used to be almost $2,000 by itself in a lot of places once sales tax is considered.

Thanks again!

Actually, you don't have to park your MacBook Pro/Air in front of the monitor at all. You'll have to get a keyboard, though, as well as a mouse or one of those Trackpads that Apple came out with last summer. I still had the Trackpad from my iMac days and my days using a mouse were over on day 1 of using that incredible Magic Trackpad. I also got one of those BookArc stands that you can pop your MacBook Air (or Pro) into and simply connect it to monitor that way and you'll be doing it with style at that! lol

Ok, so after a long search, I came upon an insane deal on a lightly used 30" Apple Cinema HD display yesterday. There is not so much as ONE single scratch or ding or whatever to be found on it and I've looked! The screen is also immaculate without even one little bitty dead pixel. Even the darn box it came in looks like it just came off a shelf in an Apple store and the manuals have that new "shiny" look to them. (knocking on wood wildly) So I'm happy BUT.....\

I do have one issue, however, and that is once again the enormous heat generated by my new 17" MacBook Pro. It's already annoying that running my 3 browsers with 15 or so tabs open in each at the same time produces enough heat to kick the fans into going at speeds exceeding 5500rpm. Now, however, the very SAME thing is happening but with ALL of my browsers shut down. In fact, I shut down all applications, all but ONE which is playing an HD movie, but instead of playing it on the 17" built-in display, the MBP is playing it on the Cinema Display! That's it. Nothing else. And once again, the MBP is brutally hot with both fans running at full capacity! It sounds like an airplane was just cleared for take-off right in front of me. The processor shows as being 90+% idle most of the time and the AMD Radeon 6750M graphics card is only using about 20% of its 1GB GDDR5 discrete memory.

I like my big 17" screen on the laptop, but this heat and those fans are a real issue now. Might there be a software fix forthcoming??? I didn't see anything in Software Updates. I must admit that I'm impressed with how seamlessly the laptop runs the 30" display. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to get a 27" ACD instead, would the MBP likely have to work significantly less hard to drive that monitor maybe because it doesn't have to run it through the Mini DisplayPort to dual-link DVI adapter/converter??? Any ideas???

I think you might have forgotten to embed a link to whatever site you're referring to. I do agree with you, though. I took some of the respondents' advice and researched other 27 and larger displays and there are good ones out there if the reviews are to believed. HP, Dell, and a relative newcomer called DoubleSight. ALL of them are MORE expensive as compared to Apple's 27" monitor. ALL of them!

So much for the so-called "Apple tax" or "Apple logo fee" hypotheses, but it was interesting (and gratifying) to find out!

Yea, the Dell U2711 for example. It's uglier, too. Apple must not care much about serving up this monitor (now that there's only one model anymore) to anyone who is not using a Mac. That's unlike was the case when they sold the 30" ACD. It even says "Windows Ready" or something like that on the box.

Not that I care, but it goes to show that Apple doesn't care either. With iOS devices being 2/3 of the company's business and on the Mac side, 3/4 of Mac's sold are MacBook's of one kind or another. It's probably simply not worth pursuing the monitor market.