New to Apple, need some guidance
Sorry if this is in the wrong section - please move if so.
Hello, this is my first time posting on your forums. I bought a compaq laptop last fall after debating over getting a windows or mac based machine. Fearing compatibility issues, I chose the Compaq. Well, with a year and a half of college under my belt, I've come to realize that it was a foolish decision, especially with MacBook's ability to natively boot windows xp thanks to the intel cpu, and would like to revisit my options.
I've looked through the reviews I've found on google, and they're all for the 13" macbooks with 512 mb of ram - I haven't found a single one that's been updated for the 1 gig of ram that's now included. The reviews said apps ran a bit sluggishly with the 512 mb, which is understandable, but having never been a mac user before I was wondering how a gig works. I'm guessing that since it's an intel processor then it's going to act like a windows machine, though I don't know how OS X utilizes its memory. I was told once that the more memory you could throw at the old Powermac processors (correct me if that's the wrong name), the better and more efficient they ran. I was also told that OS X utilizes its memory much more efficiently than Windows XP, which wouldn't be too hard to believe.
As you can tell, I'm a bit confused and would love any links to updated reviews or personal, hands on experience. I'd really like to get a macbook (non-pro) this Christmas for myself, but don't want to pay the hefty pricetag for the black one. Through my college's student discount I can get the 2.0 ghz, 1 gig 13" white one for $1,199, which I'm assuming is a pretty good deal.
Thanks to anyone who reads the entire post!
Tommy
Hello, this is my first time posting on your forums. I bought a compaq laptop last fall after debating over getting a windows or mac based machine. Fearing compatibility issues, I chose the Compaq. Well, with a year and a half of college under my belt, I've come to realize that it was a foolish decision, especially with MacBook's ability to natively boot windows xp thanks to the intel cpu, and would like to revisit my options.
I've looked through the reviews I've found on google, and they're all for the 13" macbooks with 512 mb of ram - I haven't found a single one that's been updated for the 1 gig of ram that's now included. The reviews said apps ran a bit sluggishly with the 512 mb, which is understandable, but having never been a mac user before I was wondering how a gig works. I'm guessing that since it's an intel processor then it's going to act like a windows machine, though I don't know how OS X utilizes its memory. I was told once that the more memory you could throw at the old Powermac processors (correct me if that's the wrong name), the better and more efficient they ran. I was also told that OS X utilizes its memory much more efficiently than Windows XP, which wouldn't be too hard to believe.
As you can tell, I'm a bit confused and would love any links to updated reviews or personal, hands on experience. I'd really like to get a macbook (non-pro) this Christmas for myself, but don't want to pay the hefty pricetag for the black one. Through my college's student discount I can get the 2.0 ghz, 1 gig 13" white one for $1,199, which I'm assuming is a pretty good deal.
Thanks to anyone who reads the entire post!
Tommy
Comments
I'd say you can probably ignore any reports of 'a bit sluggish' on 512MB. The added RAM will make a big difference.
You will be happy with the macbook.
I've been reading where word processing programs have been running sluggishly - why is that? Do you really need 2 gigs to run something like word?
No you can run it on 512MB but 1GB is probably the minimum you want to use for having a smooth running machine and that's probably why Apple made it default now.
Microsoft Office isn't a universal binary, with rosetta having to translate it, it slows down. It isn't terrible, but it isn't good. I've been getting familiar with pages because of it
MS Office is sluggish even native PPC on my dual G5. The mess of kludged-up Carbon porting combined with MS's p-code approach really eats up a lot of cycles to do basically a simple thing. Before I upgraded from Excel X to Excel 2004, just moving the insertion point cursor in a spreadsheet cell had a delay of about 1/2 to 1 second!
Thanks for the info. How do updates on OS X work? When a new version comes out do you have to repurchase the os (like windows)? What about software updates?
Any 'minor' update (10.4.5 to 10.4.6, for example) is free.
Any 'major' update (10.4.x to 10.5) has to be paid for.
All free updates will (or should) appear in Software Update.
Ex: overheating, melting AC adaptor, bulginig on one side, random shutdowns, cracks, etc.
I've been reading about all the problems that occurred with the first macbooks. Has Apple released a revision since then, or could a macbook I buy today potentially have the same problems?
Ex: overheating, melting AC adaptor, bulginig on one side, random shutdowns, cracks, etc.
The Core 2 Duo was a recent revision of the laptop. There may have been more revisions internally but that's at least one official revision. By now I'd say that most of the problems have probably been dealt with. That is not to say you are guaranteed to get a good one of course but the Macbook has definitely been updated and I don't hear so much of the issues I used to. They fixed the random shutdown issue too via a software update.