New MBP- Please Advise

Question

Hi. I was thinking of getting a new MBP with all the upgrades, and than someone gave me a suggestion. The idea was that instead of an MBP, get a MacBook and an iMac. This way, I have a nice desktop to use, and a laptop for portability. I would create a VPN to the iMac, and also use ACTS, since it is faster than VNC (my internet is 12/2, so its a pretty solid connection).
I will be going to college in one and a half years, so that is an important factor. I currently have a PowerBook (specs in my profile info, look at bottom of post), which runs Dreamweaver. Fireworks, and Flash pretty decently for the system. I would need those, plus Photoshop and Illustrator, and the other not so intensive apps, like iWork. I'm not big on video editing, but I do want to learn Cocoa and work in Xcode. The portable system I get now will probably be the system I take to college. Anything I absolutely need that won't run on my MB, I will use through ACTS to my iMac, but that selection should be limited, if it even exists.
As for gaming, I do once in a while (I'm not a huge gamer), and the games I would put on the MB aren't that graphics intensive. I would use the iMac for most of my games anyways.
This setup is only a few hundred dollars more, which seems like a lot, but I am getting 2 systems, one (MB) a little under the MBP and the iMac, which would be equal to or better (spec-wise). I need a system to carry around, but I also like a system I can always have on, but it's not neccesary. Any, and all, systems I get will have a copy of Windows 2008 Server Enterprise Edition installed, only because that is what I have for Windows. Not actually using for a server. I plan on having 4GB of RAM on both systems if I go with that setup, and a VM may be used once in a while for testing (also use Parallels to boot from BootCamp partition when just need Windows for something quick.)
Comments? Suggestions? Thanks, it's much appreciated.

Answer 1

my advice would be to upgrade the ram in your current laptop, keep it and get a mac pro. i only started using my laptop now that I am traveling a lot, but in college, i barely use my laptop, and mainly stick to my desktop. the mac pro is FAST, and that way, you can upgrade if you need it, whereas with the imac and macbook, both will be obsolete in 2 years. mainly youre probably going to use the laptop for note taking, if even that. everything else, you'
ll probably do on the desktop, and car run anything you need remotely. the way i see it is its better to have one really fast computer, instead of 2 "regular" ones, which will be mediocre by the time you get to college. snow leopard will help in taking advantage of multiple cores, and by the time you go to college everything will probably be at least quad core.
if you give us your budget, i can recommend more, but from experience of mine in the past couple of years, once in college, the most i used a laptop for was watching movies when not in my room and maybe looking up homework PSets and notes, nothing really intensive.