Should I get the new MacBook? I'm a math phd student, who currently owns the mid 2009 13" MacBook Pro (2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 memory and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB graphics).

I use my laptop mainly for surfing the web and watching tv shows/movies, but also as a research tool (e.g. Solving differential equations numerically and plotting various functions using Mathematica and MATLAB)

I'm really excited for the upcoming MacBook. It seems to be an improvement to my current Mac on every aspect except for the processor: It reads "1.1 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor Turbo Boost up to 2.4 GHz/1.2 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor Turbo Boost up to 2.6 GHz"

My questions are:


Is this laptop suited for my needs?
How often does this Turbo Boost kick in? If it does so often, I'll definitely get this one.


Thank you!
For the quotidian tasks you mention, your computer is adequate, although I would immediately increase RAM to 4GB, a rather trivial expense.

Mathematica &amp; MATLAB, and other CPU-heavy apps such as Strata Design 3DCX or FinalCut Pro X, have the ability to run multiple cores in parallel. In most cases, ordinary apps will run only one core of the CPU. Other apps, such as Photoshop will take advantage of multiple cores for a subset of its available operations which can benefit from parallel processing.

Mathematica, in particular, does not run most of its calculations on multiple cores, but offers operations which provide parallel computation.

If the MacBook is in OK shape, (i.e., you treated it decently,) the best options would be to increase the RAM, and if you choose to do so, install an internal SSD. At 6 years of age, the internal HD is closing in on its eventual demise.