Help! MacBook Pro/retina: should I wait?

My mid-2008 MacBook Pro was stolen out of my living room last week (via a break in), which was a huge bummer. But I've had it for five years and was considering an update in the next six months or so and all of my data was backed up on a 1 TB external drive the night before.
I'm a multimedia journalist fresh out of college (i.e. I don't have a lot of spending money) who does lots of portrait and wedding work in Lightroom 4 and photoshop CS5.5, occasional simple video work in final cut express and live type (with basic knowledge of after effects), and graphic design work in illustrator. I'm not sure whether or not I'll be doing more video stuff once my internship is up in August.
My previous machine was upgraded to 4 GB of RAM and had a 200 GB hard drive that, due to the photos, was constantly filling up. It also had a 2.3 ghz processor and I upgraded to Mountain Lion.
I've decided that the quad core of the 15-inch will probably be worth the investment. Because cash is tight, I'm looking at the June 2012 refurb standard MBP 2.3 ghz i7, 500 GB HD, 512 MB graphics card, 4 GB RAM ($1,449) which I would potentially upgrade to have 16 GB RAM and a 750 GB 7200 rpm hard drive (or SSD once they come down a bit in price. My concern with this machine is whether or not the graphics card will be enough and whether or not the standard res screens will be phased out (is retina the future?). I'm also looking at the June 2012 MBP with retina display, 8 GB RAM, 256 SSD hard drive, 2.3 ghz, 1 GB graphics card ($1,599). My concerns with this machine are the lack of upgradeability, the smaller RAM and the lack of a disc drive. Will 8 GB of RAM be enough? I was getting along with some difficulty with 4 GB. But the price on both are good considering their full prices brand new. Despite the beautiful screen, I've also read that lots of people have had lots of issues with the retinas.
I've also heard that apple is set to release updates to the MBP lineup at WWDC on June 10th. Is it worth it to wait until then and see what happens?
Thanks for the thoughts.

Hi B,
The best time to buy a computer is when you need it. It sounds like you need one now for your work . . . .
All of your reasoning is sound. If you follow the forums here, you'll see there are thousands of posts about MBPr problems. In my memory, it may be one of the most problem plagued portables Apple has produced. Given all that and your price constraints, the non-r refurb you've described sounds like a good bet IF you need it now. If not, waiting to see what happens at the WWDC might be interesting.

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Im going to use it for photography and to edit videos, but nothing professional. And also for basic stuff that i need in university or even to play some games like simcity and the sims 3/4..
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I see you are choosing from the refurbished units. Good move.
I would concentrate on RAM size, SSD size and of course price. In my opinion those are bigger factors than the difference in GPUs.
4 GB of RAM is sufficient of most programs but some applications do better in 8 GB. You cannot upgrade RAM and memory demands are likely to grow over time. So 8 GB is future proofing the system.
A big question is do you need 128 or 256 GB of SSD? How much storage do you use now? How much more are you likely to use (more music, photos, videos…)? If this will be near 100 GB then I would opt for 256 GBs of SSD. The SSDs are not upgradeable while under warranty.
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Refurbished, Oct-2013, 4 GB, 128 GB, Intel Iris Graphics: $1,100. <<<- #2 in your list
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Why do you need a expensive MacBook Pro?
Your attending high school and unless everyone else is rich also your likely going to be a target by the more poorer students for theft or damage to the machine.
You could keep it home, but if you need it for class then your exposed again.
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Unless your made of money and so are others at your school, I would recommned a low profile, just does the job cheap Windows PC.
If it dies, gets lost, stolen or damaged because of your inexperince handling senstivie electronics then it's no big deal.
You can buy a Mac later on when your sure you have a need for it, currently there isn't much advantage of owning a Mac compared to a PC, they do just about the same things now, one just looks prettier than the other.
Since 95% of the world uses Windows PC's your going to have to install Windows on the Mac in order to keep your skills up there or be unemployed, so it's a extra headache and expense.
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Hello!
I'm now a college student ! And I'll need to get a new laptop We will be using it for CAD, MathLab etc.,
But I practice on AE, I'm no expert at all (i don't even know some of the controls and keyboard shortcuts), I do like 'opening titles', a bit of 'harry potter effects', etc. I'm really interested in the new Retina Display MacBook Pro (base model), it will be the first time I ever get a Mac if I go for it
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Please ask me anything so I can help you better to help me

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Now my comments on windows machines. There are more manufacturers that I can count. There are more hardware combinations that I can imagine. Some manufactures produce excellent products. Some are just junk. Some last a very long time. Some breakdown all the time. If you were to go Windows make sure you check out the reputation and the warranty of the company building your machine. I've only owned one really high end Windows machine from a high end manufacturer. It ran just fine for about a year and a half before it needed some major component replacements. The warranty was out, there was no extended warranty available from that manufacturer, so the repairs cost me about 1/3 of the purchase price. If I'd gone with a company with a better service policy I would have saved a boatload of cash in the long run. Every other windows box that I've owned has been built from scratch or purchased in a shoe string. It took a fair amount of monthly maintenance to keep them running well.
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Help! MacBook Pro/retina: should I wait?

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