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iMac or MacBook?

HazRutter said:
Ok thanks, cheers craig, you are very on the ball on this site arent you :)
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:)

Well, my secret is that I have an iPhone 3G so wherever I am I get a little buzz in my pocket when an email arrives! Tonight when you posted I had just finished my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class and was sitting in my car outside our local swimming pool waiting on my two daughters coming out of their swimming class. Perfect time to catch up on some emails or forum posts... I then moved on to a podcast with some spanish lessons as we are going to Ibiza in the summer and it's good to know some of the local language.

Since I've had my iPhone, I never find myself with nothing to do and I rarely get bored while waiting on someone (usually one of my kids...). Brilliant little gadget! :apple:

Cheers,
Craig.
 
Hey Haz. I'm in the same situation as you. My parents are split and I move around aswell, but I want the power of the iMac, rather than the portability of a MacBook. I won't be able to get a comp for another month or two, but I'm wondering what to get aswell. I think I'll try to wait for some updates to the iMac. I'd probably just get the iMac and lug it around every week or so. Might be a pain, but just imagine how worth it it is when you turn the beauty on and start using it.

Good luck either way-

Jules
 
julienko3 said:
Hey Haz. I'm in the same situation as you. My parents are split and I move around aswell, but I want the power of the iMac, rather than the portability of a MacBook. I won't be able to get a comp for another month or two, but I'm wondering what to get aswell. I think I'll try to wait for some updates to the iMac. I'd probably just get the iMac and lug it around every week or so. Might be a pain, but just imagine how worth it it is when you turn the beauty on and start using it.

Good luck either way-

Jules
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FWIW, an iMac is pretty easy to pick up and go. I'm not saying you can use it on a plane or anything, but I've recently had to change locale a lot, and an iMac is very portable in that scenario.

Moving within a house: Macbook
Moving from house to house: iMac
 
HazRutter said:
Thanks for the response, however, what does TWIW mean?
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If you meant, what does FWIW mean it is "For What It's Worth"
You also commonly see IMO or IMHO which mean In My Opinion or In My Humble Opinion.

They are all just a way of being a bit more gentle when expressing an opinion.

HTH (Hope That Helped)
Craig.
:)
 
craig1410 said:
If you meant, what does FWIW mean it is "For What It's Worth"
You also commonly see IMO or IMHO which mean In My Opinion or In My Humble Opinion.

They are all just a way of being a bit more gentle when expressing an opinion.

HTH (Hope That Helped)
Craig.
:)
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Ah ok thanks, whoops! I meant FWIW haha, yeah I knew IMO and IMHO, haha thanks again craig!
 
thoughts

I'm 15 too and I couldn't see myself using anything in my next few years other than a laptop. It's simply the most flexible way to go. At our age people move around a lot and I for one have already experienced situations where it's more than convenient that you can just pick up your laptop and go. You don't have to use a big box or anything, you just slide it in a bag and go. Now I read that your parents split up. First of all I'm sorry to hear that, I've grown up with divorced parents so I know how sh**ty it can be. Secondly: that makes my previous point even more valid. If you want to say sit with your laptop in the living room but suddenly something ugly starts to happen amongst "the elderly", all you have to do is pick the thing up and go to another room. Plus I don't know what data you keep on your computer but going with one computer at your mom's place and one at your dad's would mean you've got some of your stuff on one machine and some on the other. I'm a film/photography/tv/journalism student so I always have a bunch of stuff I do at home and at school alike so I always have problems with not being able to get my files here and there. I usually end up with sending my stuff to myself on gmail if it's really important. So I suppose everyone should decide for themselves if syncing data is a problem or not but in my experience even small and casual annoyances matter. But this is really something you should decide for yourself.

Also, those old guys who are always going like "oh those little kids just never stop running around" are right. You never will :D. (I'm on the move all the time...)

So what I'm saying is (and this comes from a little experience but I've heard advice on planning to be mobile from wise people - pfft. my dad...). ANYWAY what I'm saying is you should always plan for mobilty first - and BTW the MacBook isn't weak or anything, I wouldn't worry about performance. I've seen 1080i HD video (hdv) being edited on a GMA950 graphics 2ghz core2duo MacBook with final cut pro fluidly. I think that machine had something like two gigs of ram. Whatever.

I say go portable and not the clunky what's-that-box oh-it's-just-my-computer kinda way. ;)
 
I would go for an iMac, faster, you get the bigger screen, and better GPU.... but if you move around a lot and you like portability then I guess Id go for the Macbook..

If you choose an iMac don't get one right now, I'd wait for the new ones to release.. thats actually what i am doing right now, I have the money to get a system, gonna get the new iMacs once they release :]
 
gieppetto said:
I'm 15 too and I couldn't see myself using anything in my next few years other than a laptop. It's simply the most flexible way to go. At our age people move around a lot and I for one have already experienced situations where it's more than convenient that you can just pick up your laptop and go. You don't have to use a big box or anything, you just slide it in a bag and go. Now I read that your parents split up. First of all I'm sorry to hear that, I've grown up with divorced parents so I know how sh**ty it can be. Secondly: that makes my previous point even more valid. If you want to say sit with your laptop in the living room but suddenly something ugly starts to happen amongst "the elderly", all you have to do is pick the thing up and go to another room. Plus I don't know what data you keep on your computer but going with one computer at your mom's place and one at your dad's would mean you've got some of your stuff on one machine and some on the other. I'm a film/photography/tv/journalism student so I always have a bunch of stuff I do at home and at school alike so I always have problems with not being able to get my files here and there. I usually end up with sending my stuff to myself on gmail if it's really important. So I suppose everyone should decide for themselves if syncing data is a problem or not but in my experience even small and casual annoyances matter. But this is really something you should decide for yourself.

Also, those old guys who are always going like "oh those little kids just never stop running around" are right. You never will :D. (I'm on the move all the time...)

So what I'm saying is (and this comes from a little experience but I've heard advice on planning to be mobile from wise people - pfft. my dad...). ANYWAY what I'm saying is you should always plan for mobilty first - and BTW the MacBook isn't weak or anything, I wouldn't worry about performance. I've seen 1080i HD video (hdv) being edited on a GMA950 graphics 2ghz core2duo MacBook with final cut pro fluidly. I think that machine had something like two gigs of ram. Whatever.

I say go portable and not the clunky what's-that-box oh-it's-just-my-computer kinda way. ;)
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Thanks for the feedback, however I already have a laptop, thats why im unsure. ATM im 90% iMac and 10% MacBook..
 
Just thought I would quickly add my opinion, for what it's worth.

I am lucky enough to have a MacBook and an iMac and either way, you can't lose. I bought my MB because I wanted a lighter, faster laptop than my Compaq (though I still use if for some things) and after a lot of research, I decided that the MB was the way to go. I got my iMac a few months later to use for work as well as recreation and although I won't go into the differences (as they have already been discussed), whilst the MB is a wonderful machine and perfect because it can come to work with me and is always on hand, it's the iMac that really blew me out of the water in terms of performance, not to mention that stunning screen! Both computers are pretty easy to move around but obviously, if portability is of vital importance, it would have to be the MB though the iMac is still easy enough to relocate. When it comes down to it though, whether you choose MB or iMac, you will still have a fantastic machine, so you don't need to worry about that...

Whilst reading this thread I was on the phone to the Apple Store so asked about the education discount and you are entitled to one. I get the HE discount and the Schools/Colleges one is slightly less than the HE but it's still money saved and you are also entitled to an education discount on Applecare, so that would definitely be worth considering if it's still within the budget you and your dad have set.

Enjoy your Mac!
 
Quick Question (probably for Craig :))

People are talking about i7 (?) proccessors and 9400 (?) graphics cards to possibly be included in the new iMacs (if they come)

Do you think they will make much of a difference to the iMac is it worth waiting for them (same for Snow Lepoard)

Thanks
 
HazRutter said:
Quick Question (probably for Craig :))

People are talking about i7 (?) proccessors and 9400 (?) graphics cards to possibly be included in the new iMacs (if they come)

Do you think they will make much of a difference to the iMac is it worth waiting for them (same for Snow Lepoard)

Thanks
Click to expand...

Sorry I'm a bit slower off the mark than normal but I'm not long home from a busy day at the office and needed to chill out a bit before sitting back in front of a computer again (I'm an IT Consultant by day you see...)

Okay, it's a tricky question to answer to be honest and, as you might expect, it depends very much on what you intend to use the machine for. However, in general, more is better in terms of CPU and GPU performance so it's obviously worth waiting for the hardware refresh (if it ever comes... :) )

Taking the CPU first, my iMac is a 2.4GHz dual core machine and is plenty powerful for pretty much everything I throw at it. Gaming will always test even the best hardware and things like encoding/decoding music and (especially) video will benefit from a faster CPU or more cores so if these sort of tasks are important to you then more GHz or cores will be worth having. However, when I bought my iMac I could have had a 2.8GHz machine but chose a 2.4GHz one. Why? Because I couldn't justify the extra cost of the faster machine for what I needed. I quite often use a program called handbrake to encode my DVD's (legally owned I might add) into files which can be used by my iPhone and in future my Apple TV (not bought one yet but probably will). This process takes several hours on my 2.4GHz machine and it will still take several hours on even a 3.06GHz brand new iMac. So even if I had a faster machine it would still be an "overnight" type job. It doesn't matter to me if it takes 5 hours or 4, I am not racing anyone and I'm not sitting waiting on it - I am in my bed at the time... :) If I was running a business doing video editing then I'd have the fastest Mac Pro I could afford because then time *is* money...

Looking from another point of view, when just working with OS X doing the usual stuff (eg. email, browsing, file management etc.) everything works almost as fast on my old iBook 1.33GHz (single core power pc) machine! Yes it is snappier on the iMac but it does much the same thing and it can keep up with my mouse and keyboard inputs just fine. The iMac and iBook are way different in terms of raw power but simple tasks just don't tap into that power and long-running tasks are long-running on both machines. Not sure I'd fancy doing DVD encodes on the iBook mind as it is likely to take much longer than the iMac.

What is perhaps more important is if Apple release a quad-core iMac (maybe a quad core 2.8GHz or something). That in conjunction with the "potential" benefits of Snow Leopard could be quite interesting and could really push the bar up in terms of getting the "potential" performance out of multi-core CPU'd which has been lacking in recent years. If you don't know what I'm talking about just think of it like this: If you are building a wall yourself from bricks and mortar then you will be able to lay a certain number of bricks each hour (single core). If you take on a helper, you will be able to build faster where one of you mixes the mortar and supplies the bricks and the other guy can lay them (dual core). This is quite a good efficient scheme and will yield significant benefits. However, once you start hiring more guys you will tend to get diminishing returns because the job can't really be split down much further and you get less benefit when you do. You also need to co-ordinate the guys to keep them all busy and resolve any conflicts. The net result will be that you will be busy resolving conflicts and several of the guys will be standing around idle (multi-core).

With Snow Leopard, Apple are trying to make it more efficient to make use of multi-core CPU's. This will make it much easier to get each additional core to contribute an equal additional benefit without the developers of the applications needing to be experts in multi-core concurrency. Add to that the idea of using GPU cores too for tasks which are suited to the GPU (eg. audio and video encoding) and we could "potentially" see a computing revolution! It will take time to put the pieces in place but I for one am very excited about Snow Leopard!

I touched on GPUs above and I'll try to keep this brief. The ATI 2600 Pro chipset is a good solid, no-frills GPU but it isn't a powerhouse by any stretch of the imagination. The Nvidia 8800 GS is something like 2.5 times faster for example. Now I'm not sure about the 9400 performance but I'm pretty sure the 9600 is faster again than the 8800 so is very worthwhile having, especially if you are gamer. I would also expect that the 9400/9600 GPUs will likely be optimised for Snow Leopard, perhaps to a larger degree than the outgoing 2600 GPU. Perhaps someone might post some actual comparisons of the 2600 v 8800 v 9400 v 9600 GPUs.

In summary, I would love to have a quad-core 2.8GHz iMac with a 9600 GPU and 8GB of RAM but only time will tell if such a machine is produced. If it was then some Mac Pro customers might consider an iMac next time and I suspect Apple will endeavour to prevent this happening, either by keeping the iMac spec's a bit lower or by raising the Pro spec's a bit higher.

As I said, only time will tell...:D
 
Wow craig! I knew it would be you, wasnt expecting such a long answer!

Thanks!

Could I upgrade the proccessor / RAM / Graphics card easily?
 
HazRutter said:
Wow craig! I knew it would be you, wasnt expecting such a long answer!

Thanks!

Could I upgrade the proccessor / RAM / Graphics card easily?
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You're welcome!

CPU and Graphics card - No. They are built onto the main logic board.
RAM - Yes (unless they change the design so that you can't - v. unlikely)

Cheers,
Craig.
 
HazRutter said:
Right, I know they should be releasing some new iMacs and minis so dont bother mentioning that, lol.

I am in year 11 (10th grade ? to you americans :), see I like to cater for everybody lol) and im in need of a new computer.

Up until earlier today I was set on buying a alu MacBook but in the apple store I sat down and played with the iMac and now im not too sure.

I mostly use my (very slow) current laptop for internet browsing, writing essays, using Excel spreadsheets ( I run my dads online music shop - www.b12records.com - if you are intrested ;)) and listening to music. Thats not to say I would not like applications to do photo and video editing, its just my laptop would not be able to cope.

Money is an issue here, I am only 15 so cant really earn that much. I have about £700 and my dad would be willing to lend me the rest. Another main issue I have is that do I even want a Mac? £1000 (or so) is a lot of money for a computer.

So what do you think, iMac, MacBook or neither?

Any Help would be great, also Hi! Im new here :D

EDIT: Sorry if I posted in the wrong area...

EDIT #2: My parents are split up, so I could either get an iMac and leave it at my mums (where I am the most) and take my current laptop to my dads or just use the MacBook.

EDIT #3: *Sorry now* How do you "qualify" for an avatar?
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Really, you would be able to get away with a PC. Anyway, considering you are going from place to place, I would recommend the MacBook.
 
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