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A few macbook questions

kavi

kavi

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 17, 2007
53
0
I'm thinking of buying a white macbook with the following hardware options:

2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB of RAM, I'm going to buy 4GB from somewhere else and install that myself I think
250GB hard drive
8x superdrive

I plan to use the laptop for schoolwork, downloading/watching tv shows, playing music, playing casual games, mostly mmorpgs, and screwing around in photoshop which I will probably do very often. that's more than a good enough set-up to do all that right?

I'm planning to buy this laptop after christmas in early January so I'm also wondering if there's any sort of speculations about a new macbook design or anything like that any time soon.

Also what's the main difference between the video card in the macbook compared to the video card in the macbook pro?

macbook: Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory
macbook pro 15-inch: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM

The macbook pro card sounds so much nicer but I have no idea what all that stuff means or what kind of difference there would be between the two laptops.

And then the final thing I'm wondering is how I can get the best price possible on this laptop. I live in Canada so the prices here are much higher. I could probably drive down into the States without too much effort, but if I just buy a laptop from a store in the States, I can't really customize it with that 250GB hard drive can I?

The educational discount brings the price down to almost equal with the US price but I'd really like to get the US price plus the discount. Probably not too much of a chance of that eh?
 
But the integrated graphics would be more than good enough for what I want, especially with 4GB of RAM right? I don't plan on doing any hardcore 3D modelling or playing super graphics intensive games.
 
what about an update or anything like that? when did the macbook originally come out?
 
And also, reading though this forum I'm seeing a ton of people talking about how their macbooks are too hot or something.

What's the deal with the temperature of the macbook? Should I be worried?
 
The macbook pro is nicer. Thank god for marketing. I've drooled over and pondered over the Macbook vs macbook pro question for quite some time. IMHO, unless you have some exacting computing requirements or money simply is not an issue, then the cost difference is impossible to justify.

Since the original post a new MacBook has come out w/ upgraded graphics. It's still "integrated"; significantly better than it was but still, a separate graphics card is generally superior.

That said the graphics card is most significant for demanding 3D rendering such as games. So, excepting games I think it's good enough.

The new OS version (leopard) is fully 64 bit, (which the Macbook's guts support) which basically means instant performance boost for any 64bit applications over their older 32-bit versions (including the OS itself, 'natch). I've seen a photoshop demo. Impressive performance increases.

Oh, Maximal memory (well, 2GB at least) is just about the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade one can do for any computer. Just don't buy it from apple, theirs is gwad-awful too expensive.
 
Well... I'm a computer engineering student and both of my roommates have MBP's. However, about a week ago I bought the black MB-SR..

Yes the MBP looks better and has a way better graphics card, but I got the MB because its smaller (easier to take to class) and cause I don't play video games. Just mainly watching HD movies which the X3100 can handle just fine.

Hope this helps.

ACE
 
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