What Mac specs would you recommend for a CS major (GHz, Flash Memory, etc)?

Question

So, I'm starting college in the fall as a computer science major. I have decided to choose a Macbook Pro with Retina Display as my weapon of choice. The only remaining questions I have before I order pertain specifically to GHz and Flash Memory. I saw that for about $250, you could upgrade your processor from 2.7 GHz to 2.8 GHz, and for $400 extra you could upgrade your flash memory. To be honest, and this is an embarrassing confession for a CS student to make, but I really have no clue what either of those things do to the computer, and what impact they have. Before I ask you what you'd recommend, let me give a little more information.
Because I'm a CS major, the kind of work I would most likely be using the computer for involves creating iPhone apps, building websites, and building desktop apps using Cocoa or Qt. Now, I'm not sure how big these project files usually are on Macs, but I have done some programming before on Windows and know that they do have the ability to get rather large. My previous programming environments have included a Windows 7 Lenovo desktop PC with 1 TB of internal memory, and a Dell laptop running Linux Ubuntu with 2GB of internal memory and a  2.26 Intel Core Duo processor (runs much slower..).
So, I guess my ultimate question is, is the extra $250 or $400 really worth it? Would I be able to get by without spending all the extra cash?
Oh, and as for screen resolution, I was thinking 15 inch, due to the fact that this will most likely be my primary computer at college. Is that a good call as well?

Answer 1

TJNickerson wrote:
So, I guess my ultimate question is, is the extra $250 or $400 really worth it? Would I be able to get by without spending all the extra cash?
The CPU upgrade is only worth it for applications where the CPU is specifically the bottleneck. These days, not many are. The amount of RAM, the GPU, and the speed of storage often play into overall application speed.
You might want to check with upperclassmen in your program, though, because it is possible that some programming environments might benefit from it when compiling or something.
But for most people, $250 for another 0.1 GHz is a bad deal. On the 15-inch it is paying 9% more to boost CPU by just 4%.
If the storage starts at 512MB, that is a lot of space for most people. The $400 is for SSD storage which is expensive (compared to traditional spinning hard disks) so you'd better need it. The two questions to ask yourself are, do you need to carry everything around all the time, or can you keep some on an external drive? Because $400 would buy you a 4TB external drive with money left over. The second question is does that storage need to be SSD fast? If yes, then maybe the upgrade is good. If no, then you'd paying a lot more for much faster storage than you need.
TJNickerson wrote:
Oh, and as for screen resolution, I was thinking 15 inch, due to the fact that this will most likely be my primary computer at college. Is that a good call as well?
15 inch is a screen size, not a screen resolution. One way to think about it is, do you expect to be using one screen-filling window at a time, or seeing lots of app windows at a time? The 13-inch is a better size for single window work, but the 15-inch is better for spreading out your workspace with multiple windows and panels.