New Apple Guy - In Need of Your Suggestions

Hi there, my name is Mike. I am a twenty year old college sophomore at Southern Conn. State U. I work at the Best Buy near our campus as a PCHO and Geek Squad Agent part-time. I have had a long love for computers and all tech-gadgets for that matter since I was ten.

Enough about me, though!

I recently decided to buy into Apple, as I recently came to the realization that 95% of the computers people of all ages and computer-literacies bring to me are PCs. Hey, I have been a long fan of them, built several systems for gaming, and had all the latest tech to go with them- but I decided to turn a new leaf.

I started off by going ahead and buying a corporate sellout Macbook 2.16 Core 2 Duo, loaded with CS4 suite, Ms word 08, ILife and IWork '09 and Norton 2.0 for Macs.. but that will of course be smashed into sparkly new HDD space (which was upgraded to 500GB, by the way)

I am still awaiting its arrival- UPS tracking says the 25th, I say it better be.

I also had a trade in heart with my cellular device, using Blackberries for my last three phones I decided the MobileMe, Time Capsule, and other cool accesories for my Macbook that I can eventually buy and love would all be complimated by a new 16G IPhone 3GS- which I bought outright for a heartacheing 600 bones- but feel it was something that just had to be done.

So if this is not too long to the point you didn't read it, then tell me- what are as follows:

1) Some of the best/most useful/fun things to do or buy for my Macbook. Also, is it worth upgrading my system to 4 gigs of ram from the stock 2, running the new snow leapord OS? I mean, is it REALLY worth it to be the first thing I do, or can I wait and buy some goodies first?

2) Some of the best/most useful/fun things to do or buy for my IPhone. Right now, all I have is a nice full coverage case and a really awesome little tri-charger. It is this all-in-one Car/Home/USB charger that I bought along with the phone for thirty bucks. It is called the 'ISmartCharger' and I figured it wouldn't be a bad thing to start off with to make my life easier with Apple products.

Tell me your favorites, what you love and what you hate alike. I need to know what to be steered away from just as well as what to crash into.

Thank you for reading and responding, bruddahs

Welcome and congrats on your Macbook purchase! The RAM question has been discussed a million times on this forum. Use the search to figure out what people say. But in short, it depends on what programs you tend to use that will determine how much ram is you want. RAM is pretty cheap to upgrade, so my opinion is to go ahead upgrade it. Also, CS4 tends to use a lot of RAM.

Leland

LelandJLK said:

The RAM question has been discussed a million times on this forum. Use the search to figure out what people say.

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That is the kind of talk that turns people away from the forum. Sure things have been answered a million times but people like to have their questions personally answered each time. It's the personal touch that makes this forum one of the best. Don't forget that please.

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And to answer the original posters questions.

1.

Also, is it worth upgrading my system to 4 gigs of ram from the stock 2, running the new snow leapord OS?

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Yes. But do you need to do it right away? No. Just do it when you feel you want to. 2GB of ram will be enough for every basic task. And if you ever do any image/video editiong if you feel you're needing some more go ahead and get it from a store for a good price and not apple. So eventually yes get it but if it's now or next month or whenever is not a too big issue.

Yes you can wait and but other goodies first. Or you can get the ram first. It's totally up to you.

2. I don't own an iphone and can not really help you there. I would have a good google up on the subject. And if you find anything you liek post about it here and someone I'm sure will tell you if that you saw is a good buy or suggest a better alternative.

Welcome aboard. I'm the cheerleader. Like my bland gray uniform?

Seriously, though. Welcome aboard!

I have always been a big proponent of RAM. The phrased I have ALWAYS used since the mid 80's, buy RAM till it hurts. It will make you system handle many resources much better, and you will for a reasonable cost add a great deal of speed.

Being an old CAD guy from the 80's has shown me RAM is a quick upgrade that you will use and improve your system and see the results immediately.

Just my $0.02

Memory does not "add speed", ever under any circumstances.

Memory WILL make a PC more efficient, assuming that there is a need for greater memory allotment.

This notion is a misnomer that has been propagated by the memory manufacturers for quite some time now and I find it disgraceful that these vendors are allowed to do it unchecked.

For those that don't know, memory (not to be confused with hard disk space) is an area that programs are loaded into in order for the processor to actually process them. At one time, computers had a static, fixed amount of memory. That is - once you ran out of memory, you could do no more until the machine or programs were shut down. Since memory at one time was very expensive and manufacturers couldn't afford to ship PCs with all the memory one might need, the concept of 'virtual memory' was created.

Virtual memory is, in short, an area of the hard disk that is allocated to behave as traditional memory. The problem is that hard drives are several orders of magnitude slower than real chip-based memory. The net effect is that if your computer doesn't have enough real memory to run the programs and operating system that you use routinely, the machine has to dig into virtual memory. The more it has to dig in, the slower the machine becomes to use.

So, in these cases, adding memory will allow the machine to behave more efficiently, but it does not "add speed" that wasn't already there.

In short, I'd recommend buying the machine and using it the way it is. Open all of your most commonly used apps and then open Activity Monitor to see how memory is being allocated. If you don't see a whole lot of green and blue in the pie chart, you should probably add additional memory:



If it does, then save your money.

Thanks CWA. I have to tell people this every day at Best Buy while selling PCs. It doesn't help when everybody selling PCs tells you that adding RAM will add speed just because it's easier than actually explaining it to people.

I always try to teach people if they want to learn.

m.grandori said:

Hi there, my name is Mike. I am a twenty year old college sophomore at Southern Conn. State U. I work at the Best Buy near our campus as a PCHO and Geek Squad Agent part-time - but I decided to turn a new leaf.

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Yay!

I started off by going ahead and buying a corporate sellout Macbook 2.16 Core 2 Duo, loaded with CS4 suite, Ms word 08, ILife and IWork '09 and Norton 2.0 for Macs..

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Step One: Uninstall the Norton as quickly and thoroughly as you possibly can.

Seriously, that is STEP ONE. This needs to happen AHEAD of anything else. There are *no* viruses for the Mac, and nothing you need to do to "protect" the Mac. The tiniest bit of common sense regarding dodgy "porn codecs" and pirated software will more than protect you now and in the future.

Step Two: if you don't have the original install discs for that third-party software, uninstall it. You don't have a legal copy without the original disks, as I'm sure you know.

I decided the MobileMe, Time Capsule, and other cool accesories for my Macbook that I can eventually buy and love would all be complimated by a new 16G IPhone 3GS- which I bought outright for a heartacheing 600 bones- but feel it was something that just had to be done.

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Macs work with Blackberries, but yes I'm sure you'll love the iPhone.

1) Some of the best/most useful/fun things to do or buy for my Macbook.

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The main thing you probably ought to focus on is *learning the Mac.* I would suggest you check out Switch 101 and maybe David Pogue's book Switching to the Mac along with iLife tutorials to get a handle on the software you're getting with your Mac.

Also, is it worth upgrading my system to 4 gigs of ram from the stock 2, running the new snow leapord OS? I mean, is it REALLY worth it to be the first thing I do, or can I wait and buy some goodies first?

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No, it can wait.

2) Some of the best/most useful/fun things to do or buy for my IPhone.

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Again, I suggest starting off by learning the iPhone thoroughly. That should take you about 3-5 minutes. Then head off to the App Store, check out some of the higher-rated apps and go to town. There's some good web sites that review and rate App Store apps, I personally like iLounge.

If you're on Twitter, the best client I've found for Twitter (and Facebook) so far is Tweetdeck.

Tell me your favorites, what you love and what you hate alike.

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There's not much "hating" going on in the Mac world.

Three things you'll want to install right away on your Mac are Flip4Mac WMV Player and Perian. They're both free -- the former makes WMV files play nice with QuickTime, and the latter makes all the other oddball codecs (except Realplayer of course <rolls eyes>) play nice with QuickTime.

Maintenance isn't that big a deal on the Mac, but I do suggest either Maintenance or OnyX (made by the same people, both free) -- the former is just a simpler version of the latter -- and run it once a month or so.

One last thing: this is just my personal opinion, but I would advise you NOT to install Windows on your Mac, at least not at first. Learn the Mac first -- you'll then be in a MUCH better position to know if you want to "waste" the resources and disk space needed to run Windows or not. Apart from hardcore gaming, most people find (too late) that they really didn't need Windows as much as they thought they were going to.

Once you've had the Mac for a little while and identified the main things you're going to do with it, come back and let us know, we'll have LOTS more recommendations for you!

Some good recommendations so far but will add my 2cents...

Get a 1 to 1 subscrip & abuse it if you can. I switched & after 1 yr re-up'd so I could get weekly training on any topic.

After mastering iMovie & iDVD & iWeb, decided to go w/ Aperture 3...which became a resource hog so after upgrading from 250g to 500g HDD I took the next step & maxed memory from 2g to 6g...HUGE improvement. I don't care what anyone says, my Mac runs faster/smoother w/ much less hiccups or spinning ferris wheel.

I used to have vmare fusion for windowsXP but really found I RARELY went into windows environment so dumped those off Mac...Neooffice-OpenofficeOrg is great replacement for MS Office unless you just want MSOffice for Mac...so recommend that.

Multiple pieces of software out there that have already been mentioned like Onyx, appzapper, coconut battery, iWork, mpegstreamclip, VLC to name a few...

Be patient & seek help in multiple areas...Switcher Hangout, Apple Help forums, Apple Store 1 to 1...

I also recommend Mobile Me but again just a personal thing...

Much more but jump in w/ 2 feet & don't look back...Wish I made jump sooner but at least I'm knee deep w/ Mac, iPhone, will get kids iPads...

One thing I'd also throw out, get a wireless printer!

Good luck.

For books I really want to recommend this book.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual
Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual - O'Reilly Media

Sure you can probably get it cheaper elsewhere. But it's widely noted as one of the best books for each version of OS X.