unused

what protection thingy?

Did you mean such as Keyboard/screen/palm wrist protector kind of thingy or what?
if that so, YES. If not.. (please elaborate more...)

can you get by with 128gb storage? can always store other files on an external hdd. if u dont mind, i'd suggest the 13" i5 but upgrade to 128gb SSD

or maybe the 13" i5 + applecare protection plan

or maybe the 13" i5 + a nice external display ;p

or + sweet speakers, or headphones or...

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Added on April 9, 2011, 12:51 pm

I'm on the 128gb SSD, learned to manage my space - I still have 60gb left and that's after ms office installations and a WoW installation (eats up 15gb!), aperture and some other stuff. Left my iTunes library(too huge!) on my home NAS (tunes are on my iphone), carry with me a 500gb portable HDD. You CAN get by with 128gb SSD, its the best upgrade you can ever have and its worth it. Just don't go putting your 1080p downloaded movies and pr0n and what not with you..sheesh

You simply can not beat the speed of a SSD drive, its amazing. Cold boot up(about 20s) is faster than my lame HP windoze laptop booting up from sleep..! (granted my HP has tons of junk in it)

the latest MPB (2011) all has SATA 3 for its HDD interface...so if you could use a SSD which is SATA3 capable, then it really benefits. The speed is superb.

mine only take 13secs to boot up osx
really2 fast wo!

Go with i7,!   i just got it on friday. Like other things,u can add on later, but cpu of course not upgradeable.

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Added on April 9, 2011, 4:56 pm

Before you set up Windows 7 - ask yourself why you need it ? Maybe set yourself aside 10-15 gig for it maybe? Is it for games?

Itunes size depends on what you have la... i rip a lot of my CDs in FLAC and convert to M4A and its huge..

For SSD - the boot up is fast - I don't know why that guy say 13 seconds that's pretty much impossible if you ask me lol but 20 seconds is the best I can tell you.
Here's a good comparison of boot up times between SSD/HDD - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxsAoZG42jM

Here's another one showing 2010 vs 2011 model, with launching of photoshop, 2010 on hdd and the 2011 on ssd - yes its a bit unfair lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpt9G4vYOvw

What other benefits of SSD ? almost instant response, no sleeping, also no spin-up times, possibly better power savings(unsure really), quiet, no moving parts like HDD.

Do you really need it ? Maybe, if you can wait a bit then maybe you can buy the SSD later when Lion comes out.

Win7 possibly need 6-10 gb? then extra space for other stuff. don't know about xunlei, is that one of those proprietary p2p video thingee? if you must run it then theres also parallels or bootcamp. Absolutely no idea whats HoN, SC2 runs just fine on mac natively. Why do people buy Macs to run windows apps that has always baffled me.. hehe but anyway its your machine

As for i5/i7 - personally I don't feel there's much difference, but like someone in the forum said, processors can't be upgrade, just got for i7 la..
Later you get i5 sure hand itchy itchy one...and at night cannot sleep wondering if you made the better decision

one is quad core one is dual core.. look properly not just the Ghz that matters
Long story short, go for i7, if not tonight you sure cannot sleep hahaha...

Lion is next mac os version 10.7.. now we're at 10.6.7
And yes SSD can be added later, like a hdd upgrade - BUT WAIT you go and check first, the price from apple store to upgrade normal HDD to the 128GB SSD, then you compare buying outside separately.

Then you might change your mind and get the SSD now     

music depends on ur collection obviously.

win7 64-bit + bootcamp drivers is almost 15gb. so maybe just set aside 30gb? unless u want to install a lot of games lah. not sure about 32-bit
in my opinion, yes i7 is faster than the i5, but u dont get to 'see' it a lot unless u always deal with processor-intensive tasks. just because the i5 is the cheapest model doesnt mean it's slow...judging from benchmarks it's just slightlyyy slower than the previous fastest MBP with the older i7. benefits of SSD is more 'appreciable' because anyone would open apps n files all the time

You must read this first than u decide....

http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2011/02/mac...rks-early-2011/      
Ask i said earlier, HDD u can upgrade later to SSD....

movie editing, 3d rendering, modeling n simulation software, those kind of stuff. that's where the i7 will shine, at other times u probably wont realize the difference compared to the i5. simply bcuz the i5 is pretty fast already

im not saying will freeze la. just have a look at youtube videos see how fast a SSD can boot, launch apps etc compared to a HDD. boot / launch apps are stuff any computer user do, and do it a lot. thats y i say the benefits are more appreciable. not every computer user to processor intensive tasks everyday

maybe it's like buying a merc C-class or an SLS. sure the SLS is faster, but since u drive in a city anyway, the extra speed doesnt really benefit u. what really benefits u everyday is the better fuel economy. just my opinion la of course. if u want to get the i7 anyway nothing wrong with that hehe

Do you want to sleep better at night?        go for i7 

120gb SSD price - buying from outside.. eg.
corsair F120 - 769
mushkin e.c.dlx - 749
ocz vertex 2 - 749

13" i5 model - 320gb -> 128GB Solid State Drive [Add RM 763.00]
13" i7 model - 500gb -> 128GB Solid State Drive [Add RM 610.00]
15" 2.0ghz 500gb -> 128GB Solid State Drive [Add RM 611.00]
15" 2.2ghz 750gb -> 128GB Solid State Drive [Add RM 306.00]

okay ...maybe it doesn't seem so cheap since you're getting the 13" model lol..I'm assuming this since you said you have to choose between i5 and i7...

But yea you can get it later after all it seems (just be wary that when buying SSD make sure you research about enabling TRIM support) - its a long story ...!

Thanks thanks yupio!  im hoping to learn more about the MB here lol. Its my very first MB.. kinda feel weird at the mo using it  Just finished calibrating my battery for the first time lol..  downloading whatever updates there is for now

@ Christopher7 that's cos when running on Windows, you're not dealing with Mac OS X anymore... so if it sucks... the gamer & programmer can't blame Apple...

Not 100% sure if I understand what you're asking but I'm gonna give it a shot..

Bootcamp is a way to boot straight to Windows - then you run windows as if you're on a windows based laptop. It's a software that helps you do things like get ready a partition for windows and all that stuff prior to installing windows..

The alternative to playing games made solely for windows - for some is to run things like emulators like Crossover or Parallel Desktops, or .. other things like that.

Given the two options, bootcamp will give you better performance since there's no 'emulators' layers running in between.

comparing specs-to-specs only makes sense when choosing between windows laptops, simply because there's nothing different apart from specs. you dont see any HP, dell, acer "fan" around because all the laptops are the same.

MBP have more features like better touchpad, good battery, sturdy build, good screen etc. u cant compare these stuff between windows laptops that's why nobody cares about it because they cant.

some people may say "if u just wanna buy a mac bcuz it looks nice etc better dont" but i disagree. so what if u buy it just for the looks? no one buys designer brand shirts because of better quality / easy to wear...they just buy it cuz it looks nice. nothing wrong with that
it's because of no directX. OSX only support openGL, and even that (IINM) not as good as windows' support

also because GPU in macs are normally underclocked a bit

I wouldn't bet its 100% compatible.. it does have an export option to word format however.
The new ms office is pretty good however. The version prior to the latest one had horrible compatibilities but the newer ones as far as I can tell, have pretty good compatibility.

edit : iWork templates are awesome though. they really make your document stand out...

I came from Windows so called wintel users...so I have lots of MS Office files with me....and as such, I went for Office for MAC 2011....bought it n worth it....when it comes with office productivity apps, it' best to go with the world majority....at present which is MS Office.....can't go wrong from there...at least you have peace of mind never have to solve file compatibility issues.

TIPS : If you want to submit reports, etc.....and worry your recipient unable to open....then save as PDF or print to PDF then send....

i agree with tarpaucase. iwork is compatible but it's likely that something will go wrong somehow

office2011 for mac is great. dont have visio, access etc la so i hope u dont use them. so far my docx, pptx and xlsx files open w/o problems between office2011 and office2007/2010.

for presentations you might wanna try out keynote though, very nice. u can buy just keynote from the mac app store, no need to buy the whole iwork suite