Those who saw my previous thread about buying a new IT gadget may be surprised to learn that I am considering getting a MacBook Pro, mainly due to the lack of good quality Windows alternatives.

Now, the decision is whether to go for the 128gb or 256gb option. The former would leave me enough money to buy a NAS device, which I intend to do anyway, whereas the latter option won’t.

Does anyone use the 128gb version with external storage? How is it? Do you wish you’d gone for the 256gb version?

As you are getting one with SSD why not get the Air?

I’d like the Retina display, plus the Air only comes with 4gb of RAM and the upgrade to 8gb puts the cost very close to the MBP

Ive got a retina pro with 8gb of ram and 128gb ssd and like you I run a 2tb nas drive in my house. Absolutely superb setup.

With all my software installed I have 75gb free so no issues with space.

Ref the air, it’s actually tapered so both devices are pretty much the same thickness at their thickest point. It’s light, powerful and the battery life is exceptional. I’m very pleased I paid the extra for the retina

Thanks win, sounds good.

You can also expand the storage with Transcend Jet Drive for £60ish.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-JetDrive-Lite-Storage-Expansion/dp/B00MTHLURE/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416129488&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=trancend+jet+drive

Thanks iodius. I was considering an SD card as a portable option, although I wasn’t aware of that product.

Picked up a 2014 Retina Pro with 256 SSD and 8GB from John Lewis.
Full guarantee etc but for some reason it had been bought and returned the same day!
Cost the same as a 128/4GB 😉
With a 3TB Extreme and 200GB of cloud I’m not running out anytime soon

I have a 13″ mac book pro, with retina display and 128gig, I use several external drives (work and personal) for extra storage, I connect it to a nice monitor at home for design work. I like the set up it works for me. I sit behind a mac at work all day and the small pro is good for taking on the move to clients or bringing home, it fits nice In my commuting rucksack.

As said above it’s tapered, I can’t see the air being good value in comparison.

Cheers folks. I think that is settled: I’m going to go for the 128gb with external storage.

I agree King, the Air really doesn’t look great value in comparison.

Don’t know how easy it is to change on MBPs but PC World were doing 256Gb SSDs for <£50.

The latest MBP can’t have the storage upgraded at any kind of reasonable cost. The SSD is PCIe format not SATA as the earlier ones. Those that are available as well as been very expensive are actually much slower in tests than the OEM. The 128gb OEM version is also slower than the 256gb. Google it for the details.
I’d go for the larger drive rather than regret it later.

I agree with Craig. I have an OLD (2010) MBP that I’ve just stuck an SSD and upgraded the RAM in – get the biggest drive you can afford.

I have a NAS with my iTunes library on it – but it’s much more difficult to host your photos (if you are using iPhoto) on a NAS. Well – it was when I looked into it a while ago, perhaps it’s changed now.

My iPhoto library is nothing special….. but it takes up 105GB of my new SSD

On further reflection, I’ll probably go for the 256gb one.

I put a 500Gb SSD in my MBP along with 8 Gb, couldn’t really work with much less….

rMBP. Great. Give the difference in weight and size, there’s no real point getting an Air. And the retina display more than makes up for the slight extra weight and thickness.

128GB is OK if you’re happy to put music and photos on a NAS or cloud or external drive for when you need them.

256GB is easier to deal with.

Either option is fixed. There’s no adding a different drive later as the chips are soldered to the board.

John Lewis are doing 3 year free warranty on Apple stuff at the moment, if that helps?

@batfink.

with an iPhoto library that size I would have suggested changing to Aperture. With Aperture you can store the original images elsewhere e.g. NAS and it keeps ‘previews’ in the library that you’d keep on the local storage. Aperture also keeps edits as metadata for the originals rather than creating a fresh file of the image as iPhoto used to. Both result in my 38,000+ image library taking up <43GB on my rMBP.

But, with the new ‘combined’ Mac photo app expected in early 2015 maybe Aperture isn’t the right move now.

I had a 128GB McBook Air but gave that to the Mrs and now have an 256Gb rMBP and also use a NAS for storing iTunes library and videos/photos.
256GB is definitely the way to go in my view.
Had the rMBP for two years and still more than happy with it. Probably the first machine I haven’t wanted to upgrade after 12 months!

Cheers folks. 256gb it is. I am happy, and keen, to move all my media on to a NAS. Any files I want to take away with me can be stored on a 64 or 128gb Transcend SD card.

I appreciate that the choice of RAM and SSD are fixed, but the majority of comparable Windows machines are the same (soldered RAM etc), so it’s to be expected these days, especially in Ultrabooks.

@prettygreenparrot

Thanks – yeah, I think the new wedding photos have bloated it out a bit! But it’s interesting to hear just how inefficient iPhoto is at managing it’s storage. I’ll look into Aperture – cheers!

@Tom: Thanks, that was who I was planning on getting from, for that very reason.

with an iPhoto library that size I would have suggested changing to Aperture. With Aperture

Aperture has been binned by apple. Lightroom or capture1 would be a better choice.

Aperture has been binned by apple. Lightroom or capture1 would be a better choice.

Is that a recent thing? I am sure when I looked at the bundled software a week or so again it mentioned Aperture: However, when I looked yesterday, it wasn’t included.

Been on the cards for about 5 months.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/mac-users-work-flow-for-photovideo-viewing-and-editing-lightroomimovie#post-6213262

Don’t quote me on this but I read that the larger SSD drives 256Gb+ perform faster than the 128Gb drives as there are more data channels available. Not sure if it’s a noticeable difference or not.

Yeah, I read that too. I’ll dig out the article if I remember.