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-- [Somewhat OT]: Considering a Mac....

[Somewhat OT]: Considering a Mac....

No, RANN and Eric J, I'm not going to switch. I'm happy with my self-built PC and W7. However, our 5-6 yo HP (AMD64/2GB/W7 32-bit) laptop is getting on in years and it's pretty much become my wife and son's computer. They use it primarily for surfing the web, emails, and my wife occasionally uses it for work with MS Word and Excel, and she has some geneology and photo editing software that she runs - nothing that requires a powerhouse processor or more than 2GB of RAM. The biggest problem with it is that our son likes going to these educational websites, which bombard it with adware/spyware and the computer starts crawling like a turtle every few months and I have to go in and either clean it up or reinstall everything. So, we love our iPads so much that I'm considering replacing it with a secondhand MacBook, which I see selling for $500-600 pretty regularly in my neck of the woods.

My questions then (finally!) are, which model/OS should I be looking for (or avoiding)? Aside from the iPads and iPods, we're Mac virgins and, as mentioned above, we don't need a very powerful laptop, just a low-maintenance one. It would need to run MS Word/Excel, so I assume that means Bootcamp? And, we use Adobe PhotoShop CS2 and Lightroom. I will also probably load it up with PT9 and possibly Sonar (if possible with Bootcamp) or maybe even consider Logic Express for very light production work (e.g., scratch tracks, some tracking) when travelling. The only other consideration that I can think of is that it has to network with my W7 PC to access our photos (I have a 1TB HD dedicated to our photos) and another dedicated backup drive - is that going to be an issue?

Re: [Somewhat OT]: Considering a Mac....

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik No, RANN and Eric J, I'm not going to switch. I'm happy with my self-built PC and W7. However, our 5-6 yo HP (AMD64/2GB/W7 32-bit) laptop is getting on in years and it's pretty much become my wife and son's computer. They use it primarily for surfing the web, emails, and my wife occasionally uses it for work with MS Word and Excel, and she has some geneology and photo editing software that she runs - nothing that requires a powerhouse processor or more than 2GB of RAM. The biggest problem with it is that our son likes going to these educational websites, which bombard it with adware/spyware and the computer starts crawling like a turtle every few months and I have to go in and either clean it up or reinstall everything. So, we love our iPads so much that I'm considering replacing it with a secondhand MacBook, which I see selling for $500-600 pretty regularly in my neck of the woods. My questions then (finally!) are, which model/OS should I be looking for (or avoiding)? Aside from the iPads and iPods, we're Mac virgins and, as mentioned above, we don't need a very powerful laptop, just a low-maintenance one. It would need to run MS Word/Excel, so I assume that means Bootcamp? And, we use Adobe PhotoShop CS2 and Lightroom. I will also probably load it up with PT9 and possibly Sonar (if possible with Bootcamp) or maybe even consider Logic Express for very light production work (e.g., scratch tracks, some tracking) when travelling. The only other consideration that I can think of is that it has to network with my W7 PC to access our photos (I have a 1TB HD dedicated to our photos) and another dedicated backup drive - is that going to be an issue?

Macbook Air. It's amazingly fast and pretty much exactly what you want and need.

That would be waaaay overkill.

Will ask Anakratis, he just recently added new Mac to his collection lol and he is really, really happy.

Darek

Re: [Somewhat OT]: Considering a Mac....

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik No, RANN and Eric J, I'm not going to switch. I'm happy with my self-built PC and W7. However, our 5-6 yo HP (AMD64/2GB/W7 32-bit) laptop is getting on in years and it's pretty much become my wife and son's computer. They use it primarily for surfing the web, emails, and my wife occasionally uses it for work with MS Word and Excel, and she has some geneology and photo editing software that she runs - nothing that requires a powerhouse processor or more than 2GB of RAM. The biggest problem with it is that our son likes going to these educational websites, which bombard it with adware/spyware and the computer starts crawling like a turtle every few months and I have to go in and either clean it up or reinstall everything. So, we love our iPads so much that I'm considering replacing it with a secondhand MacBook, which I see selling for $500-600 pretty regularly in my neck of the woods. My questions then (finally!) are, which model/OS should I be looking for (or avoiding)? Aside from the iPads and iPods, we're Mac virgins and, as mentioned above, we don't need a very powerful laptop, just a low-maintenance one. It would need to run MS Word/Excel, so I assume that means Bootcamp? And, we use Adobe PhotoShop CS2 and Lightroom. I will also probably load it up with PT9 and possibly Sonar (if possible with Bootcamp) or maybe even consider Logic Express for very light production work (e.g., scratch tracks, some tracking) when travelling. The only other consideration that I can think of is that it has to network with my W7 PC to access our photos (I have a 1TB HD dedicated to our photos) and another dedicated backup drive - is that going to be an issue?

Damn, I saw the title and thought, he's seen the light finally

Macbook air is not a greta idea IMO. it has the lowest ratio of performance to value of any Mac. You're really paying for it's (lack of) weight, battery life, sleek design and portability (which in fairness is outstanding if that's your criteria).

I would try to get as new a macbook or MBP as you can. nothing older than 2008 though, as there were major changes (i.e. intel - and some software is now discontinuing support/updates etc for non intel macs).

Go snow leopard (which even if it doesn't have it is a painless install) not Lion (not so great for audio right now).

And no, you don't need to run bootcamp for office etc - all available on mac

I reckon, try to get a 2009, 2010 second hand macbook - should be in your price bracket and still powerful enough for basic producing on it. Will alst you a good few years. I have a friend with a 4 year old macbook and it's still going strong and we've even done minor production work on it.

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik That would be waaaay overkill.

.if that is overkill , then they are al overkill. that is their least powerful unit.

Thanks for the info RANN! What about the networking part - will I be expecting any major headaches trying to network a Mac with my PC? That's a pretty important consideration since, as mentioned, my PC has 6 HDs totalling around 4TB - that includes backup space for both computers and our photos, videos, and music, not to mention a shared printer. I really need the laptop to network seamlessly with it.

quote:

Originally posted by Looney4Clooney .if that is overkill , then they are al overkill. that is their least powerful unit.

I was meaning in terms of price and being the latest/coolest (AFAIK) model.

weird.. don't seem to be any MacBooks up on the apple refurbished store

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Thanks for the info RANN! What about the networking part - will I be expecting any major headaches trying to network a Mac with my PC? That's a pretty important consideration since, as mentioned, my PC has 6 HDs totalling around 4TB - that includes backup space for both computers and our photos, videos, and music, not to mention a shared printer. I really need the laptop to network seamlessly with it.

No, shouldn't really be any problems with networking a mac with a PC. I'm not an expert on networking but I've done it with my imac and PC laptop and it was super easy; you just have to allow access to the files in windows and on the mac. Let me know when you're ready to do it and I'll give you a guide. It's actually never been easier since snow leopard and Win7 came about. You can also do networked backups (i.e. backup the macbook to the PC drives) but I've never done it and don't know exactly how.

you might have to mess around with this app called SharePoints it helps a lot with networking on OSX. Also I wish they would add support for NTSF formatted disks..

Cool - thanks guys! If we decide to go with a Mac, I'll be taking you up on that, RANN.

As DJ RANN said, nothing before 2008. Very important to point that out.

I would imagine you would like something like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-MacBo...#ht_1622wt_1219

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Cool - thanks guys! If we decide to go with a Mac, I'll be taking you up on that, RANN.

the only thing i'd say is the macbook line has a high resale value so don't look at the price tag and think it's overkill, depending on how long you keep it 40-60% of it is recoup-able

If only this post was around when i got my macbook pro 07, bloody 07 model.

im thinking of updating mine as well i get a load of glitching unless thats logic 9

Cryo did you make a decision yet? where you heading with your choice?

quote:

Originally posted by meriter you might have to mess around with this app called SharePoints it helps a lot with networking on OSX. Also I wish they would add support for NTSF formatted disks..

I have support for NTFS on my mac, you just need to install add on, and it will give you that http://www.lifehack.org/articles/li...n-mac-os-x.html

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Thanks for the info RANN! What about the networking part - will I be expecting any major headaches trying to network a Mac with my PC? That's a pretty important consideration since, as mentioned, my PC has 6 HDs totalling around 4TB - that includes backup space for both computers and our photos, videos, and music, not to mention a shared printer. I really need the laptop to network seamlessly with it. I was meaning in terms of price and being the latest/coolest (AFAIK) model.

The Macbook Air is the latest, fairly inexpensive, and shockingly powerful:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/20/macb...011-benchmarks/

"The first benchmarks for the MacBook Air 2011 refresh (released alongside Lion) are rolling in, and they show that the Intel Core i5 processor in both the 13″ and 11″ variation are screamers. How fast? Well, just check out the Geekbench scores, which for both models are at least double the speed of the 2010 Core 2 Duo�s they replaced. In fact, the new MacBook Air�s are so fast that the speed of the new 1.7GHz Core i5 13″ model is faster than the 2010 MacBook Pro 17″ that was a 2.6GHz Core i7, as ElectricPig says:

To put these benchmarks into perspective, the 2010 17-inch 2.67 GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro scored 5423. For [$999] the 11-inch MacBook Air offers a benchmark on par with last year�s [$2499] 17-inch MacBook Pro."

They start at $1000, and they are by FAR Apple's coolest laptop, and their most recent. Tonnes of PC manufacturers are now trying to duplicate the Air.

quote:

Originally posted by Energy_3 Cryo did you make a decision yet? where you heading with your choice?

I haven't decided yet. It turns out that most of the Macbook Pros that I'm seeing in that price range are from 2006-07 and the 2008+'s are a little more. I'm not in a hurry, so we're going to just keep an eye out for a good deal and hopefully snatch one up over the next few months. In the meantime, I'm going to wipe the HP's OS and reinstall everything (again).

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik I haven't decided yet. It turns out that most of the Macbook Pros that I'm seeing in that price range are from 2006-07 and the 2008+'s are a little more. I'm not in a hurry, so we're going to just keep an eye out for a good deal and hopefully snatch one up over the next few months. In the meantime, I'm going to wipe the HP's OS and reinstall everything (again).

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