Discussion
Thinking of turning to the darkside. Never owned a mac before but i've just had enough of the endless windows crashes, and vista looks like it needs a supercomputer to open up the start menu and I hear you can now run windows on a mac for any essential apps that aren't compatable with OS X. Thinking of going for the black macbook over the pro for portability. Anyone own one of these beasts or got an opinion on it?
I also hear new macbooks are on the horizon (end of summer/sept/october) with new intel chips and the new OS X leopard... is it worth waiting for it?
I also hear new macbooks are on the horizon (end of summer/sept/october) with new intel chips and the new OS X leopard... is it worth waiting for it?
mindgam3 said:
Thinking of turning to the darkside. Never owned a mac before but i've just had enough of the endless windows crashes, and vista looks like it needs a supercomputer to open up the start menu and I hear you can now run windows on a mac for any essential apps that aren't compatable with OS X. Thinking of going for the black macbook over the pro for portability. Anyone own one of these beasts or got an opinion on it?
I also hear new macbooks are on the horizon (end of summer/sept/october) with new intel chips and the new OS X leopard... is it worth waiting for it?
Shirley turning away from the dark side (according to the court cases anyway) I also hear new macbooks are on the horizon (end of summer/sept/october) with new intel chips and the new OS X leopard... is it worth waiting for it?
The new macbooks will probably be a bit better, not sure I'd wait though. Personally I can't imagine how Leopard will improve upon Tiger - maybe the apple.com website will explain.
Using 'Parallels' you can run WinXP etc inside a window - safely contained
The main problems with going the Mac route are: 1) it requires a bit of faith, 2) becoming a Mac fanboy as you realise how good personal computing really can be and 3) starting to slag off windows every chance you get as you realise how bad it really was.
No registry. No DLLs. No Virus. Works with standards. Lots of software. Very fluffy graphics. SpotLight. Expose. Dashboard. Preview/PDF. Took me a long time to get used to Finder, but I've sort of tuned into it now, plus there are loads of 3rd party apps, not just NeoOffice, Fink, VLC, SuperDuper, Thunderbird and Firefox...
don't need to buy now, but the value of my pc laptop i'm going to sell to partly pay for it will go down waiting til october. Don't really need it until I go into my final year at uni in september so I'm guessing the best plan will be to wait.
I have a lot of documents in office formats (.doc/.xls) etc. Will I need to convert these or do i need to buy ms office for mac if i move to a macbook?
I have a lot of documents in office formats (.doc/.xls) etc. Will I need to convert these or do i need to buy ms office for mac if i move to a macbook?
mindgam3 said:
don't need to buy now, but the value of my pc laptop i'm going to sell to partly pay for it will go down waiting til october. Don't really need it until I go into my final year at uni in september so I'm guessing the best plan will be to wait.
I have a lot of documents in office formats (.doc/.xls) etc. Will I need to convert these or do i need to buy ms office for mac if i move to a macbook?
I have a lot of documents in office formats (.doc/.xls) etc. Will I need to convert these or do i need to buy ms office for mac if i move to a macbook?
My new (US) Apple actually came with MS office installed, as a free 1 month trial. So I immediately dragged it into the Wastebin (I've used it before) and Emptied it, then installed NeoOffice.
NeoOffice seems to read DOC and XLS files fine, but you may want to keep a backup of them anyway in case some are tricky.
mindgam3 said:
don't need to buy now, but the value of my pc laptop i'm going to sell to partly pay for it will go down waiting til october. Don't really need it until I go into my final year at uni in september so I'm guessing the best plan will be to wait.
I have a lot of documents in office formats (.doc/.xls) etc. Will I need to convert these or do i need to buy ms office for mac if i move to a macbook?
I have a lot of documents in office formats (.doc/.xls) etc. Will I need to convert these or do i need to buy ms office for mac if i move to a macbook?
Office 08 for mac is out soon as well. Probably quite reasonablethrough uni/ edu discount. ALso buy the mac through uni, nice discouont as well.
bobthemonkey said:
mindgam3 said:
don't need to buy now, but the value of my pc laptop i'm going to sell to partly pay for it will go down waiting til october. Don't really need it until I go into my final year at uni in september so I'm guessing the best plan will be to wait.
I have a lot of documents in office formats (.doc/.xls) etc. Will I need to convert these or do i need to buy ms office for mac if i move to a macbook?
I have a lot of documents in office formats (.doc/.xls) etc. Will I need to convert these or do i need to buy ms office for mac if i move to a macbook?
Office 08 for mac is out soon as well. Probably quite reasonablethrough uni/ edu discount. ALso buy the mac through uni, nice discouont as well.
Indeed, £858 I was quoted for the black Macbook. At £999 it was on the pricey side, but at that price it undercuts any of the pc laptop competition by quite some way from what I've seen.
I bought a MacBook when they first came out last year, white, 1.83 Core Duo, 512MB RAM.
Absolutely love it. I have a PC as well but I use once a week at the very most. The only cloud on the horizon is that I have to use Windows at work but hey ho, I often take my laptop with me anyway and work on that, because once you've gone Mac you'll never go back...
I recently upgraded it to 2GB RAM as I'm often running Dreamweaver, Fireworks and various other applications all at the same time and OS X likes as much RAM as you can throw at it. It absolutely flies now.
As for waiting? Well, if you need it now, you might as well buy now. If you don't, wait. There is *always* something better, something faster, something even more exciting around the corner (especially with Apple) but if you bought one of these machines now it isn't going to be out of date when Leopard (the next version of OS X) comes out in October - newer versions of OS X typically run faster on the same hardware than the older versions anyway.
Absolutely love it. I have a PC as well but I use once a week at the very most. The only cloud on the horizon is that I have to use Windows at work but hey ho, I often take my laptop with me anyway and work on that, because once you've gone Mac you'll never go back...
I recently upgraded it to 2GB RAM as I'm often running Dreamweaver, Fireworks and various other applications all at the same time and OS X likes as much RAM as you can throw at it. It absolutely flies now.
As for waiting? Well, if you need it now, you might as well buy now. If you don't, wait. There is *always* something better, something faster, something even more exciting around the corner (especially with Apple) but if you bought one of these machines now it isn't going to be out of date when Leopard (the next version of OS X) comes out in October - newer versions of OS X typically run faster on the same hardware than the older versions anyway.
I bought a Black Macbook in the US in Dec 06, it took a while to get used to a few Mac quirks however its way better than Windows. Cost me around £800.00 all in.
One bit of advice, unless you really like the look of the Black then I would go for the White version with 80GB HD and save the £100, its a lot to pay for an extra 40Gb. You could spend the £100 on a nice external drive or extra ram. I wish I had done this as the Black finish always has sticky finger prints all over it! Black does look good though!
Go for it, you will not regret it!
One bit of advice, unless you really like the look of the Black then I would go for the White version with 80GB HD and save the £100, its a lot to pay for an extra 40Gb. You could spend the £100 on a nice external drive or extra ram. I wish I had done this as the Black finish always has sticky finger prints all over it! Black does look good though!
Go for it, you will not regret it!
Another saving tip is to spec the cheapest memory and disk option (tho you may want the DVD writer), as upgrading these (via super duper) in a macbook is easier than falling off a log. Sata drives tho kids.
US is also cheaper + I like the keyboard layout, IIRC laptop personal import duty is zero rated so you can keep the box too
US is also cheaper + I like the keyboard layout, IIRC laptop personal import duty is zero rated so you can keep the box too
Cheers for the replies.
I have also been looking into boot camp and parallel for running the odd windows app when needed, quick CAD and simulation programs. Anyone had any experience of them?
From what I can gather boot camp is faster and better for games/video editing but you have to restart to run it - should be shipping built into the next OS X.
Parallel is only good for smaller apps like office stuff but you can run it as a new window within OS X and it costs £50.
My question is, can you use the same windows partition to run both boot camp and parallel?
Also, do you have to install windows programs in the windows parition, and can you share files across the different partitions. I.e can you put all your MP3's on your OS X partition and access them when running windows?
Finally, is the macbook capable of running the 20" and 23" cinema display without any slow down?
I have also been looking into boot camp and parallel for running the odd windows app when needed, quick CAD and simulation programs. Anyone had any experience of them?
From what I can gather boot camp is faster and better for games/video editing but you have to restart to run it - should be shipping built into the next OS X.
Parallel is only good for smaller apps like office stuff but you can run it as a new window within OS X and it costs £50.
My question is, can you use the same windows partition to run both boot camp and parallel?
Also, do you have to install windows programs in the windows parition, and can you share files across the different partitions. I.e can you put all your MP3's on your OS X partition and access them when running windows?
Finally, is the macbook capable of running the 20" and 23" cinema display without any slow down?
mindgam3 said:
My question is, can you use the same windows partition to run both boot camp and parallel?
Also, do you have to install windows programs in the windows parition, and can you share files across the different partitions. I.e can you put all your MP3's on your OS X partition and access them when running windows?
Finally, is the macbook capable of running the 20" and 23" cinema display without any slow down?
Also, do you have to install windows programs in the windows parition, and can you share files across the different partitions. I.e can you put all your MP3's on your OS X partition and access them when running windows?
Finally, is the macbook capable of running the 20" and 23" cinema display without any slow down?
Yes, you can use the same Windows install for both bootcamp and parallels.
Yes, windows programs have to be installed under windows.
Yes, you could give windows (parallels) full access to your OS X partition, but you *really* don't want to do that. The best way to share files between the two is simply drag and drop when needed.
Don't know about the display. Don't see why not though.
Edited by Strangely Brown on Wednesday 25th April 21:11
mindgam3 said:
Finally, is the macbook capable of running the 20" and 23" cinema display without any slow down?
I think only the 30" cinema display requires nutty graphics cards (which are clearly no go on a laptop). I run an external display at 1600x1200 next to my laptop and it's just fine. No obvious slowdowns there, and mine's an original 1.8GHz Core Duo. You may need a $20/£20 adapter to convert to a full size DVI-D connector though - the laptop uses a miniature version to save space in the case. Not sure if they come supplied or not these days.
The one application I still struggle with is Finder - I happen to think that Windows Explorer is better thought out if you have a lot of files to organise. However, PathFinder at www.cocoatech.com is a very fine (and cheap) life saver in this regard.
mindgam3 said:
I have also been looking into boot camp and parallel for running the odd windows app when needed, quick CAD and simulation programs. Anyone had any experience of them?
I use Vista through bootcamp on my MacBook Pro, and it's more or less OK. Biggest problem is that the external monitor port doesn't work - might be different on the MacBook though, and it'll hopefully be fixed before it comes out of Beta. jamieboy said:
mindgam3 said:
I have also been looking into boot camp and parallel for running the odd windows app when needed, quick CAD and simulation programs. Anyone had any experience of them?
I use Vista through bootcamp on my MacBook Pro, and it's more or less OK. Biggest problem is that the external monitor port doesn't work - might be different on the MacBook though, and it'll hopefully be fixed before it comes out of Beta. That sounds like a driver problem rather than anything to do with Bootcamp. This suggests downloading the video driver from ATI:
[url]http://blogs.msdn.com/hans_vb/archive[/url]
rustyspit said:
jamieboy said:
Biggest problem is that the external monitor port doesn't work - might be different on the MacBook though, and it'll hopefully be fixed before it comes out of Beta.
That sounds like a driver problem rather than anything to do with Bootcamp. This suggests downloading the video driver from ATI:
[url]http://blogs.msdn.com/hans_vb/archive[/url]
It is a driver problem, but it's using the Apple-ised ATI drivers that come with bootcamp beta 1.2, so I'd class it as a bootcamp problem. When I was using beta 1.1.2 I had a load more problems and found the blog you've listed, but I tried what they suggested and it still didn't work - bear in mind that blog was talking about beta 2 of Vista, whereas I'm using the release version. I think I read somewhere that it works if you use a DVI connector.
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