Mac Questions (again)

[Stag]

Alright, just want to bring this up since I have been a HUGE Mac proponent. As of about 11am today, my hard drive died. My Mac Book Pro is not yet 2 months old. I was on the phone with Apple Support and we tried everything and yielded no results.

Good news is I back up my data religiously so I lost about an hours worth of information, which = not much on Sunday morning. 2) Apple is so curious/concerned about the failure they are shipping me a brand new machine and taking my old one so the engineers can review it and try and diagnose the problem.

Bad news, I am with out a Mac for a week until the new one gets here and that will severly hamper my ability to earn money this week.

Well, thems the breaks of owning your own business.

 

[Chess Piece Face]

Switching over is easy. For what you stated, you don't need a Macbook Pro, and the air is too expensive and limited. Get a Macbook. They may be the "low end" but they are fantastic machines and I bet a "low end macbook" will beat your higher end windows laptops in many areas. Especially because they solidly run Leopard and they are not heavy. Save some cash - go for the Macbook.

 

[StolenThunder]

^ It should be noted that there are rumblings of a MacBook refresh in the summer. At the same time the hardware in the MacBook was just recently updated and there's no fun in always waiting.

Factor it in though.

 

[AliciaD496]

Hey, I'm back again. Thank you AGAIN for all the great advice.

I've been looking around at mac-forums as well, mostly just lurking and seeing what other people had to say as well. I'm amazed at the amount of derision leveled towards the Air! Mac fans really don't like it much do they?

OK...I'm not purchasing until I'm back in the States in June (it's simply cheaper and I'd be getting the proper plug adapter for home) so I may wait a little to see about this MacBook refresh is all about. Hopefully by the end of May more solid rumors will be made about the announcement and I'll have a more solid date and whether it's worth waiting until later in June to buy if there is a big change coming.

Over all I think I've pretty much made up my mind, though. I may take a closer look at the MacBooks again and ask my sister (a current Mac user who uses them daily for her work) but in general I'm 80% certain I'm probably going to get the Air. I'm not planning to play around with heavy duty photo-editing (photoshop), video-editing and my iTunes library isn't all that large. Aside from the Sims I don't play any games (I probably won't have time to play it anyway between school and the internship I'll be doing this summer). Basically during the months I'm using it as a sole computer it'll basically be for web-surfing and word processing with a possible presentation thrown in. If I go with the Air I'd definitely get the SuperDrive (I'd go nuts if I couldn't watch DVDs on weekends since I don't have TV here) so that cuts out the optical drive problem. Anyway...I know, I know it's against general consensus and that is giving me some pause.

The thing that really made up my mind? Carrying a backpack to school yesterday and having it feel like a ton just because I carried my laptop with me. The lightness and small size have really sold me on the Air. Yes, yes, yes, I recognize the MacBook isn't THAT much bigger or heavier and will take a closer look again. A few of my classmates use the MacBook and are very happy with it so that does weigh in its favor. I like the aluminum case, back-lit keyboard and larger track pad of the Air better, but that may be changed with this update right?

Anyway, still undecided a little but I'm really excited about this purchase either way.

 

[Lindley]

Alright, just want to bring this up since I have been a HUGE Mac proponent. As of about 11am today, my hard drive died. My Mac Book Pro is not yet 2 months old. I was on the phone with Apple Support and we tried everything and yielded no results.

Good news is I back up my data religiously so I lost about an hours worth of information, which = not much on Sunday morning. 2) Apple is so curious/concerned about the failure they are shipping me a brand new machine and taking my old one so the engineers can review it and try and diagnose the problem.

Bad news, I am with out a Mac for a week until the new one gets here and that will severly hamper my ability to earn money this week.

Well, thems the breaks of owning your own business.

Apple makes as many lemons as any other company. My brother used to have a first-gen iMac that was always having problems, while my machines have all been just fine.

Of course, given the track record I have to wonder if that doesn't say more about my brother than the hardware.....

 

[Chess Piece Face]

Alicia, one thing you will want to do is get more RAM. But don't buy it from Apple, they charge way too much. They basically ship all their computer with a minimum of RAM and everybody seems to buy it elsewhere.

I have a Macbook with 2 Gig of RAM, (it shipped with one) and a Mac Pro with 2 gig (It shipped with 2) and it is not enough for what I do on either computer. But I do heavy photoshop, video editing, flash, etc.

I too, carry a backpack full of books, plus one or sometimes two toolboxes of art supplies PLUS my Macbook, and the macbook's weight is not the problem. The problem is more in handling how to carry all the stuff. Perhaps you should look into one of those backpacks that have a space for a laptop in them, that would eliminate carrying the laptop seperatly at all.

Just some things to think about. Remember, if everybody is saying the air is not worth it, there must be something to that. I personally would get a macbook and use the money you would've spent on the Air, extra drive etc for RAM and a nice carrybag or backpack.

Have fun, either way you're bound to love your machine because macs are amazing machines.

 

[StolenThunder]

The problem with the MacBook Air is that it's only just beyond proof-of-concept level at the moment. Yes it's sexy and yes it's small - but the hardware compromises entailed make it extremely expensive for the performance you get.

It has some big negative points: no Superdrive, very small hard drive space (64/80GB once you've installed the basics is not going to take you far), slow PATA access on the non-solid state, highly variable battery life (Ars was only getting 2.5hrs!!!), no user-replaceable battery, very few ports, slow CPU.

The MacBook is about half the price (and something like 1/5th if you compare base MacBook with SSD MBA!) and has a substantially bigger hard drive, a faster CPU, and a longer battery life. Plus a few more ports. And there's a redesign in the air for this summer. It's only 2.5lbs more. Which really isn't a lot.

I sound a little serious there on the MacBook Air. It's a little misleading because if I had the money I'd probably get one myself over a MB or an MBP. However, I already own a top-end Alu iMac. I wouldn't get a MBA as a primary computer - not until a substantial hardware refresh.

Alicia, one thing you will want to do is get more RAM. But don't buy it from Apple, they charge way too much. They basically ship all their computer with a minimum of RAM and everybody seems to buy it elsewhere.

It should be noted that the RAM on the MBA is soldered onto the board and not user-replaceable or upgradeable.

Ultimately all Apple models are good computers - it's just a price/performance/need thing.

 

[David cgc]

Alicia, one thing you will want to do is get more RAM. But don't buy it from Apple, they charge way too much. They basically ship all their computer with a minimum of RAM and everybody seems to buy it elsewhere.

Otherworld Computing is the best place I know of to get RAM for Macs, as far as price and value go.

However, the MacBook Air is too tightly packed for RAM to be user-upgradable. It's not a tenth as doable as it is for a MacBook or MacBook Pro (where, through practice, I've gotten down to being able to do a total RAM swap in about two minutes).