10-27-2004, 02:09 PM

Hey everybody!

I'm considering whether or not I should enter the world of mac. I've been using pc's for about 10 years, and i'm very satisfied with what i can do with it. However, now I'm considering laptops and it seems the new iBook-series could be my best bet, and, beeing an IT-student, I would also like to have some experience with the mac environment..
My problem is: I don't know anything about mac's whatsoever, and no idea how compatible they are with pc's. I know most progs have a mac counterpart, and you can do basically everything you can on a PC, but hardware etc.. Will 256MB of RAM and a 1,2GHz cpu be enough to run OSX smoothly when working with semi-heavy apps? Like photoshop editing and light home video editing? I hate the problems you get with win when running heavy tasks and have a long uptime, and want to get rid of these.. Also. I have a 250 GIG external drive that's formatted FAT32 to be able to RW from both *nix and win. Can mac handle other filesystems? If anyone have answers, any good tips, or maybe an URL where I can find some good info on how to be a mac newbie, I'd be forever grateful!

Sorry for the long post!
Thanks in advance!

10-27-2004, 02:22 PM

Macs like memory, you will probably want to upgrade from 256mb.

10-27-2004, 02:57 PM

ok, but is the increase in performance really worth the extra $100? extra ram cost ALOT for these babies!

Thanks though!

10-27-2004, 11:36 PM

Don't buy ram from Apple, buy it aftermarket, RAM is considered user serviceable so it doesn't void the warranty from what I hear.

10-28-2004, 12:07 AM

ok, but is the increase in performance really worth the extra $100? extra ram cost ALOT for these babies!

Thanks though!

Yeah, it's definitely worth it. All of my apps/games sped up 2-3x after upping the RAM from 256MB to 512MB. You'll definitely notice a huge difference. It's a huge speed difference, worth the $100 definitely.

10-28-2004, 12:12 AM

I would just get the standard built-in 256mb from apple then go to newegg.com to get another chip for the expansion slot, you can get 256mb for around $50 and 512mb for less than $100.

10-28-2004, 12:21 AM

I got my first Mac (G4 PowerBook) this past summer and it was a breeze to make the full swtich from PC to Mac as a big "IT head". I had used a G3 PowerMac at work for about 3 months for designing so while I was used to using macs, I still didn't know alot. Now I never use a PC for anything! Just do some research or gradually explore the OS and you'll figure things out, its really easy.

OSX can read from FAT32 and NTFS formatted drives, no problems there.

When I was making the switch I wanted a good site or tips, but I never really found/needed one. I just lurked and read forums and generally was able to figure out everything myself.

10-28-2004, 06:22 AM

Actually i Don't think that OS X can write to a NTFS drive, only read...

But if it's a FAT32 drive, there are no problems.
The only difficulties I've experienced is in writing my iMovie files to Fat32, for some reason OS X wouldn't let me do that...

But reading and copying normal files (to FAT 32 and unix drives) is no problem whatsoever.

10-29-2004, 05:30 PM

just convert the partition to FAT32 before you hook it up to mac.

10-29-2004, 10:12 PM

Originally Posted by mynameis

Don't buy ram from Apple, buy it aftermarket, RAM is considered user serviceable so it doesn't void the warranty from what I hear.

yes DO NOT buy from Apple because i got suckered into buying another 256 for $100. i could have saved at least $40... oh well, anyway my new iBook 12" does run a lot smoother and a bit faster with 512 - i don't use any heavy weight programs so... the more RAM the better I say.

good luck

10-30-2004, 01:12 AM

Definitely bump the memory up to at least 512 MB. You can't really go wrong there. I bought another 256 MB from Crucial, and I think it cost $52.

10-30-2004, 01:18 PM

I went to Apple today, I was messing around with the 12in. I have decided that if I get one it'll probably be the 12in because that is plenty big enough to work on but small enough to easily carry.

edit: One thing I didn't like was the touchpad, it seemed really hard to control, it would always jump around then sometimes it wouldn't respond, I am hoping that is just a problem with the display model because of all the people just abusing it.