MacBook Pro - New to Mac, how much HDD and Memory?
My daughter will be leaving for college and she has decided to get a 13" Macbook Pro. She is not a power user or gamer. She uses Itunes, the internet, and office applications. She does enjoy digital photography and does some light photo editing.
Is 2GB enough? What about disk size? She will be using the MS Office apps to have compatibility with PC users at college.
Mac Specs: White MacBook. iLife '08. iWork '08. Mac OS X 10.5.7
2GB ram? Yeah. Disk size - 120 GB-160 GB would be good. Go for that unless someone recommends something bigger. Welcome to the forums and tell your daughter to have fun. Is this her first mac?
The first Mac in the family. I'd pretty PC savy and an engineer in the industry. Once Apple with with Intel chips, I was sold As we replace our systems we will likely be replacing with Macs. If Intuit had their act together on Quicken for Mac, I'd have a Mac Pro in the back office already. Once I go Mac at home I don't intend to have any MS software on it.
Cool, a new Mac supporter. Well, I think she should get the new 2.26Ghz Macbook Pro with 2GB RAM and 160GB HDD. I think that'd be perfect for her so she can put her music, movies and files on there, no problem. 2 Cores at 2.26Ghz should do her well. At first I was going to suggest the Macbook but the 13" Pro is better. Who knows, she may also take a liking to GarageBand once she gets a Mac. That's my 2 cents.
Thanks, the new 13" Pro is perfect. She the things we really wanted that were missing in the 13" Macbook were an SD card reader and a firewire port. Both solved, and now you get the new battery technology and the lighted keyboard at the old price. With the free Ipod touch (which she will sell) and the student discount, it's a great price.
On the apple care. My credit card doubles the original warranty up to 12 months so we would get 2 years for free. Is it worth the student price of $189 to get the apple care for what is really just one more year?
Thanks, the new 13" Pro is perfect. She the things we really wanted that were missing in the 13" Macbook were an SD card reader and a firewire port. Both solved, and now you get the new battery technology and the lighted keyboard at the old price. With the free Ipod touch (which she will sell) and the student discount, it's a great price.
On the apple care. My credit card doubles the original warranty up to 12 months so we would get 2 years for free. Is it worth the student price of $189 to get the apple care for what is really just one more year?
Probably not. I would use that money to get a bigger, faster HDD and upgrade to 4GB.
Mac Specs: MacBook 2.4 GHz, 4 Gb, 320 GB 7200 RPM WD Scorpio, OS X 10.6.2, Win 7
To the OP:
Something else you should buy for her: See this Link
I highly recommend you consider purchasing the insurance unless your home owners policy would cover it. Too many college students have their machine stolen or damaged. It happens. And guess who pays for the replacement?
I'm still note sure of the arguments pro/con solid state drives verses higher-capacity regular drives. Are there differences in longevity? Durability? Access speeds?
Also, would you folks recommend buying a less-upgraded mac from apple, and then adding bigger drives and memory on my own? I'm aware that it compromises the service warranty, but I have rarely used that anyway, since I can manage most problems myself.
A side note... can anyone recommend any portable printers? Preferably small (brief-case-able?), light- weight, and not ink-guzzlers, but I don't know what options exist
Mac Specs: 15" mbp, too many ipods and other stuff
installing ram, at least (I haven't looked at the hard drive installs for the new models yet) does not void your warranty. Period. It simply means that the ram you bought isn't covered by apple.
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mike
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Got # ?
I'm still note sure of the arguments pro/con solid state drives verses higher-capacity regular drives. Are there differences in longevity? Durability? Access speeds?
Also, would you folks recommend buying a less-upgraded mac from apple, and then adding bigger drives and memory on my own? I'm aware that it compromises the service warranty, but I have rarely used that anyway, since I can manage most problems myself.
A side note... can anyone recommend any portable printers? Preferably small (brief-case-able?), light- weight, and not ink-guzzlers, but I don't know what options exist
SSD technology is still in development. I don't think that the benefits out weigh the pricing at all. Sure no moving parts is nice, lower power consumption and faster read/write/access times compared to some HDD.
If you do plan on getting an SSD then installing software on the SSD and using an external to store all your media, and working files is probably the best way to go.
I don't really see SSD lasting longer than HDD. I have HDDs that I have been using for over 10 years and it works perfectly fine.
You can upgrade the RAM yourself without voiding the warranty, the HDD is a little sketchy.
Can't answer your portable printer question because I don't have first hand experience with that.
RAM here. Pretty much anything from this list. Although I would probably go with Crucial on this one.
Yeah, I agree. If you can find and install the HDD and RAM yourself then either wait until she needs it and order the parts at a lower price in the future or use the money you save from not buying AppleCare to increase the HDD and RAM now. If your daughter is pretty careful then she probably won't need the AppleCare anyway.
MacBook Pro - New to Mac, how much HDD and Memory?
As we replace our systems we will likely be replacing with Macs. If Intuit had their act together on Quicken for Mac, I'd have a Mac Pro in the back office already. Once I go Mac at home I don't intend to have any MS software on it.
