Seconds away from buying Macbook, Last Minute Questions

[iarejedi]

Ok well, I have been wanting to get a Macbook for awhile now and have been doing my research. But I have just a few questions to make sure I am making a smart move.

Here is my plan; Buy a lower end Macbook 2.0ghz 1gb ram 80gb from apple with my student discount. Then later on when I have the money add more ram and a bigger hard drive from OWC when need be (also so I don't have to spend such a huge chunk of change at one time). I believe this process will save me some money if I buy the upgrades from OWC instead of just buying the 2.15ghz model(which has 2gb ram and 120gb HD) right from apple.

But some questions, 2.16ghz... do I really need it? Is it that much of a boost? i don't want it to be a "well depends on what your doing". But in general, will a person actual notice a boost? Secondly, what about Combo Drive/ SuperDrive...do I really need a superdrive? And a final thing, do you think going for a lower end model and doing the upgrades myself is a smart move overall?

Thanks for helping me out.

 

[CrzyCanuck72]

I would really doubt if anyone would notice the 160 mhz... it's such a small increase. The real difference is in the superdrive... I used to have an eMac with only a combo drive, and I always wished I had a superdrive. That's why I consciously made the decision to get a MacBook with a superdrive. Now that I have it, I hardly use the superdrive (party cause the MB's harddrive is 4x larger than the eMac's), but I am definitely glad it's there if I ever want to use it.

You could always just get an external DVD burner, though...

 

[Zwhaler]

If you plan on keeping the computer for more than 2 years I say get the higher end model. Technology is moving fast... and who knows maybe in the future SuperDrives will become the new CD burners (ex everyone has one and uses it a lot) so I would recommend getting the faster computer. The extra speed and RAM will come in handy in the future when the newer OS's will be more and more speed hungry. Thats my advice

 

[j/k/Andy]

I would say that you would only notice the .16, less then 10%, when your doing long tasks, like encoding video. If something takes 2 hours, you would save 12 minutes, theoretically.

As for the DVD drive, useful if you edit home movies or like to 'back up' DVD's, other then that the only other use I have found is making backups of my home directory.

As far as games, I can't comment.

 

[Cybergypsy]

I had all the revs of the mackbook the 2.16 is the best yet......the build quality on my first two were very poor and had nothing but issues with them...this one seems perfect