Noobee ? - Want photogs opinions esp.

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Hawai`i
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MacBook Pro 17" | Intel Core Duo 2.66 GHz | 300 GB HD
Aloha from the beautiful island of Maui! :)

I'm going to be buying my first Mac! It's been a long time coming. I've lusted after them for years. Ah, but I digress. Up until the recent upgrade, I knew which MacBook Pro I was going to buy. Now I'm not so certain. I can't decide between the 15" MBP with the 2.2 GHz processor (bumping up the HD capacity to 160 GB) or the one with the 2.4 GHz processor. If money was no option, I'd go for the 2.4, but money is a HUGE consideration here, so that's why the 2.2 looks attractive.

Before I go on, let me give you a little background info on my computer use and my future expectations. I'm probably not the typical user in the sense that I've had only 2 computers in the last 11 years - the first was a 1.6 GB desktop wonder I bought new in 1996 and the second, that I still have, is a Toshiba laptop that I bought used in 2002. The only upgrades I made to the desktop were to install more RAM and replace my modem. I used Windows 95 (first version too) until the summer of 2002. The used laptop I have has Windows ME on it. (Yeah, I know. Don't say it.) I tried upgrading to XP, but it was too much of a pain in the *****. Not only did the install process stall several times, but trying to find the right drivers made me think the whole upgrade just wasn't worth it. (Thankfully I bought the upgrade at Costco, so I wasn't stuck with shelling out money for something I wasn't going to use.) At that time I figured I'd just wait for Vista to come out and then I'd buy a new computer. Anyhow, do you see a theme here? Yes, I'm *ahem* thrify. In terms of my spending habits, I inherited the tight-as-a-duck's-*****-and-that's-water-tight gene from my Dad. However, I also inherited the you-get-what-you-pay-for and the spend-it-now-and-enjoy-it genes from my Mom. You can see how I get conflicted sometimes, although the gene from my Dad does tend to dominate. :D Needless to say, whatever I end up buying, I will probably use it for a long time. And what will I use it for? Aside from my current uses (surfing the 'net, trying to watch live-streaming videos, hoping they don't crash my computer - you know, like "Lost" from ABC - what did YOU think??, e-mail, some word processing stuff, web page authoring, chat, some VERY minor image manipulation --- gee, is that all?) I plan to get into photo editing and also some video stuff too. I recently got back into photography, which was a childhood love. I have a Canon Rebel XT (digital) to start me off. I also have a digital video camera my parents bought me. I have used it only a handful of times, but I wouldn't mind delving into some video editing to make home movie type of things. I'm not going pro in the video end of it - so I don't need anything advanced. It would be nice to have video transition capabilities such as dissolves and wipes, but that's not really a "gotta have it" thing for me. I'm more interested in the photo editing capabilities.

While I know more about computers than my co-workers & family, I consider my knowledge to be a drop in the bucket. Can anyone tell me how significant the difference is between 2.2 and 2.4? To any photographers out there, do you think my needs would be met with the 2.2? Keep in mind that I'm a novice photographer, but I'd like to have something that will be able to expand as my capabilities do.

Oh, I should state at this time that I will not, I repeat NOT be doing any gaming. Unless you consider the following site to be gaming. :p

http://www.orisinal.com (A cute site, and...very habit forming!)

One last question to Mac users...if I buy now and upgrade to Leopard, will the transition be as seamless as the store guy (an Apple re-seller, so I guess not an acutal "genius") said it would be? Or should I wait until Leopard comes out?

I really don't want to wait!!!!! My current computer is suckin' big time right now, crashing pretty much every day!

My apologies for the rather verbose post. I hope you made it this far without falling asleep! :D And a big mahalo (thanks) in advance to any and all helpful suggestions and advice!
 
Joined
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Redwood City, CA / Stanford, CA
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MacBook, Black, 2.0GHz C2D, 2GB RAMs, 160GB HD
WOW... Looong Post.

But Welcome to the Forums, first of all.

The Difference between the 2.2 and 2.4 is honestly not that big. I'd take the difference in price and dump it on adding more RAMs to the 2.2GHz model. Which will be more than enuff for all ur day to day tasks, and the Photo Editing. Not sure about Video editing but I think it should be sufficient.

About the upgrade to Leopard, I believe it will be a seamless upgrade and it shouldn't give you any problem. But you'll probably have to wait and see from other people experiences at the point of the Leopard release. But if you are concerned about Hardware upgrades for Leopard, then the answer is NO. The hardware that you are gonna have on ur MacBook Pro will be more that enuff to run Leopard IMHO.

MacBook Pros are superior laptops so enjoy it.

Cheers
 
Joined
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MacBook 2GHz/2GB/CD
Hi, welcome to the forums :D Hawaii, huh? I live in NY, wanna trade?

To answer the second question, before I forget: the transition will be seamless, indeed. If you were coming from XP to OS X, it might take a few days. But if you learn how to use OS X Tiger, Leopard will be no problem at all. If anything, you'll learn new and better things.

As far as the processing capability, a mere 200 MHz will not affect you. As the post above said, go for the 2GB ram (install it yourself, if you have Apple do it, your wallet will be ever so thin).
 

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