newbie, 1st post

Hello, I'm new here to the forums. Don't have a macbook (yet) but would like to say hi to everyone. I have a few questions I will be posting shortly. I hope to join the ranks of mac owners soon.

welcome to the world of Apple ! or nearly

any question just post them and one of us on this amazing,welcoming and friendly forum

welcome.

cheers ! chris.

Thanks for the kind welcome Chris, now onto the questions;

I am a PC guy, and have only had experience with a mac way back in 89, so bear with me.

I'm looking at the 13" macbook (2.0Ghz) currently for use when I travel. I usually travel by motorcycle, so size and weight are an issue which is what led me to the macbook. What I will be using it for is basic internet, email, blog, word processing, and photo storage and editing. The macbook seems to fit the bill, however being a PC guy I can get similarly equipped windows machines for about the same price.

I know I can run bootcamp and use Mac OS and also WinXP, but given the 80GB hard drive size, how much will be eaten up by 2 operating systems? I know I can add an external USB hard drive, but that defeats the purpose of a small setup if I have to lug all sorts of add-ons along.

Another concern of mine is durability; I will have notebook in a tail bag on the back of the bike, possibly in a padded hard case, or just in a softside case inside my soft luggage in between layers of clothing. It will be experiencing bouncing due to road conditions, moreso than in a car. How do they hold up?

I see that battery life and heat build up are 2 of the biggest concerns with laptops. I hear that the macbook has superior battery life to most of the PC's out there, but how good/bad is the cooling? Thanks.

One final question. Is there any basic photo cataloging/editing software included with the macbook? Thanks.

My battery is awesome, 3-4 Hours in light use, but it does get pretty hot on your lap.
The Macbook comes wit h a piece of software called "iPhoto", it let you import your images but it only do light editing, i would reccomend you to get Photoshop Elements for editing.

How hot? Some dell users complain of near overheating and processer speeds slowing to a crawl until the heat dissapates.

I have elements, but for windows. I don't plan on doing any heavy edits, just going over the days travel photos and tossing the junk, and sorting out the keepers. Maybe some cropping etc.

I'm kind of concerned about the integrated graphics (64MB) and was wondering how so little ram can do anything quickly. Maybe it is handled differently on a mac, but even my 6 year old desktop has 256mb for video.
Most of the PC's also have integrated graphics at this price point, but a few have ATI cards with 256mb, although it is shared from the ram, but still.

Thanks.

Hi! Welcome to MF and I hope you'll enjoy your stay! (I know I do.)

rootrageous said:

How hot? Some dell users complain of near overheating and processer speeds slowing to a crawl until the heat dissapates.

I have elements, but for windows. I don't plan on doing any heavy edits, just going over the days travel photos and tossing the junk, and sorting out the keepers. Maybe some cropping etc.

I'm kind of concerned about the integrated graphics (64MB) and was wondering how so little ram can do anything quickly. Maybe it is handled differently on a mac, but even my 6 year old desktop has 256mb for video.
Most of the PC's also have integrated graphics at this price point, but a few have ATI cards with 256mb, although it is shared from the ram, but still.

Thanks.

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I dont thin its that hot, its not so hot that it overheats! I run both Aperture and Photoshop CS2 with no problem on the video side, i even do light gaming, so dont worry.

Hey Rootrageous,

Welcome to the Mac-Forums enjoy ur stay.

MacBook are superior laptops, I have used my fair share of Windows Laptops and nothing comes close.

To answer some of your concerns.

Heat:
In My Opinion, I don't think the MacBook gets that hot to the point u can't take it over ur lap, I use it that way a lot and no complaints here. It does get warm but nothing to worry about.

Battery:
Your battery life concerns are probably from the older posts around about some defective batteries, that Apple already took the measures to fix, software and hardware wise. I can get somewhere around 3.5 to 4 hrs of use on my MacBook on Wireless Internet which is awesome.

I'd recommend u try to get the bigger drive if u can afford it to help with ur Photo Storage, because the 80GB will be too small.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

I vouched for the 120gb HD upgrade on my macbook and it is definitly enough to run both OSX and Windows via Bootcamp. I knew going to the installation of bootcamp, i would not need much space so i only partititioned about 10gb for it. Aside from the internal HD, i purchased a 120gb western digital usb powered external drive. It is not only super small but a decent price (around $100)

Heat wise the max my computer has ever gotten to was 65 celsius. Luckily SMC Fan Control helps cool things down and lets me know how hot my machine is running.

rootrageous said:

How hot? Some dell users complain of near overheating and processer speeds slowing to a crawl until the heat dissapates.

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Your MacBook, as long as you keep it well ventilated (don't block the intake ports on the back of the notebook), it will stay cool and performance will not be affected.

I have elements, but for windows. I don't plan on doing any heavy edits, just going over the days travel photos and tossing the junk, and sorting out the keepers. Maybe some cropping etc.

Click to expand...

It sounds to me like iPhoto (included with the Mac purchase as part of iLife '06) will fit the bill quite nicely for you. It allows cropping, resizing, minor light adjustments, and red-eye correction. If you need anything else, I suggest taking a look at Elements for Mac, or possibly Aperture (Apple's own professional level photo finishing application).

I'm kind of concerned about the integrated graphics (64MB) and was wondering how so little ram can do anything quickly. Maybe it is handled differently on a mac, but even my 6 year old desktop has 256mb for video.
Most of the PC's also have integrated graphics at this price point, but a few have ATI cards with 256mb, although it is shared from the ram, but still.

Click to expand...

You have here found one of the main differences between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. For the uses you have stated in this thread, you will not need a dedicated video card (GPU with dedicated RAM). The integrated Intel GPU is actually quite a robust unit as far as notebook units are concerned, and you won't suffer the battery drain of a seperate GPU. For instance, under normal use, my MacBook would get 4-5 hours of use, whereas my MacBook Pro now gets between 2-3 hours. They had the same specs as each other, aside from the video card difference and a 0.16 Ghz CPU jump in my Pro.


Something I would consider for your hard drive:
Buy the stock configuration from Apple, and buy a 120 GB SATA HDD from NewEgg.com. Swap the hard drives (so you have the 120 GB inside the MacBook) and then find an external SATA enclosure for the stock 80 GB drive. You now have plenty of space on the internal drive for two seperate partitions (OS X and Vista/XP), and a very small and portable USB external drive for extra storage, should your needs require it. My enclosure that I found is slightly larger than a deck of cards.

Welcome!

Sounds like a good plan. Enclosures are pretty cheap.

snoslicer8 said:

Something I would consider for your hard drive:
Buy the stock configuration from Apple, and buy a 120 GB SATA HDD from NewEgg.com. Swap the hard drives (so you have the 120 GB inside the MacBook) and then find an external SATA enclosure for the stock 80 GB drive. You now have plenty of space on the internal drive for two seperate partitions (OS X and Vista/XP), and a very small and portable USB external drive for extra storage, should your needs require it. My enclosure that I found is slightly larger than a deck of cards.

Welcome!

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