MacPro Question ..........

[RadDave]

OKAY OKAY.... you boys need to quit. Just go into your corners and admit to the superiority of the female. What would you do with out us???

Now Lisa - you'll entering the domain of men - beware! Dave
.

 

[lclev]

Right.......

Lisa

 

[pigoo3]

I'm sure we can get along!

- Nick

 

[lclev]

Nick -

We already get along great. I love your incite and leaning from you. Now if only my body looked like Wonder Woman....sigh.

Lisa

 

[erics72]

Nope. You will have to purchase it separately. This is one of the reasons why I'm in no rush to upgrade to the "latest and greatest". My suggestion, purchase the Mac Pro tower model just before the latest one (MacPro5,1). Yes, it maybe bigger, but when you think about the extra peripherals you will need to purchase, it can take up as much space as the older towers. eg. you want extra storage drives. You need to buy external drives. You will also need an external superdrive. With the tower, you get 4 internal drive bays (up to 2TB each, though I've heard some using 4TB HDDs), and 2 optical drive bays (1 should already have a superdrive installed, and you can also use the second as bay for an SSD drive). The towers are much more, and easily upgradable than the new model. Plus it will be cheaper than the newer Mac Pro. And you will still be able to use it for at least the next few years before needing to consider upgrading.

 

[craigglenn]

For traveling light, macbook air with external dvd player is another option for you

No, lucky wife, dang it, lol. I'm on a crusade to replace all of our windows equipment with Apple products and her Windows machine is dated and losing body parts, so she will be the first to get a new Mac. Since we're retired and starting to travel some she opted for a laptop over a box.

If you are deciding on which mac laptop to get for travel and want to also use dvd player you might also consider a macbook air and simply buying a small compact external USB DVD/CD player. These can sit on top of, or to the side of the laptop. Advantage is it costs less and MB Air weighs less and more portable. Con is external dvd player is not as "convenient" as having the player build right in to the body and will slide off the laptop if holding at an angle. When picking external DVD player also decide if you want a slot loader (like the Apple Superdrive or copycats like it) or one with a tray that comes out to take the DVD disk. The slot loaders are easier to use and there is less chance of damage to flimsy external tray that pops out of the tray-type DVD drives. There are several choices at Amazon to pick from. (I am unsure of apple compatibility for a lot of these. I personally have both the $80 Apple Superdrive slot loader and a $38 Samsung USB 2.0 Ultra Portable External DVD Writer Model SE-218CB/RSBS (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DBV28TG/?tag=macforums0e4-20). Both work fine for both playing and recording, but I prefer a slot loader only because the Samsung tray seems so fragile and it takes 2 hands to "snap" the DVD into place into the manual pull-out DVD/CD tray. Oh yeah, the cables for these external portable drives are pretty short.

 

[pigoo3]

Nope. You will have to purchase it separately. This is one of the reasons why I'm in no rush to upgrade to the "latest and greatest". My suggestion, purchase the Mac Pro tower model just before the latest one (MacPro5,1). Yes, it maybe bigger, but when you think about the extra peripherals you will need to purchase, it can take up as much space as the older towers. eg. you want extra storage drives. You need to buy external drives. You will also need an external superdrive. With the tower, you get 4 internal drive bays (up to 2TB each, though I've heard some using 4TB HDDs), and 2 optical drive bays (1 should already have a superdrive installed, and you can also use the second as bay for an SSD drive). The towers are much more, and easily upgradable than the new model. Plus it will be cheaper than the newer Mac Pro. And you will still be able to use it for at least the next few years before needing to consider upgrading.

I'm not sure you've read the entire thread. The OP is talking about a MacBook Pro laptop…not a Mac Pro desktop.

- Nick

 

[joe1946]

Nope. You will have to purchase it separately. This is one of the reasons why I'm in no rush to upgrade to the "latest and greatest". My suggestion, purchase the Mac Pro tower model just before the latest one (MacPro5,1). Yes, it maybe bigger, but when you think about the extra peripherals you will need to purchase, it can take up as much space as the older towers. eg. you want extra storage drives. You need to buy external drives. You will also need an external superdrive. With the tower, you get 4 internal drive bays (up to 2TB each, though I've heard some using 4TB HDDs), and 2 optical drive bays (1 should already have a superdrive installed, and you can also use the second as bay for an SSD drive). The towers are much more, and easily upgradable than the new model. Plus it will be cheaper than the newer Mac Pro. And you will still be able to use it for at least the next few years before needing to consider upgrading.

I have both the older MacPro and a new 6-core MacPro with LaCie 1TB Little Big Disk Thunderbolt-2 Solid State Drive along with a 4TB USB 3.0 7200rpm ext HDD . The new Mac Pro is still smaller with the ext drives compared to my old Mac Pro.

 

[Rod]

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet as it almost always is so I will. lizardskeep you will at least need a portable External HD to perform backups of the MacBook no matter which one you get. Please don't trust one device to store all your valuable travel memories. You can use the native Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner whatever but especially when travelling you need to allow for theft or accidental damage. I would also suggest you keep it in a different place to the laptop and maybe just plug it in once a week or whenever you add new photos.
If you need any advice on this we are more than willing to help.

 

[Stretch1100]

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet as it almost always is so I will. lizardskeep you will at least need a portable External HD to perform backups of the MacBook no matter which one you get. Please don't trust one device to store all your valuable travel memories. You can use the native Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner whatever but especially when travelling you need to allow for theft or accidental damage. I would also suggest you keep it in a different place to the laptop and maybe just plug it in once a week or whenever you add new photos.
If you need any advice on this we are more than willing to help.

Great advice Rod. Interesting that no one else picked up on that. I always remember the three most important words in computing, backup, backup, backup. My Time Capsule has dug me out of the manure a number of times.

Cheers,

Stretch

 

[Rod]

Great advice Rod. Interesting that no one else picked up on that. I always remember the three most important words in computing, backup, backup, backup. My Time Capsule has dug me out of the manure a number of times.

Cheers,

Stretch

Thanks Stretch, I'm not the only one to beat this drum just the first to mention it. I have a CCC bootable usb HD I back up once a week and I keep it in the bottom of my sock drawer. But here is one I had not heard of; Posted by a friend of a local Fire Chief, if you keep your backup in an airtight container in the freezer it is unlikely to be stolen and will in most cases even survive fire. How about that?