Desktop or Laptop?

15" MBP with a 27" display hooked up at home. Love the portability of the laptop (I am jealously eyeing the new MacBook) and I can work on the display when at my desk.

You'll be disappointed going from iMac to laptop. Code is smaller, hard to read, and if you run two pages at half screen like I do it's next to impossible to follow along with treehouse videos visually while you code.

I took a year of computer science writing Python, c++, c, and assembly with a macbook pro. I find that the pro is a great laptop option because you can custom optimize everything from memory to screen quality (retina, etc.).

If you're concerned with screen real estate, I suppose that depends on personal preference. I find that with a retina screen, my ability to see is uninhibited by the size. When in doubt, I can always throw on a pair of readers (there's no shame!).

Since you are used to the iMac, the screen difference may be cumbersome at first (as I enjoy the iMac as well), but for me, getting used to the macbook pro has other benefits like being able to get outside to code, or into a nice coffee shop! :)

My current setup works well for me. It's a MBP with a 27" external monitor I dock to when at my desk. That's my minimum for screen real estate.

I use my custom home desktop for my main coding and have 2 ASUS 24" monitors. When I work on a project from Treehouse I tend to use Sublime Text 2 which is a very nice text editor.

I can almost say it makes coding a lot more fun since you are able to quickly write code while also being helpful with color coding. Honestly I would download that and maybe change the view a bit. If you do download it, change some settings by going to:

"View" then "Layout" and you will able to fit multiple columns for your code onto 1 screen if screen real estate may be a problem.

Hopefully that helps you out.

If portability is not required go desktop, you get a lot more computer for your money that way. If some portability is required, but you don't need to anything much outside of text-editing a cheap chromebook could do the trick. It really depends on your overall needs.

Thank you all for the responses and the feedback. I honestly didn't think about using my iMac screen with a laptop. That might be a really great option, as I would like to be able to get out and code at Starbucks or another location.

now I ask this question, a macbook or a macbook pro? is the pro that much better? I have a macbook pro 17 inch, but unfortunately, I do not seem to be able to update since its from early 2007 and I the peeps at Apple tell me I cannot upgrade to get it current.

so the question, macbook or macbook pro? Opinions?