MacBook.

[InfamousOverstander]

I'd buy a Mac... if Apple stopped smelling their own farts.

I mean those Apple vs Mac commcerials are just painful to watch, playing on their own "artsy" Mac user stereotype.

Bullshit.

I agree. they are very painful to watch and i LOVE IT!!

I have a macbook and it's BRILLIANT.!

[hollaforadolla]

I'd buy a Mac... if Apple stopped smelling their own farts.

I mean those Apple vs Mac commcerials are just painful to watch, playing on their own "artsy" Mac user stereotype.

Bullshit.

apple vs mac commercial?

[vvoc]

my current dell is dying....im thinking about hoping on the macwagon too, do you guys recommend i buy one soon or try to wait till this new os comes out? what is the new os like any specs? also are there any ways to keep the heat down on them? i hear they do heat up pretty badly... thanks!

[maxmax]

my current dell is dying....im thinking about hoping on the macwagon too, do you guys recommend i buy one soon or try to wait till this new os comes out? what is the new os like any specs? also are there any ways to keep the heat down on them? i hear they do heat up pretty badly... thanks!

both macbook / macbook pro have been updated recently and are 'safe to buy.' you can see features of leopard on apple's website. a lot of improvements seem to be under the hood. upgrading the os on a mac is easy and leopard will only cost $129. if they have the same student price as tiger it's only $69 if you qualify for an educational discount. there is a program called smcfancontrol that lets you speed up the fans if you have a problem with the heat.

[twistedtrees]

power wise the black book is also identical to the entry level pro, same amount of L2 cache and everything. If like me, you won't be doing heavy video editing or gaming, that extra video ram isn't that important.

..

OK, I am planning on doing some heavy video editing. I'll be getting the student discount on Final Cut & Avid Express Pro. Also, for school I've been told that I'll be using CS 2 or3 so I should max out the ram.

However I have a friend who does IT for his work and he's been hooking up his production department with just macbooks & maxing the ram. He's told me not to buy one without letting him help me. He's also suggested a refurb with the Apple Care plan.

So based on this, does anybody recommend pimping out a black Macbook, or just getting a refurbed 15" MBPro & upping the ram?

Also, I will be getting a separate display because I need the dual monitors for editing. Is this possible with either? I'm assuming it is, but want to be sure because if not I will definitely need a bigger screen. Thanks.

[polishmike]

For video editing you should get a Macbook Pro. Just wait till the end of the summer and they might have a deal like last year where you get an ipod for free when you buy the laptop. You can sell the ipod and it will cover the ram. You also get a student discount at the Apple store.

New iMacs are coming out this summer so maybe something else will be announced as well. You should wait with your purchase till then.

[BodiesOfLight]

Mine's in the mail (MacBook Pro--graphic designer student).

I've had a none stop boner for it.

[Sabrosa]

Just wait till the end of the summer and they might have a deal like last year where you get an ipod for free when you buy the laptop. You can sell the ipod and it will cover the ram. You also get a student discount at the Apple store.

Right now (until September, I believe), with a student ID you can get a $200 rebate off an iPod Nano as well as some sort of printer rebate.

I've been thinking about getting a Macbook as my next laptop, but I may wait until next summer to finally upgrade. This crappy Dell that I have now works well enough for my current needs...the only thing really annoying about it is no USB2.0. The old USB is archaically slow for moving large files back and forth.

[polishmike]

I think by now everyone knows that I like Apple over PCs but to be honest I would never recommend a regular MacBook to a friend (client is another thing ), Pro is the only way to go.

[misterpretender]

I think by now everyone knows that I like Apple over PCs but to be honest I would never recommend a regular MacBook to a friend (client is another thing ), Pro is the only way to go.

I totally agree....I've had my macpro for almost two months and I'm loving it. It's so easy to use and it's heaps faster than the ordinary PC out there...It's worth every penny I paid for it...

[twistedtrees]

thanks. I'll be getting one in mid august, so I guess I'll be good for that iPod nano.

Anybody else look at the student discount page where it says you can only get 1 of pretty much any hardware per year, but you can get unlimited iPods with the discount? I'm wondering if it would be worth investing in some & ebaying them for a few measly dollars profit. But I hate ebay, really. Unless it's your full-time gig, you only make scraps.

[polishmike]

I'm wondering if it would be worth investing in some & ebaying them for a few measly dollars profit. But I hate ebay, really. Unless it's your full-time gig, you only make scraps.

Not worth it unless you value you time very low, you're not going to make much money. iPods are still pretty expensive in some parts of Europe so if you have good contacts there you can make few bucks. Few years ago I took 6 iPods to Poland and they paid for my plane tickets and some.

[black.shadow]

OK, I am planning on doing some heavy video editing. I'll be getting the student discount on Final Cut & Avid Express Pro. Also, for school I've been told that I'll be using CS 2 or3 so I should max out the ram.

However I have a friend who does IT for his work and he's been hooking up his production department with just macbooks & maxing the ram. He's told me not to buy one without letting him help me. He's also suggested a refurb with the Apple Care plan.

So based on this, does anybody recommend pimping out a black Macbook, or just getting a refurbed 15" MBPro & upping the ram?

Also, I will be getting a separate display because I need the dual monitors for editing. Is this possible with either? I'm assuming it is, but want to be sure because if not I will definitely need a bigger screen. Thanks.

For serious video editing a macbook will not be sufficient. The graphics cards are too weak. Your best bet is a desktop but a mackbook pro will do much better than the macbook.

[Heroshima]

Recently picked up a macbook and i'm in love with it. So great, only beef is battery life. Think i might have to upgrade to a better one. Still have my dell upstairs but never turn it on anymore. Mac all day

[spinmyworld]

how long is the battery lifetime on a macbook if you're just browsing the internet, listening to music and maybe working in photoshop a bit? I don't need an exact answer, just what you macbook users would estimate.

[phen3N]

anyone have this problem? i guess i have heavy wrists or something cuz the plastic kinda chipped on the edges. not only that, but the macbook is really sloowww. i shouldve gotten the mb pro...

[Guest chemi]

yep, same exact thing happened to mine after the first month of hard wear. if you've saved the piece, you could always just superglue it back on.

[dismalfuture]

phen3N, is yours one of the first ever MB's that came out? I had the same problem on my white MB, and mine was slow as shit too, my previous Powerbook G4 felt faster. My MB eventually got stolen and I don't really miss it, it was a piece of shit.

I'm holding tight to see what this mini-notebook they're coming out with is gonna be like, I'll probably cop.

[phen3N]

ya, its the older macbook that has the core duo processor, not core 2 duo. i wanna upgrade to the pro since its faster and has better resolution/screen size, but im scared that something new will be released right after i robocop it

[Advantage]

The only reason why I won't go for a macbook is the Video Card. Everything's great, then videocard shits everything up. Don't do macbook if you plan to use it for any graphic intensive application.

[CactusArmy]

Is it just me, or does the mac notebooks seem slower ever since Leopard. I restarted the MB and MBP at the apple store the other day and man they look alot longer than usual. Also the OS seems abit laggy. It wasn't just on the day either, I've tried them on other occasions and it seems the case.

Also for anyone thinking of buying anything now, I would wait it out til next year. They're definitely gonna be putting out some new stuff or if not at least they'll refresh the current batch of MBP's.

[hxcxor]

Leopard is most certainly much snappier than previous OS's. It's likely just the overuse and idiotic general public causing the hiccups on the Apple Store display models.

[freecat]

On my white basic macbook with 1gig of ram, Leopard gave me serious speed bump. The only problem I have is that the battery died (I left it unplugged for 2 month this summer ), and also that Safari crashes like everyday or 2 days, fortunately I have Saft which saves my tabs and windows (but could also be responsible of the crashes !).

If your macbook is getting slow, delete the preferences for the apps you use the most, (in user/library/preferences), make a full maintenant in onyx, reset the pram and leave a lot of free space. RAM is quite cheap nowaday, extra ram on a mac is never a waste of money.

About the dirtiness, I tried rubber and don't have any special one for cleaning. But I doesn't look like new yet. Any recommandation ?

[hxcxor]

RAM is quite cheap nowaday, extra ram on a mac is never a waste of money.

QFT. I also have the basic white Macbook, and adding another gig of ram certainly helped quite a bit. I don't do much work on mine that requires the extra memory, but I tend to have many things open at once (Ableton, Firefox/Safari, Unison, iTunes) and it all starts to add up pretty quickly!

[damachee]

VLC crashes regularly on leopard

[Guest Goose25]

Hey all, time to let you all in on some little secrets to keep your macs running sweety.

I hear so often "I just bought a mac and now its slow - I should have kept my PC"...

The reason why your mac slows down is all the great new apps you have put on there. The mac architecture is very precise and you need to let your mac know you have added new apps or it gets confused and slows down badly.

Do this:

1. Download MainMenu here http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17111

2. Install it and it places a small button top right of your Finder bar

3. Under Rebuild choose Update prebindings

This reconnects you architecture up with all your new bits and speeds you up.

Then, once a month run the rest of the MainMenu options and you should be sweet.

[Felix]

^ thanks man!

[Guest Goose25]

^ thanks man!

No problem, gald it's helping.

-> Make sure you do this as well (from this link http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/11/21/maintenance.html ) once a month or so:

"Open the Disk Utility located in your Utilities folder and click on the First Aid tab. Then, select the Mac OS X partition - not the whole hard drive - and click on Repair Permissions. You do not need to Verify first."

[sidneylo]

^^ Listen to this man, this is how he optimizes Superfuture when it's down...

[likwidsix]

anyone have this problem? i guess i have heavy wrists or something cuz the plastic kinda chipped on the edges. not only that, but the macbook is really sloowww. i shouldve gotten the mb pro...

i've got the black macbook as well and its cracked in the exact same spot.

in terms of performance:

i upgraded to 2gb ram (big difference, i would put more but 2gb is max on macbooks)

i also upgraded to a 7200rpm hard drive, it decreases battery life a bit but apps launch must faster, especially office/photoshop

now it runs great