Which MacBook Pro for Premiere Pro? Or a PC?

[Guest paulwatt]

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Pretty much every pre-unibody I know of has fallen apart. They just couldn’t take day to day use.

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[Guest Travo]

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I have a recommendation for you, Dell Precision m4600.

After weeks of home work weighing out the pros and cons of available mobile options, I decided on the Dell m4600 with i7-2720QM 2.2GHZ, 16GB RAM, Quadro 2000m, with 192 cuda cores.

The Dell has pretty much the same specs as a Lenovo w520, but with a better RGB IPS display, and a real HDMI out, and better ports/layout. Also it features 2 usb 3.0 ports, and esata.

This video pretty much sold me on the m4600, at around 2:15 he shows the the viewing angles of the FHD IPS display, and also shows some mercury playback action in P Pro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o5VZlGLFi4

You can check out the specs and options of the Dell Precision m4600 here.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m4600/pd

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[bubba]

Hate to spoil the pre-unibody macbook pro haters club meeting, but I just have to disagree on one point:
The Early 2008 17" MBP offered a High Res 1920 x 1200 LED as an option.  These discrete 17" models continued through the October 2008 introduction of the Unibody 15" model. 

I bought mine because they are the [b]last[/b] user replacable battery models ...and the last ones actually take and use 8 meg of RAM. I did send mine off to have the graphic chip replaced with the 2010 model of the 8600M/512MB chip and an SSD drive is in the works.

Bottom line: With the MXO2 and accelerator, it is still a good, usable tool.    Also, it you shop carefully ...you can find good used ones (with the hi res screen) for under $500.  (I've since bought spares.) Spend another grand on a few things, most of which will transfer to newer machines and you are home free for really cheap, [i]AND[/i] you can also use it on location for HDMI out ...just take along some extra batteries!!