Newbie Questions!

[JamesEsquire]

Hello everyone! I hope this is the place for this kind of thing....

I am looking to make the switch to a MacBook Pro after using a PC so clearly i need a bit of advice first!

1, I really want to make sure i buy the best so my first question is should i wait for the next upgrade? Will it be a big leap from the current power? Also would it be wise to wait until Panther comes out?

2, How do they really perform? Is everything 'instant' for example what are the loading times of Itunes, Photoshop, Safari etc etc compared to a top of the range PC?

3, I will be wanting to transfer music and a few files from my current PC to my MacBook... what is the best way to do this? I have an external hard drive i use for my PC so will this be able to transfer files to a macbook?

4, Internet! i currently use a wireless connection to a netgear router, will this work fine with my macbook?


That is the main questions.... but its up to you guys to convince me to spend £2000 on a new Macbook Pro when i could buy a much higher spec pc laptop for a lot less!

 

[gauchogolfer]

Hello everyone! I hope this is the place for this kind of thing....

I am looking to make the switch to a MacBook Pro after using a PC so clearly i need a bit of advice first!

1, I really want to make sure i buy the best so my first question is should i wait for the next upgrade? Will it be a big leap from the current power? Also would it be wise to wait until Panther comes out?

2, How do they really perform? Is everything 'instant' for example what are the loading times of Itunes, Photoshop, Safari etc etc compared to a top of the range PC?

3, I will be wanting to transfer music and a few files from my current PC to my MacBook... what is the best way to do this? I have an external hard drive i use for my PC so will this be able to transfer files to a macbook?

4, Internet! i currently use a wireless connection to a netgear router, will this work fine with my macbook?


That is the main questions.... but its up to you guys to convince me to spend £2000 on a new Macbook Pro when i could buy a much higher spec pc laptop for a lot less!

Well, it's not up to us at all to convince you, I could honestly care less what kind of machine you buy. Having said that, I'll try to address your questions.

1.) We don't know what kind of specs will be in future machines. If you need it now, buy it now. Otherwise, wait. The next OS version is Leopard (not Panther) and will probably be out some time before summer.

2.)Loading time is a poor measure of how fast a machine is. A better metric is how fast you actually get work done. Using this standard Macs are very competitive.

3.) There are a variety of approaches to transferring data from PC to Mac, most of them addressed in this handy Macrumors Guide.

4.) Your wireless network should be painless to configure.


I hope this helps you with your decision.

 

[phungy]

Hello everyone! I hope this is the place for this kind of thing....

I am looking to make the switch to a MacBook Pro after using a PC so clearly i need a bit of advice first!

1, I really want to make sure i buy the best so my first question is should i wait for the next upgrade? Will it be a big leap from the current power? Also would it be wise to wait until Panther comes out?

2, How do they really perform? Is everything 'instant' for example what are the loading times of Itunes, Photoshop, Safari etc etc compared to a top of the range PC?

3, I will be wanting to transfer music and a few files from my current PC to my MacBook... what is the best way to do this? I have an external hard drive i use for my PC so will this be able to transfer files to a macbook?

4, Internet! i currently use a wireless connection to a netgear router, will this work fine with my macbook?


That is the main questions.... but its up to you guys to convince me to spend £2000 on a new Macbook Pro when i could buy a much higher spec pc laptop for a lot less!

I am a recent switcher from PC to Mac so hopefully these answers will help you

1. Panther has been out for a while...you must mean Leopard right? or do you mean Lynx in 2010?

2. Loading time depends on the processor as well as RAM.

3. The external should work, it worked for me.

4. Airport Extreme is amazing, I had no difficulties detecting/connecting with my wireless router.

Macs have a higher resale value, looks better than the competitors and are amazing! I'm always wondering why I never switched earlier.

Getting the higher spec PC for less and reselling it within a year you may get 50% of the value at best while getting the MBP you're likely to get 80-85% of the value.

My friend sold her iBook after 2 years and was able to get 75% of the value back. I highly doubt this happens with a PC.

 

[JamesEsquire]

thanks for the answers so far! and yes i meant leopard *slaps head* the reason i was asking about load times is i have seen around here people recommending 2gb of ram to run photosop cs2 but on my pc i can run it perfectly on 1gb of ram....

 

[gauchogolfer]

thanks for the answers so far! and yes i meant leopard *slaps head* the reason i was asking about load times is i have seen around here people recommending 2gb of ram to run photosop cs2 but on my pc i can run it perfectly on 1gb of ram....

The point of my post was that once photoshop is loaded, who cares how long that took? If it loads in 5 seconds or 30 seconds, it's irrelevant. What matters is how fast you work in Photoshop. For this, I'd recommend as much RAM as you can handle.

The reason CS2 takes so much RAM right now is that Adobe hasn't released an Intel-native version of it. So, it has to run in Rosetta, which has some RAM overhead. I run it fine on my PPC-based Powerbook, with less than 2 GB.

 

[flyfish29]

1. I agree with if you absolutely need it buy it, if not, wait. One thing to consider...The very first release of Leopard may have a few hiccups, so if the computer is for business use lets say desktop publishing you may want to either purchase now with panther and then upgrade at the end of the year after a revised Leopard is out, or else just wait until at least fall for a few tweaks to be done. If the computer is for just general surfing, mail, etc then I would say wait until Leopard comes out and go for it.

2. To my knowledge, there are no "instant" systems, but that being said, I think that most general tasks will be "instant" and your photoshop or other higher intense tasks will be much quicker than most PC's.

I agree with gauchogolfer as it is how fast you get your work done...expose is a huge time saver and takes no CPU/RAM resources to run, the stability of Mac OSX is a big time saver, being able to multitask while photoshop and other programs work is top notch with a Mac, and the list goes on. Have you worked on a Mac yet? I would highly recommend it if you have any doubts. Do you know someone that has one you can borrow or mess around with? If you go to a store make sure the store has kept it running properly so you get an accurate gague on how well a Mac runs.

3. been covered above!

4. wireless will work great with Linksys, Belkin, or any other wireless system.


Good luck with your decision

 

[swwack91]

Congrats to switching!

When's the par-TAY!? lol

 

[Leeds]

Just a note, and I know this is a poor comparison, but...

On my Althon X2 4600+ machine (1GB Ram and 7200rpm SATAII hdd) , loading iTunes takes about 20 seconds... on a fresh windows xp install...

On my MacBook 2.0 C2D with 1GB ram... loading iTunes with the exact same library or music... takes about 3 seconds at most

 

[JamesEsquire]

I had a play with my friends Ibook and to be honest i found it a bit slow! but with the intel chips i guess there is a big difference now?

 

[gauchogolfer]

I had a play with my friends Ibook and to be honest i found it a bit slow! but with the intel chips i guess there is a big difference now?

There's a huge difference for every conceivable application between the iBook and Macbook. Night and day.