pleaseee help me! buy or not buy! need advice!
Hello everyone! I'm davide from Italy, just got into appleInsider and I love it! Im always on my AI app now!
I need some advices about rmbp! hope that someone can help me! im gettin into mac world and i really wanna go to an apple notebook (coming from an old dell xps), I'm currently working in australia but im leaving in couple of weeks, I would like to buy now a 13" retina mac book pro beacuse it fit what I need and it's really cheap compared to italy with the euro dollar exchange, I can get tax refund at the airport before going back home ( for example i was looking at the model with 2,6 ghz and 256 gb ssd, that came out 2 months ago, in italy the price is 1700 euro agaist the 1600 au dollar here with the tax refund, that its like 1200 euro converted) the problem is that I just saw that in the new WWDC, apple will probably release a new version of the rmbp with the haswell processor soon, should I wait the new one and buy it in italy (more expensive) or should I buy it now here? thanks for you help!!!!!!!!!! by the way if you would buy it now, which model you advice me to get??? big thanks 
Comments
Sounds like a good machine and a good price. If you are happy with it, then buy it. There are no promises of tomorrow from Apple or life in general. So enjoy! And when you get back to Italy, PM me so we can arrange for me to get you some dollars for a great bottle of vino to ship to the states.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SCProfessor
Sounds like a good machine and a good price. If you are happy with it, then buy it. There are no promises of tomorrow from Apple or life in general. So enjoy! And when you get back to Italy, PM me so we can arrange for me to get you some dollars for a great bottle of vino to ship to the states.
ahahah no worries man ! pm me your favourite italian wine!! any advice about the setup of the machine? like which processor pick or how many gb of ssd?? (by the way one of my collegue got me a 1tb lacie external hd 5400rpm with thunderbolt, so i dont need too much storage in the internal hd, and i already have an external apple optical drive) do I need other features? thanks
I don't know... let me rephrase... their are others on the forum far more versed in providing you the specs. Hell, I just spent $3K+ on Alienware (off-shoot of Dell}, but it fit my needs. On the other hand I was within 2 seconds of pulling the trigger on a 15 in. MPr, and had to call MACmall to cancel the order.
With that said though, if those two seconds had passed, I'd get 512 SSD with a modest 7200 rpm HD. Try to get 16 gig of RAM. For the processor try to get the icore7 with the turbo boost to around 3.4 to 3.7 GHz. The retina display is nice, but I don't know if my eyes can visually justify the difference in price.
So if you have extra dollars to spend, I'd kind of go:
1) RAM
2) Processor
3) SSD
4) Wireless card
5) Graphics card
6) Display (retina)
Good luck and safe journey.
is that a mac forum? if somebody can give some advices please do!
If they use the GT3 Haswell chips, they'll have significantly improved graphics performance and it's possible there will be a price drop. Back in March, Apple dropped the 13" Retina prices $200. They may do the same again to eliminate the older model. If you bought the Retina Macbook Pro now, they could introduce a new model in early June and cut the price $200, which immediately drops the value of your machine by quite a lot.
In terms of spec, I'd say 256GB is a good size to go with for the internal given that you have enough external storage. It's not good to go below 256GB. The processor depends on what you use it for. The i7 processors tend to be a lot better than the i5 ones but for average use, the i5s are fine.
Tim Cook indicated that there wouldn't be new hardware until later on but it would be unusual for them to leave the MBPs that long. I would wait until WWDC. If you get desperate to buy, there's also the refurb store where they have discounts - the machines there are pretty much as good as new, full warranty. The only downside is not being able to choose the options you want:
http://store.apple.com/it/browse/home/specialdeals/mac
Hahahaha Mai riso cosi su un forum!! Che modello mi consigli di prendere? 13" 256 ssd o 15" entry level??
In Australia, the 2.6GHz model is A$1849 incl 10% GST so ex GST, it's 1849/1.1 = A$1681. This is 1311 euros. In Italy, it costs 1729 euros including tax so you save 418 euros.
That's a good saving. If they dropped the models down in June, the new one would be 1529 euros but 1311 euros would still be a good deal for the previous generation and they might not drop the prices.
Just make sure that you take the right documentation:
http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page4646.asp
It says that for items over A$1000, you need a tax invoice that has your name and address (I assume your Italian address) on it so make sure to get one from the Apple Store or wherever you buy the laptop. Don't take a receipt that says on it "this is not a tax invoice".
The i7 on the 13" MBP is only about 15% faster than the i5 and costs A$235. Sometimes the upgrades aren't that much like on the 15" you can go from 2.4GHz to 2.7GHz for A$120. That's around the same boost for half the price. I'd leave out the i7 upgrade on the 13". The i5 in the 13" is 4-thread. Also, when you add upgrades, you usually have to wait longer to get it.
If you get the 2.6GHz i5 with 256GB and make sure to get the proper tax invoice, you should get a pretty good deal.
You'd actually get a better deal if you could get a refurb from the Australian Store:
http://store.apple.com/au/product/G0N40X/A/refurbished-macbook-pro-29ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i7-with-retina-display
That's got the i7 and 512GB SSD for A$110 more than the 2.6 i5 model. That model normally costs A$2424 or 2229 euros. So you'd get it for A$1781 = 1388 euros, saving you 841 euros. Even if you didn't get the tax back, it would be 1526 euros so you save 703 euros.
That's a bit strange. Australia used to be really expensive to buy Apple products. Maybe they dropped the prices recently.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
In Australia, the 2.6GHz model is A$1849 incl 10% GST so ex GST, it's 1849/1.1 = A$1681. This is 1311 euros. In Italy, it costs 1729 euros including tax so you save 418 euros.
That's a good saving. If they dropped the models down in June, the new one would be 1529 euros but 1311 euros would still be a good deal for the previous generation and they might not drop the prices.
Just make sure that you take the right documentation:
http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page4646.asp
It says that for items over A$1000, you need a tax invoice that has your name and address (I assume your Italian address) on it so make sure to get one from the Apple Store or wherever you buy the laptop. Don't take a receipt that says on it "this is not a tax invoice".
The i7 on the 13" MBP is only about 15% faster than the i5 and costs A$235. Sometimes the upgrades aren't that much like on the 15" you can go from 2.4GHz to 2.7GHz for A$120. That's around the same boost for half the price. I'd leave out the i7 upgrade on the 13". The i5 in the 13" is 4-thread. Also, when you add upgrades, you usually have to wait longer to get it.
If you get the 2.6GHz i5 with 256GB and make sure to get the proper tax invoice, you should get a pretty good deal.
You'd actually get a better deal if you could get a refurb from the Australian Store:
http://store.apple.com/au/product/G0N40X/A/refurbished-macbook-pro-29ghz-dual-core-intel-core-i7-with-retina-display
That's got the i7 and 512GB SSD for A$110 more than the 2.6 i5 model. That model normally costs A$2424 or 2229 euros. So you'd get it for A$1781 = 1388 euros, saving you 841 euros. Even if you didn't get the tax back, it would be 1526 euros so you save 703 euros.
That's a bit strange. Australia used to be really expensive to buy Apple products. Maybe they dropped the prices recently.
thank you for your time!!! I can get education discount easily with my collegue, so is gonna be 1749 aud for the 13 and 2279 for the 15" the save is around 480 euro total! depends on the current change, but i will pay with aud cash that otherwise I have to change and get a low exchange rate!!!! (a bit of a problem for the online store order), i had already read the thing about the invoice thats why i was worried about buying online, i called the apple store about the tax invoice and there werent so crystal clear, that refurbished is a big deal....if i cant get the refurbished should i go 13 or 15??
It depends what you need it for. The 15" is much faster because it's a quad-core processor so double the 13" and the graphics are 3x faster so much better for games and GPU-accelerated computing and you get the bigger screen. If it's a machine for basic browsing and needs to be portable, the 13" is a easier to slip into a backpack and lighter to carry around. If it's not going to be carried around every day and might be used for processor intensive tasks like encoding movies or for gaming, the 15" is a better option.