Hello Party People! Question about MacBook Pro configuration

Hi, I moved this to the appropriate forum. This is clearly not an introduction but a hardware question. I also changed the header to reflect what the post is about.

If your purpose is to use it primarily for DJ-ing (i.e. not storing tons of downloaded video material or pictures or stuff on it), 256GB should be more than enough. We advise to keep your core DJ collection well below 2000 tracks. Even at full uncompressed WAV format, that will be less than 100GB (and you don’t want your collection in WAV 🙂 ). Add the OS and your DJ software and you still have a comfortable margin. I actually used my MBP with a 128GB SSD for close to 2 years before I felt ok spending the money for the 256GB upgrade which I am currently using.

I’d rather spend the money on processor and/or ram memory than on the extra storage.

Just my two cents of course.

If you carry around a small portable drive such as a Western Digital My Passport, you could choose any of these and be fine. The My Passport drives come in up to 3 Terabyte configurations. The 3TB version sells for about $130 on Amazon. You also may want to consider buying a protective case for the external HDD such as a Pelican Micro 1020 Case.

If I had to choose between the 3 you mentioned; I would pick the 2015 MBP w/retina. Here you get excellent performance and if you plan on doing more with the video’s you mentioned; they’ll look awesome.

The only other thing I would suggest you at least consider is an external CD/DVD combo drive such as: http://www.apple.com/us/search/CD+DVD+SuperDrive+USB?src=globalnav. You really don’t need to get the one made by Apple. However, it would probably work the best with whichever Mac Book you decide to purchase.

You could also search on NewEgg for USB external CD/DVD combo drives (http://www.newegg.com/External-CD-DVD-Blu-Ray-Drives/SubCategory/ID-420). Many of the products here have customer reviews and you could always do a Google search for more reviews on any particular model. I’ve always had good luck with the LiteOn brand and the Plextor brand of drives.

my only concern is what about the 2.9ghz i7 vs the 2.7ghz i5?

Honestly, unless the i7 is Quad core 2.9 GHz and the i5 is dual core 2.7 GHz (a difference of 200 MHz); there’s no real difference in CPU performance (at least none that you’ll really notice). However, you would notice a difference between the 2012 ATA Hard Drive (300 or 600 MBps transfer rate) and the 2015 Flash Storage drive (Solid State Hard Drive).

Although the Solid state “flash drive” is smaller in storage; it’s way faster in performance. So by choosing a model with a solid state hard drive, you have more speed performance over a ATA hard drive because the ATA drive has to spin up, so the mechanics of how the drive works would slow you down more that what could be made up for by a slightly faster CPU. A solid state “flash drive” has no moving parts; so the only thing limiting the drive is the class or speed of the memory.