To Penryn or not to Penryn

[sealab2021]

I currently own a SR MBP, but if you can believe it, ever since I saw someone using their macbook at the airport, I've never been happy with mine.

So, I'm making the switch. Only question is,

if I buy the old SR MB, I assume it quick, but when I go to the store, I'm impressed by the quickness of the the new Penryn MB's. Not having given macbooks much of a look through before, I don't know if its quick because of the Penryn chip or because of leopard? (My current MBP has Tiger)

What do you guys think?

Reason why I say this is, if I buy a refurb macbook, its only $850, and I'll do all the upgrading myself. So, save myself $150-250 or to Penryn? That is the question!

Any thoughts?

P.S. I've done some searching, but haven't found much feedback on the new macbooks. Seems like there are a fair number of people who didn't even know they were updated?

 

[flopticalcube]

Penryn? Very little diff between the Merom and Penryn MacBooks. Go for the cheaper chicken.

 

[AppleFan360]

Well, there might be very little difference but there is a difference. When I moved to a Penryn, I noticed a difference in speed and battery life with less heat. If I were you, I would go with a Penryn. It's not a big difference but IMHO, enough to warrant the upgrade.

 

[sealab2021]

Thought I would add here,

Remember the days when apple would say, "Now 6 times faster than one of our 4 year old laptops!" LOL Now they say nothing

 

[iAmLegend]

Adding penryn was a waste of time. No noticeable difference whatsoever.

Wait til next year for a real upgrade and go with the cheaper model for now.

 

[Pacer69]

Adding penryn was a waste of time. No noticeable difference whatsoever.

Wait til next year for a real upgrade and go with the cheaper model for now.

Except for a reported extra 30-45 minutes of battery life, and better cooling thanks to larger vents and a more efficient processor. And then there's the speed thing. Outside of that, though, no, not much difference.

Go for the Penryn. Otherwise you'll see one at the airport sometime and wish you had gotten it instead.

 

[vansouza]

Why switch, keep both.

 

[bluedoggiant]

Adding penryn was a waste of time. No noticeable difference whatsoever.

Wait til next year for a real upgrade and go with the cheaper model for now.

So what, your gonna sue apple for it? Better than a 2.2 merom, who cares, its better, more standard ram and HD. It's like returning a blackbook because you don't want a 250gb hd, i can see:

"WHY THE FXCK DID YOU GIVE ME A FXCKING 250GB IN MY FXCKING BLACKBOOK??? I WANTED 160GB!!!!!!"

It just doesn't make sense apple wasted their time.

Except for a reported extra 30-45 minutes of battery life, and better cooling thanks to larger vents and a more efficient processor. And then there's the speed thing. Outside of that, though, no, not much difference.

Go for the Penryn. Otherwise you'll see one at the airport sometime and wish you had gotten it instead.

the 2.2 have the same bigger vents, apple made the vents bigger in the 2.2 models.

 

[Shackler]

if ur current MBP is fast enough than the refurb. Mb will be fast enough as well so u dont need the updates. plus you will be upgrading yourself so the HDD and RAM makes no difference.
And welcome to the macbook side!

 

[Celeron]

My SR 2.2 Macbook was just replaced with one of the new 2.4ghz models because of a botched repair job at the local Apple store. I haven't noticed any speed increase at all. I would say spending money to "upgrade" from any SR would be a waste in my opinion.

 

[nickXedge]

Except for a reported extra 30-45 minutes of battery life, and better cooling thanks to larger vents and a more efficient processor. And then there's the speed thing. Outside of that, though, no, not much difference.

Go for the Penryn. Otherwise you'll see one at the airport sometime and wish you had gotten it instead.

Go with the refurb, and upgrade yourself. You won't notice a difference, the only way you will know its different is if you benchmark it. Save yourself the money. If you regret it, which you won't, upgrade in June when Montevina comes out and you'll have Montevina/Penryn versus Santa Rosa/Penryn and you will notice a considerable difference in both speed and battery life.

 

[AppleFan360]

Go with the refurb, and upgrade yourself. You won't notice a difference, the only way you will know its different is if you benchmark it.

And you know this as a fact? When I upgraded I noticed a big difference when rendering DVDs.

 

[nickXedge]

And you know this as a fact? When I upgraded I noticed a big difference when rendering DVDs.

No offense, but it's psychological. You only "notice" a difference because your mind is telling you it's better. Even the benchmark stats show very minor speed increases. As for battery life, mine lasts all day without needing to recharge, so 30-45 minutes doesn't really make or break me. I would be surprised if it was a considerable upgrade for anyone.

 

[AppleFan360]

No offense, but it's psychological. You only "notice" a difference because your mind is telling you it's better. Even the benchmark stats show very minor speed increases. As for battery life, mine lasts all day without needing to recharge, so 30-45 minutes doesn't really make or break me. I would be surprised if it was a considerable upgrade for anyone.

Alrighty then. But I owned both Macbooks and saw a difference. We will just need to leave it at that.

 

[bluedoggiant]

Alrighty then. But I owned both Macbooks and saw a difference. We will just need to leave it at that.

Agreed. and .2ghz difference + penryn. There is a reason we buy 2.4, there is a reason i got 2.8 over 2.4 for my imac, otherwise everyone would be getting 2ghz, and 2.1ghz, and 1.83ghz, and 1.6ghz, and 2.4ghz, and 2.8ghz xeon quads.

 

[DaBrain]

Adding penryn was a waste of time. No noticeable difference whatsoever.

Wait til next year for a real upgrade and go with the cheaper model for now.

All I can say is that IM glad they did this update. It allowed me the opportunity to get a real nice black macbook 2.2 refurb at a great price.

Im very satisfied with it! Good luck in whatever decision you make!

 

[LightDemon69]

No offense, but it's psychological. You only "notice" a difference because your mind is telling you it's better. Even the benchmark stats show very minor speed increases. As for battery life, mine lasts all day without needing to recharge, so 30-45 minutes doesn't really make or break me. I would be surprised if it was a considerable upgrade for anyone.

Hahaha, try saying that to me using an old iBook G4.

 

[alphaod]

No offense, but it's psychological. You only "notice" a difference because your mind is telling you it's better. Even the benchmark stats show very minor speed increases. As for battery life, mine lasts all day without needing to recharge, so 30-45 minutes doesn't really make or break me. I would be surprised if it was a considerable upgrade for anyone.

Your battery lasts all day? Wow you must use all the power saving options. I just stick with Caffeine and it stays on all the time.

As with the speed, it partially psychological. Sometimes it is fast, just not with this Merom to Peryn change.

 

[cecil444]

Go with the cheaper Santa Rosa/Merom

Having owned a Merom macbook and now a Penryn macbook, I seriously haven't noticed a different between one to the other. I like to think there's a difference, but it's nothing you'll notice. The fan seems to be a lot quieter in my Penryn, but then the Superdrive makes more noise than it did in the Merom! Some people say the case (if you get the black one) is less a fingerprint-magnet, but I haven't noticed much of a difference there. If there is an improvement it's very slight.

I would definitely go for the cheaper option if I were you.

The Penryn upgrade is a modest one, and if peak performance was your top issue you probably wouldn't be downgrading from a MBP to a MB.

Good luck with your choice! It's always an excruciating process for me too.

 

[sealab2021]

Thanks Guys! I went with the "Cheaper Chicken", as one poster put it. LOL

I'm sure Penryn is awesome, but turns out that after all the upgrades, I'm still going to be paying $1200. But now I'll have 4GB of RAM (totally unnessary), and 320GB HD!

If anyone is interested, I'll be putting my SR MBP up for sale. Its only 6 months old, and hardly used. I'm thinking $1500. Send me a email or something if anyone is interested.

 

[miknos]

I just bought the penryn (2.4). I had a merom 2.16.

The differences:
- runs cooler
- have more RAM
- more HD
- more battery life. Now I get 30min more (6 hours using internet, music, email.. nothing heavy)
What I don't like:
- New processor have 3MB compared to 4MB of L2 cache. The speed are the same comparing the 2.2 vs 2.4. Penryn have more instructions, so in future the applications would run faster.
- Now you have to pay 20u$$ for remote control!!!

 

[xeux]

The only real difference worth the $ is less heat. In my opinion....