MacBook.

[blm14]

Who says I paid for anything?

[Pennsylvania]

Yup, Apple products are more expensive, but I wouldn't call it a "surcharge". Considering you do get iLife included with the package and don't get all the crap many PC companies load their computers up with, it's really not a bad deal. Macs are also pretty reliable and unless there's some major shift with them (like going from PowerPC to Intel) they tend to stay current for a while.

I'm the owner of two MacBooks, one regular model and one Air. Use the Air mostly for business and travel; the regular MacBook is older and usually gets used either for backing stuff up, for work at home that isn't on the Air, and for those times when I need to use a CD on the Air. Pleased with both and probably will wind up getting another MacBook of some sort in a few years once the Core 2 Duo gets phased out for good.

[herpsky]

I have an early 2011 macbook pro (13").

I want to upgrade the RAM from 4gb to 8gb.

Does my computer have two 2gb RAM sticks?

Will I have to purchase an 8gb upgrade kit that has two 4gb RAM sticks or can I just buy a single 4gb stick and add it to the existing configuration.

Thanks guys

[shekki]

Anyone here modded their optical drive to fit an SSD? If so what is an reasonably priced SSD (around 60-120gb) that will work well with OSX?

I just upgraded last week. Bought a 64gb kingston v100 for 64$. It's not the best, but for 1$ a gig it wasn't a bad deal for my aging non-unibody mbp. I bought a drive caddy from ebay, replaced the opticaldrive, and it worked perfectly. I'm still in the process of transitioning all my stuff, but the difference is definitely worth it.

[sunkenshoes]

i dont know if this is the right place for this question, but i couldnt think of any other topic that would.

i want to buy this one app from the appstore. i dont have a creditcard and paypal doesnt work for my country as a payment option.

i only need one app thats 99 cents in the store and buying a $10 gift cards seems kind of stupid to do.

does someone maybe have a $1 left on a giftcard or something? i will pay you for it.

or does apple block multiple users on one giftcard?

[blm14]

It comes with 2GB sticks installed, so you need to go with the former option. I just did this myself but I'm not sure it was worth it. I haven't noticed much of a performance bump.

Memory upgrades generally don't make huge performances differences unless you have so little (or so much stuff running) that your machine is swapping all the time.

If you're not doing intense graphical/video work, or doing a lot of gaming, 2-4GB is _plenty_

[Pennsylvania]

i dont know if this is the right place for this question, but i couldnt think of any other topic that would.

i want to buy this one app from the appstore. i dont have a creditcard and paypal doesnt work for my country as a payment option.

i only need one app thats 99 cents in the store and buying a $10 gift cards seems kind of stupid to do.

does someone maybe have a $1 left on a giftcard or something? i will pay you for it.

or does apple block multiple users on one giftcard?

When you authorize a gift card, it's tied into the account you use it with. I doubt it's transferrable, as the money from the card goes right into the account.

If I were you, I'd go ahead and buy the $10 gift card. You'll find, over time, that you'll probably want a few more apps. Alternately, you can use the card for some music or TV shows, maybe a movie rental.

Memory upgrades generally don't make huge performances differences unless you have so little (or so much stuff running) that your machine is swapping all the time.

If you're not doing intense graphical/video work, or doing a lot of gaming, 2-4GB is _plenty_

I can vouch for 2GB being plenty. I've got 2GB in both MacBooks (Air and regular) and do fine with it. Both Macs usually get used for office-type apps, web browsing, and the occasional movie. I do use iMovie on the regular MacBook and have created some longer projects, but have done fine RAM-wise.

If you want a performance boost, you're better off swapping out a hard drive for SSD.

[hugoagassi]

wasn't there also a macbook air thread? can't find it

[blm14]

If you want a performance boost, you're better off swapping out a hard drive for SSD.

SSD is great for a boot-only drive but I would NEVER keep stuff that I really care about on SSD. They suffer the same issues that flash/thumb drives suffer from, namely write endurance. I have a bunch of servers that have either database files (oracle) or O/S's on SSD. I recommended against keeping the database stuff on SSD but was overruled on that one.

If you had you MacOS on SSD and then a traditional drive for your data that would be fine. Another good alternative is to move your swap to some kind of solid state memory. I do that on almost every machine I have anyways, just on principle.

[freecat]

they do some 2.5" hdd with a few gigabyte of ssd, this is a good concept. i'd love to have like a 8gb ssd inside for the OS on my 500gb 7200rpm 2.5" hdd.

[blm14]

That would be sweet admittedly. But I don't know how "nicely" macos plays with O/S on a different drive from applications and data. Linux does that very cleanly

[freecat]

i had 2 hdd on my now defunct macbook and it worked well. i'm selling my mac mini soon and will still have my lenovo x201s. i plan on keeping a light w7 partition but using mostly linux.

[Akura]

Anyone know of a way to go from Leopard to Lion without having to purchase Snow Leopard. I think it's dumb that I have to purchase Snow Leopard so I can get Mac App Store just to upgrade to Lion.

[Bislane]

RIP Macbook

^You should be able to just get a friend's OS disc if they got a mac after the 6.6 update, that's all it's going to take honestly then you're good to go. it was really fast download even on my tiger macbook.

[youre sketch]

anyone has Lion yet? I kinda want it but am more preoccupied with putting 7 on mine at teh momet.

[kiya]

anyone has Lion yet? I kinda want it but am more preoccupied with putting 7 on mine at teh momet.

I was going to install it but it seems there's a pretty hefty list of major software that doesn't work with it (Quicken, Checkout, etc..).

[youre sketch]

I figured it wouldnt be worth it right now.

kinda sad that the white macbook is gone now. all rook same now.

[madapaka]

I was going to install it but it seems there's a pretty hefty list of major software that doesn't work with it (Quicken, Checkout, etc..).

not necessarily a macbook queston more of a mac osx question..

are quicken/quickbooks on a mac different than their pc counterparts? i'm in the process of saving up for a mbp for school and i'm studying accounting but i'm afraid of the operating system making a difference.

[blm14]

^ install VirtualBox and run as many different operating systems as you want.

[madapaka]

yeah i figured i would do that if it really made a difference..

[blm14]

virtualbox is the schnizz. At work I have a machine with dual quad-core xeon X5355, which means I could run up to SEVEN vms at once if I wanted to. I usually only run one or two at a time, but I have:

Windows XP

Windows 7

Windows Vista

OSX 10.4

OSX 10.5

OSX 10.6

OSX Server 10.5

Redhat Enterprise 5

:-D

[madapaka]

jeez. what are the benefits of having 10.4 10.5 and 10.6?

[M4TM]

i was thinking about getting a mac mini for a media server - anyone do this? basically use it to hold all of my media and then plug it directly into my tv and AV system. is that a good solution?

I was going to go with apple tv (much cheaper), but currently i hold everything on an external hard drive hooked up to my airport extreme. i think it would lag too much to stream thru apple tv... or at least that's what the "genius" said.

[Bislane]

I'd do it just so that yeah you don't have to worry about your network and hogging bandwidth etc, it's just an expensive HD in that aspect but if you want to upgrade a PC at the same time it seems smart.

there's definitely cheaper options out there for just an external hard drive that plugs into your ps3 or whatever, though..

[sunkenshoes]

did anyone upgrade to Lion? Is it worth it? It's just $29 or something though.

[blm14]

i was thinking about getting a mac mini for a media server - anyone do this? basically use it to hold all of my media and then plug it directly into my tv and AV system. is that a good solution?

I was going to go with apple tv (much cheaper), but currently i hold everything on an external hard drive hooked up to my airport extreme. i think it would lag too much to stream thru apple tv... or at least that's what the "genius" said.

www.xbmc.org

[DaBestSpoona]

I have a 6tb(4 2tb drives raid 5) synology with sickbeard, couchpotato, sabnzb, and transmissions running, connected via gigabit to a tiny acer atom dual core running windows 7 and xbmc with hdmi as my htpc setup. It uses 46 watts total when on. With a mini as a htpc, its kinda over powered as a media server front end, and limited in storage as a full blown media server. Buying a boxee device with a cheap dual drive nas might be a better option than mini and cheaper.

[blm14]

^ we're on the same page. I have a revo 2700 (I think, it's the dual-core atom one) which cost me something absurdly cheap like $200. I'm using linux on it instead of windows but otherwise we have similar setups. I have a file server (running on a super low-powered celeron) with 8TB raid5 that has basically nothing on for operating system except a kernel, a samba server, openssh server and an x client...

[DaBestSpoona]

I have the revo 2700 too. how did you deal with the hdmi issue on linux? I could never get the resolution working right on my tv. With windows, everything worked out of the box. I went from a desktop running as a file server to a low powered nas and it reduced my electricity bill by 20-30 a month.

[M4TM]

cot damn... what language y'all speaking?!? i just want a simple set up! was thinking about getting a RAID something or other, but even that was a challenge. well, will study more. (+rep - thanks)