Opinions Welcomed

I recently purchased a MacBook for my daughter on the free iTouch special. This is the first Mac I have ever used and now want one for myself.

I have a couple basic needs and do not want to buy more than I need. My usage will be the traditional Office suite of products for work, general surfing on the net and a project I promised my wife to digitize the old Sony Super 8mm video recordings.

Which MacBook and s/w do I need? Thanks in advance for any input and help.

BTW, this my first post.....be kind...

Any macbook will do really, the choice is yours depends on the budget

Do you have a Digital camcoorder and a projector to film those old movies. If so then the mac comes with iMovie software for free, and exports to DVD with iDVD giving you the change to have proper DVD menus when you burn the movies

The old Super 8mm videos were shot with a Sony Handycam Vision CCD-TRV15 NTSC. The Sony camcorder was purchased in the mid-80's and we used this camcorder until around 1998 (latest 8mm metal tapes that I found). You know, kids being born, growing up and a few bass fishing videos.

I suspect I will have to use something like a Dazzle 150 to record from playback on my TV. I have used the Dazzle from recorded TV clips to put online. It is old and not sure if my Dazzle will work anymore, I have upgraded laptops and PC's twice and lost the installation CD.

The other features that I would need is to be able to run Windows for my work (Office Suite and Adobe Acrobat Pro). I read here that Adobe does not play well with Windows on a Mac. The ability to run both OS X and Windows (not sure if XP Home, XP Pro or Vista is best) would be nice.

From searching information on this forum, it looks like a MacBook with 2 gigs of RAM should meet my needs. But, I am not sure what all I need to digitize the old Super 8mm tapes, which Windows OS and additional Apple hardware/software I need. Boot Camp would work, but I like the idea of running both OS at the same time.

Any Mac comes with Bootcamp which lets you run XP/Vista. Also, Office: Mac is available for $129, but I recommend iWork. iWork can export projects as office documents and can also open any word, powerpoint or excel document.

Also, you might like this: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

if you decide to go completely mac Adobe will let you cross grade to the mac version

I am not aware of any particular problems with Acrobat across platforms


If that cam has composite video output you may be able to hook it up to the mac

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000WE7ZO8/

I would get tier 2 macbook and deck it out yourself. IE Memory from third party and install that yourself. Very easy takes less than 5 minutes.

Personaly i would have got a Imac the bigger screen helps you get into the workflow of a Mac

Thanks for all the replies.

I have been playing around on iMovie on the daughter's MB and found editing digital movies from my Cannon camera quite intuitive and easy. I believe transforming the analog movies with the Pinnacle hardware mentioned above should work, but the reviews on the Pinnacle are mixed at best.

As of now, I think I will order the MB w/2 gig RAM and purchase XP Pro from Newegg. Have not decided on Office for Mac or MS Office yet. The daughter gets the student discount from Apple, but she is just starting in her core classes at school and the prof suggests Vista and 2007 MS Office. She is majoring in Computer Science. I will just trade her the new MB for the one I bought her earlier this month. If I do so before the 15th, I will keep the iTouch for me. She already has one.