TijmenDal wrote in post #14414805
EDIT: How big of a difference would make an SSD in my optical drive to read files from?
Some, but not a lot. Might see 10-20% improvement in performance on some processes.
It won't have any effect on edit render times though.
You can't buy a computer as an investment, laptops especially.
I've found they generally have a 3 year life span, and I budget to replace them that often.
If I get 4 years out of one I'm amazed.
The technology is still changing and advancing, and as the hardware gets better, the software gets more complex and demands better hardware.
In the photography world you have the added complication of our camera's producing ever larger files sizes.
My first camera produced 1MB files that made my computer of the time work hard, my current camera produces 30mb files and makes my current computer work hard.
And that camera has now been made obsolete and the computer is 1 generation behind in technology.
Along with the advances in technology there are often gaps in the currently available technology, the advances don't occur at a nice linear rate.
Your current Mac is built around the Intel Core 2 processor.
These were made for quite a long time, over which only small improvements were made in their performance.
However there was always a big difference between the desktop and mobile versions, the desktop versions were considerably faster.
My last computer was built on this technology, and despite being a year older than your Mac Book would run rings around it in terms of performance.
My current laptop, despite being very average, runs rings around my last desktop. My current desktop runs ring around that.
The current generation of Intel processors is called Core i3, i5 and i7, and they took a huge set up in performance over the Core 2.
There was fundamental change made in how they worked that lead to massive gains in performance.
It also leveled the differences between the mobile and desktop versions.
While the desktop versions are faster, the difference is not that great.
So how does all this useless info help?
Well if you do decide you need a new computer, consider the following:
Intel Core 2 has been around since 2006 and Core i(3,5,7) has been around since 2010.
But, some manufacturers are faster than others to take on each new processor from Intel.
Apple is one of the slowest, they kept selling the Core 2 based computers for nearly 12 months after other manufacturers had taken on Core i(3,5,7).
But, if you assume a 4-5 year life cycle from Intel it also means that we are about half way through before there will be another big leap in technology and performance.
So while 2010 was not a good year to buy a laptop with out really understanding the hardware differences, 2012 is a good year as all the major brands are producing laptops and computers with current generation processors.
In theory you should get around 3-4 years out of it and then be ready for the next leap in technology.
