wallaceizm

If Macbook Pro is your choice, you better look at 15" and above as the cpu and gpu is better. Unless you are just using it for handling documents, surfing of net and maybe do a bootcamp. iMac is good but not portable.

wallaceizm

Seems like the 17" Macbook Pro is being discontinued, don't see it in the apple online store anymore. In terms of CPU, iMac stands out well. As for GPU, you need to use 15" Macbook Pro to deck against the iMac. iMac can also customize to fushion storage, meaning flash and hard disk. If OS is loaded in the flash drive, everything would be much faster. I don't know if the flash storage Apple is using now is the flash drive, or is it SSD. Previous Apple Online Store, you can customize it to have HDD + SSD which is a brilliant combo.

If you decided to go for Macbook Pro, you can just change the ram yourself. It's more affordable that way. I upgraded mine to 8GB using Corsair's DDR3 ram.

By the way, if you are particular about the motherboard, iMac is using notebook's motherboard too if I am not wrong, hence the compact size.