Which to order $300 difference in Macbook pro

I finally having the funds to purchase a macbook I'm just down to a couple questions. The 2 mac books I'm looking at are the 13.3 version with from what I can tell all the specs being the same expect the following and the price difference is $300. I'm just trying to figure out if the price difference is worth it. Will mostly be used for school and internet surfing with the occasional photo and video work.

500gb hard drive vs 750
2.5 i5 dual vs a 2.9 i7 dual
4 gig ram vs 8

I figure I can jump to 16 gigs of ram for about $100 and add a 1TB or larger external HD for another $100 or so. I'm still coming in at $100 less on the macbook with double the ram and hd space, just not the processor. So your suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

Looks like the question is ....is the 2.5 i5 good enough for you during the time you plan to own the machine. Assuming you plan on keeping the laptop for at least e years, I would want the fastest CPU I could get. I would go with the $300 package. There is likely no need to go past 8GB of memory. As for disk space, don,t plan to carry all your data with you. Put big media libraries from iTunes or Aperture on external drives. Do plan on a large external drive for time machine backups.

Looks like you're comparing the 2 base models. I'd spend the extra $300. More storage, faster processor, and all the ram you'll most likely need.

With laptops always buy the fastest you can afford. If something is user upgradable, do so later and put the money into the CPU.

I'd personally opt for the i5, and use the $300 to buy a large SSD and 16gb ram. Ram is cheap, as are SSDs. Whatever benefit the i7 would give over the i5 (10-15% for some tasks), the SSD will make up for and then some.

On a side note, have you considered the 13" MacBook Air? I have an 11" air and find it to be the best laptop I've had for all around performance and that includes multiple MacBooks and 4 MacBook Pros.

JoeyC wrote in post #15420326
I'd personally opt for the i5, and use the $300 to buy a large SSD and 16gb ram. Ram is cheap, as are SSDs. Whatever benefit the i7 would give over the i5 (10-15% for some tasks), the SSD will make up for and then some.

On a side note, have you considered the 13" MacBook Air? I have an 11" air and find it to be the best laptop I've had for all around performance and that includes multiple MacBooks and 4 MacBook Pros.

Just bought a MBP base model for the wife and this was the conclusion I came to. Don't need the processing power (for her) to justify a i7 CPU. Save the cash and upgrade the RAM yourself and either swap the current disk for a SSD or remove optical and add a SSD instead. What you need it for may be for something completely different though.
If it was for me, I want to have a powerful machine and upgrading it after would only leave RAM and HDD available so getting an i7 now would save you later when you want it. You can't change the CPU down the road of course.