Pre-Switch Questions

Hey everyone. I'm a new user and I've been browsing these forums just checking out all of the info - and as I've seen a lot of you post, there is a massive amount of said info.

I decided to register because I go to the University of Wisconsin - Stout. Stout gives laptops to its students - basically Macs for art students and PCs for everyone else. Currently I'm a business major so I have a Windows 7 PC but I'm meeting with an advisor tomorrow to switch my major to Graphics Communication. This would mean Macbook Pro

Anyway, I do love Windows 7, especially over the travesties of Vista (horrible functionality, heavy, and slow) and the crayon-drawn tragedy that was Windows XP. But the aesthetics of Macs are so sleek and perfect; animations are so smooth. Windows just can't match that. I have no doubts that I'll love the MBP, I just have a couple questions.

1. Most importantly, I'm a music producer. I use FL Studio to make my beats and a whole lot of VST plugins. I know that FL Studio would have to be run in Parallels or Boot Camp'd Win7. Which option would be better here? Speed, functionality, etc.

2. I've read a little about how great Time Machine is at back ups. I guess I'm just looking for how selective it is? On my PC laptop I've just done it manually by copying whatever I wanted backed up onto an external hard drive. How simple could this be with a Mac?

1. For maximum performance running Windows, use Boot Camp. Parallels, Fusion, Virtual Box allow you to run Windows in an app of its own without restarting and booting into Windows, but you won't get full use of your Mac's processing power and memory. I don't know how intensive the work is you do so you'll have to figure out which option is best.
Don't forget, all Macs come with Garage Band installed. That might help, might not be as full-featured as you need. I don't know... just throwing that out there.

2. You can be selective with what you backup with T.M. or you can have it backup your whole "system". You go through all that when you first set it up. Don't forget, to use T.M. you will need to format your external drive to MacOS Extended (Journaled). Easy to do in Disk Utility. Google it.

MYmacROX said:

I don't know how intensive the work is you do so you'll have to figure out which option is best.

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Most of the projects I do take up quite a bit of RAM so I'll probably end up using Boot Camp.

MYmacROX said:

Don't forget, all Macs come with Garage Band installed.

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I wasn't sure if that was standard or not, but I will definitely be playing around with Garage Band!

MYmacROX said:

you will need to format your external drive to MacOS Extended (Journaled).

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Which means I will have to find somewhere to store everything on it. It's currently formatted as NTFS but Mac reads that no problem right? How about the reverse, could a PC read it after I format it to MacOS?

Thanks for helping me out.

Vibe said:

Which means I will have to find somewhere to store everything on it. It's currently formatted as NTFS but Mac reads that no problem right? How about the reverse, could a PC read it after I format it to MacOS?

Thanks for helping me out.

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Yes, Macs can read NTFS. You could copy (drag+drop) all that info to your new Mac, then reformat and set up T.M. Or buy a new external and keep that old one as a backup backup. HDD are pretty cheap these days.

Windows cannot read MacOS formatted drives without a 3rd party app. Might be tricky.