13 macbook pro (new)
 

I have an option to buy from a friend a new 13 inch, 500 gig (split with vista), my question is with no way to get serial ata to hook up, is the firewire 800 fast enough and is the on board video card with 256 megs of rams enough for hd video?

Thanks,

Charlie Branham

The graphics card uses shared memory and is the weak point in the 13" design. I would try to max out the ram (8GB) and get the fastest processor. The 500GB HD will help, especially if it's 7200 RPM. The FW 800 is not the limiting factor and there are even RAIDs configured for FW800.

Unless you have money to burn then forget about upgrading to 8GB as the price of 4GB DIMMs is outrageous ($899 for the 8GB upgrade).

just got one
 

Got a 13" $1200 macbook pro last week. Edited a 3min 1080p ProRez documentary with it. The video card (as others predicted) is more than adequate. Even with the stock 2 GB of ram the computer still performed great, though I will upgrade the ram eventually for more multitasking.

Renders weren't noticeably slow. I could not edit and output to a second monitor in Safe RT, I had to step the quality down a bit while editing. But it is great to really edit in HD while being mobile on a laptop that only costs $1200. Technology is awesome.

Haven't tried motion yet, I don't use it too often anyways.

Anyone else get a 13" MBP?