Buying a Mac/Upgrading in the future. Good or Bad?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I am still trying to make my decision on buying a MacBook.



I was told this earlier:





Thought you were worried about upgrading in the future. Not with a Mac. What you buy is what you get



What does he mean by this?

Is Mac not a good investment in terms of upgrades 5 years down the road?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    anyone have a thought here?
  • Reply 2 of 7
    trobertstroberts Posts: 702member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by austintx05 View Post


    Thought you were worried about upgrading in the future. Not with a Mac. What you buy is what you get



    I do not know what he meant by that.



    I have had my iBook for 3.5 years and I have had no problems with it so I think a Mac is an excellent investment. Even though the MacBooks, which you are still deciding to buy or not, were recently updated I would wait until after Steve Jobs gives his keynote speech at WWDC2007 before buying. No special reason other than the general rule is you do not purchase right before WWDC or MWSF.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    9secondko9secondko Posts: 929member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by troberts View Post


    I do not know what he meant by that.



    I have had my iBook for 3.5 years and I have had no problems with it so I think a Mac is an excellent investment. Even though the MacBooks, which you are still deciding to buy or not, were recently updated I would wait until after Steve Jobs gives his keynote speech at WWDC2007 before buying. No special reason other than the general rule is you do not purchase right before WWDC or MWSF.



    If you buy a notebook, Mac or PC, your upgrade options are limited. memory is the only thing most people can upgrade, while hard drives are a possibility, but out of the range of most folks. Excahnging hard drives will also void your warranty in some cases.



    CPU and GPU upgrades are impossible in Mac notebooks currently. As it is in almost all notebooks, be they PC or Mac. I suppose apple could make them more upgradeable, but then they would be a lot more bulky and probably not as structurally rigid.



    The iMac is also limited in upgradability, but is more flexible than the notebook.



    The Mac Pro desktop is a different stroy altogether. It is one of the most easily upgradable machines ever mass produced. (CPU, GPU, HDD, RAM, etc. can be upgraded. You will probably have some issues changing the Mobo though).



    The biggest bang for your buck in an upgrade is always going to be more RAM. so you are safe there. As for me, I prefer to max the thing out at purchase and therefore, it is always performing at optimum speed. But I usually wait a long time to buy until I have enough saved up.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    You need to get a tower if you want to really upgrade or expand easily. Still, processors and many other components do not upgrade easily and you void your warrantee. Other Macs allow you to do simple upgrades along with USB and Firewire add-on's, but if you really need new features in the future, you want to have the PCI-whatever ports.



    As for 5 years... I have found Mac hardware lasts pretty long and you don't need an upgrade as often as PC's do. I am amazed at how well OS X runs on my 400Mhz Pismo laptop. Still use it every day.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    poppetpoppet Posts: 90member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by troberts View Post


    I do not know what he meant by that.



    I have had my iBook for 3.5 years and I have had no problems with it so I think a Mac is an excellent investment. Even though the MacBooks, which you are still deciding to buy or not, were recently updated I would wait until after Steve Jobs gives his keynote speech at WWDC2007 before buying. No special reason other than the general rule is you do not purchase right before WWDC or MWSF.



    It does make sense to wait until the conferences I reckon. I am waiting for the change in imac design before I make that big purchase but in the mean time I got a macbook. Given that it has just been updated would that mean there is no such chance of another upgrade on the macbook for sometime???



    I hope they upgrade the imac at this conference. I love my macbook. I lucked out and managed to get the upgrades and a cheque back because my order was still open. As a first time mac user I am impressed with the ease and integration of all the applications I don't have to sit here surfing for the best downloads and I did indulge in .mac I know there are probably things out there that are better value for money but i love again how you can use it with the applications already on the computer no buggering about. I don't have time for all that.



    Hope you get what you want.



    J
  • Reply 6 of 7
    when is the conference?
  • Reply 7 of 7
    majormattmajormatt Posts: 1,077member
    June 11th
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