Refurbished MacBook Core Duo or New MacBook Core 2 Duo w/Edu Discount?

Question

I'm interested in getting an Apple notebook for school and can't decide whether to get the new MacBook Core 2 Duo and use my student discount or just get a refurbished MacBook Core Duo for a few hundred less. Is the Core 2 Duo chip worth the extra money? I plan on using it for my design courses, which use the Adobe and Macromedia suite of applications. Oh, and I plan on playing WoW on it as well.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Well theres a few important details here:
What version of the Core Duo were you after (Basic Middle or Black) for refurb?
What version are you thinking of for the Edu Discount?
Personally i'm going to university next year and am Planning on buying a Macbook in about March or June (What ever model is out then hopefully a 3rd revision). But from what is out the greatest value out of all Macbooks to date is the Middle Version of the MBC2D.
In the Core Duo generation, the jump from basic to Middle wasn't big. You got a slightly faster processor and Super Drive. Now for the same price difference you not only get the bonus C2D processor you get 1GB of Ram, A Superdrive, and a 80 GB Hard drive. For that reason, the best value i would say is the middle version of the C2D Macbooks.
You may not think that you really need 1 GB of Ram or a 80 GB Harddrive but after using a mac mini (which i unfortunately returned) I quickly realized how slow these machines are without sufficient ram. If you plan on using the Adobe suite which is not yet UB you will have a rough time without at least one gig of ram. By then it would probably be UB, but still, programs like Photoshop and Cinema 4D (If you are taking any computer animation courses) will not run well with just 512 MBs. Leopard, i'm expecting will also recommend aproximately 1 Gig of ram. If you plan on playing WoW and doing Work (Exactly what i'm planning on doing on MB) i'd go for 1 Gig of ram at least no matter what generation you get. The 80 Gigs is also in my opinion required if your running bootcamp. 60 Gig HD is insufficient, because, after being formated and having both Mac OSX and Windows XP (Or Vista) on it, the 60 GB HD may end up as more of 52 Gig HD which isn't much space to devide between to Operating Systems. (After installing +your suites that gives you like 45 Gigs to split+Music or videos you may have... brings you down to like 37 GBs + the 10 Gigs you should keep free for your computer to run fine that gives you about 27 Gigs to devide as freem space). If you plan on only running OSX then 60 Gigs should be sufficient if your not doing video editing. But if you want to run Bootcamp I'd get at least 80 Gigs (I'd go with 120 but the jump in price from 80 to 120 is huge compared the jump from 60 to 80). This is why i think the Middle CD2 is the best Macbook because you get 80 GB HD with 1 Gig of ram, a faster processor and they throw in your Superdrive from a relatively small jump in price. When looking to make a purchase try to get the cheap upgrades if they will help (Eg. a 80 Gig HD over a 60 gig HD for a small price) and try to stay away from expensive premium upgrades (120 GiG HD for much more money- unless you really need it).
Hope that helps your decision,
Sorry if the grammar/spelling is horrible, I wrote this very quickly and didn't bother with grammar/proof reading.
Good luck,
I'm sure you will be happy with w/e macbook you choose but like i said i recommend a 80GB HD and 1GB ram at least on either generation of MB. I
MacBookWannabe