Thinking of a Macbook

I am currently thinking of getting a macbook and trading my dell inspiron 9100. I am a college student that is studying abroad this upcoming semester in london and will be taking a computer with me. I dread taking my dell laptop because of its weight and batt life. I am trying to figure out if a macbook is going to be right for me, I no longer play PC games (I have a 360 now), I do multi-task such as word process, surf the web, and listen to music, and also download. Would the macbook be capable of doing maybe 3 of these task at a time? Thank You

omg it can do all of that and a whole lot more at the same time. my 4 year old powerbook can run FCP, adiumx, and itunes all at the same time

go to the store and look at the macbook and you wont be disapointed
-chris

I am new to Mac not much knowledge about them, What are drawbacks to not having a video card I know gaming, but what else? Also could someone point me in the direction of some macbook benchmarks of dvd ripping? I dont absolutely need the macbook until september, should i wait until than to purchase it, will there be any major revisions?

there is a lot to learn about both the computers themselves and also the company itself.

apple is extremely secretive, anything you hear about future products is a rumor and should be treated as one. will there be another revision before september? IMHO most likely not. but there is still a good chance, you never know what they have up their sleeve.

ripping a dvd, i dont know about benchmarks but it should only take a few minutes, longest part of the process is going to be the compression but you can still do a lot of stuff while it is compressing. i would suggest light computer usage while burning a dvd, i even do that with my dual 2.7ghz powermac with 2.5gig of ram.

for actual benchmarks google 'macbook benchmarks' and then enjoy the reading because there are tons of articles, when you find one thats relavent let us know!

btw, welcome to the forums! feel free to join the irc chat people are usually there at night.

Also what are the drawbacks to not having a vid card obviously not good for gaming but what else will it suffer? I will be working with photos from my digital camera, will there be an impact on that? Thank You for the help.

The video card, or lack there of, will have little to no impact on photos, video rendering, or many other day to day tasks. The only time it will come into play is when you are working with 3D. This includes most modern games as well as things like 3D Studio Max or any other modeling software.
From the requirements you listed, the integrated card should suite you just fine.

eddiddiums said:

The video card, or lack there of, will have little to no impact on photos, video rendering, or many other day to day tasks. The only time it will come into play is when you are working with 3D. This includes most modern games as well as things like 3D Studio Max or any other modeling software.
From the requirements you listed, the integrated card should suite you just fine.

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Argeed. The MacBook graphic card has very good 2D acceleration, but not so great 3D. The drivers have been tuned to provide the best preformance under normal OSx usage - ie dashboard, exposé, dock and the genie effects etc rather than shifting a vast of amount of polygons. Even then it's only the lack of hardware T&L that causes real issues with games.

As for ripping DVD. A macbook will fly, those dual cores should love mpg to h.264 compression

http://forums.dealmac.com/read.php?4 said:

Another comment... last night I used Handbrake for the first time on the MacBook and all I can say is holy-o-sheeesh! With my PowerBook 1.5, it would take a couple hours to rip a normal 1.5 - 2.0 hour DVD at around 25-ish fps. The MacBook hammered through a 2-pass rip of a 2 hour movie in about 1/2 hour + a few. Averaging fps in the mid 60's. No, can't complain about that at all!

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Some other handbrake benchmarks (DVD ripper) here

Hi All... I'm another mac newbie, I've been a Windows/DOS user for over 10 years and I've never spent more than 10 minutes with a mac.

I'm thinking of getting the $1299 macbook and I have a question: The Superdrive, does it burn dual layer DVDs? I searched around and couldn't find an answer.

schopra said:

Hi All... I'm another mac newbie, I've been a Windows/DOS user for over 10 years and I've never spent more than 10 minutes with a mac.

I'm thinking of getting the $1299 macbook and I have a question: The Superdrive, does it burn dual layer DVDs? I searched around and couldn't find an answer.

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Nope it's single layer. The size of the drive (9.5mm iirc) is too thin to squeeze a DL burner. Thread here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=178413

Apple specs:

http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook/specs.html said:

Slot-loading SuperDrive with double-layer read support (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW): writes DVD-R and DVD+R discs at up to 4x speed, writes DVD-RW and DVD+RW discs at up to 4x speed, reads DVDs at up to 8x speed, writes CD-R discs at up to 24x speed, writes CD-RW discs at up to 10x speed, reads CDs at up to 24x speed

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Notice lack of DL on burning spec.
The lack of Dual Layer on the superdrive was one of the reason I've gone for the lower end model. The money saved is better spent on RAM, I'll use an external burner or another machine to burn DVD's - not that I create many DVDs.

now the question is do I go ahead and get it now or wait until later? Also I read something that intel has a new chip coming called "mernom" is that worth the wait? Or will Core duo just suit fine? I would absolutely need the macbook by the end of august. Thanks guys

In my personal opinion, nothing will change about the MacBook between now and the end of August. But if you don't need it until then, there's no harm in waiting unless you are looking to get the student discount and rebates on printers and such. I believe those expire in mid-July.

so the core duo should last me a good amount of time?

PJmikk04 said:

so the core duo should last me a good amount of time?

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What do you mean by that? Like... durability? The processor is good and should fit your more basic needs as a student. Even with all the processes you mentioned, the 1.83 or 2GHz processors will do the trick.

what im trying to get at is will i regret my purchase 3 months down the line?

schopra said:

Hi All... I'm another mac newbie, I've been a Windows/DOS user for over 10 years and I've never spent more than 10 minutes with a mac.

I'm thinking of getting the $1299 MacBook and I have a question: The Superdrive, does it burn dual layer DVDs? I searched around and couldn't find an answer.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately no. The drive can read dual layer DVD's but there simply is no dual layer burner on the market that could meet the form factor required by Apple for this laptop.

it's difficult to say whether you will be unhappy with your purchase in three months, that depends on you. someone may be an ibook g4 today and be happy with it for five years, it really depends on the type of person you are. i know i will not regret my purchase and will plan to use it until (if) it dies on me in a few years.