Apples 2 Apples? or Apples vs PC

Garyi
I have been toying with a Macbook (not the Pro version) to back up my digicams on the road and to edit pics in the evenings on holiday. Do you think it's man enough for that kind of stuff? I'll be running Adobe Lightbook mostly. I have a 24" iMac at home.

Chris

Butting in here - I use a Mac G4 Powerbook for holding image files when I am traveling - I do not use it for editing apart from adding the location information into the EXIF data using Photoshop CS1.

I do not do more work because I use the G5 dual Powermac at home with the big screen and Wacom pen device for serious work on the pictures.

Just make sure you have sufficient memory and you have a good amount of disk space.

Before I had the Powerbook I used a Thinkpad 600x with OS/2 and PMView for my photo storing and reviewing.

Hi Chris

I think if you go along to Apple store then they'll let you try the MacBook with your software. I've had such a service from our local dealer.

I really like the MacBook Pro almost as much as the old Titanium PowerBook. However, I wasn't totally happy with the build of the MacBook - especially the keyboard; that said colleagues who use one frequently don't often complain so perhaps I'm being too critical. Our guys use them for penetration testing customers systems and running reports so they don't do a great deal of typing on them.

However, I'd definitely give one a trial run before committing.

ATB Rotf

Derek
My Thinkpad was a t41 (if I recall correctly) but was returned along with my Golf GTI on September 15th! My current work laptop is a Dell but I'm not too impressed with it and it's way too big for the app I have in mind. (ie physically too large to lug about in a photo backpack.)

ROTF
Thanks. My son uses an iMac and a Macbook for his composing and DJ work and says both are fine. It's quite a price jump to the Pro from the Macbook and I'm not sure I need to spend that much. I'll go into the Apple Store in Kingston next time I'm over there and have a play.

The macbook current spec comes with a gig of ram and 2ghz Core 2. Its is more than man enough.

Or put another way I am running aperture on it with no issues what so ever. Aperture is a lot more processor intensive than Lightroom (assuming lightroom is what you meant, I don't know what light book is)

I thought I would hate the key board as its a bit weird to look at however I am not having any issues.

Infact my only gripe is they have made the edges of the things sharper than the ibook and it rubs yer arm!

Seriously spec for spec £700 is a very good price when you consider the design as well. Other 700 quid notebooks in John Lewis anyway look like shit in comparison.*

* No seriously has anyone stopped and looked at the current crop of HP machines? Man they are utter crap.

Interesting this argument hasn't changed much from 20 years ago.

I wanted to get into drafting, having been in the landscaping outdoors hard work. After the traditional skills I tried AutoCAD and Ugh! DOS. Never could find my file after I'd sved it. Made me really fast at recreating small projects tho. When I got into grad school I had to write a paper and told to go to the computer room I was scared of the Mac. One friend showed me the paper and folder icon, and the trash. Wow I was sold. but back then you could get anysoftware and hack at it to figure it out.

8 years later I went back to school for graphics degree, MUCH more complicted programs, but they all worked seamlessly on a mac, and those key commands are faster than dropping down menus. Illustration? photoprocessing? motion? and gee lets add some sound and publish it on the web. the PC users were really left behind. 3D construction and animation was mostly PC in 2002.

I'd heard an insider, say yeah all the big time 3D and special effects were done on dedicated systems, Lucas, Pixar etc, but all the creative people had Macs on their desks to previsualize.

I just think they really screwed up in the divide when Mac had to choose the opposite command and control keys, I get screwed up so much the few times I used Windows machines.

If I were in big business or architecture I'd be using a Windows machine. But If yer in graphics or it's personal, I'd go Mac. Hell I even taught my 80 YO old mother to do email on an iMac 7 years ago. tho she's too intimidated to surf the web or click on links, she gets lost easily and doesn't know how to get home.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
I purchased the base macbook on the weekend Andrew, just out of interest what did you pay in HK?

I did in fairness get £100 knocked off as someone had purchased it, took it home, realised it was not vista and bought it back

Its is very nippy, and the screens are nice and bright as well.

Hi Gary,

Sorry for the delay, been a bit busy yesterday. I don't have the exact figure, but the exchange rate is very much in our favour and saved approximately £170 on the price of the mid-range MacBook.

It's roughly similar to the price saving if bought in the USA.

Yep the screen is very nice, and the performance is very smooth.

Looking forward to Leopard, but unsure whether the upgrade would interfere with the files and applications on the current installation - or whether it would work around them.

Will be buying Parallels to run my spare copy of 32-bit XP inside OS X.

Also got NeoOffice (free MS Office compatible software) running

Andrew

quote:

Originally posted by Chris Kelly:
Garyi
I have been toying with a Macbook (not the Pro version) to back up my digicams on the road and to edit pics in the evenings on holiday. Do you think it's man enough for that kind of stuff? I'll be running Adobe Lightbook mostly. I have a 24" iMac at home.

I reckon it will be more than man-enough. The processor, memory and FSB specs are similar to the current iMacs, but the MacBook uses a lesser graphics chip. Most apps mostly rely on the processor anyway. It seems to run applications at a more-than-acceptable pace.

Andrew

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
...
I thought I would hate the key board as its a bit weird to look at however I am not having any issues.

...

Seriously spec for spec £700 is a very good price when you consider the design as well. Other 700 quid notebooks in John Lewis anyway look like shit in comparison.*

* No seriously has anyone stopped and looked at the current crop of HP machines? Man they are utter crap.

I thought I wouldn't like the keyboard, after trying the a few months ago in the Apple Store. Maybe they've improved it in the recent models, because I'm finding it a lot more friendly than I remember.

A big part of the reason for buying an Apple was the hardware specs. I was also advising my wife to look at a good PC-laptop and dual boot it with Ubuntu (which I can soup-up with Beryl Desktop Manager, Conky and some rather nice applications).

As it turned out, anything decent in PC-laptops would be £1000+. Even then the quality of the casing is usually trash. The HP Pavillion range seemed like the best of a terrible-lot, but they were too big and heavy for my wife.

BTW I'm quite amazed by how light and reasonably size the MacBook is.

Best regards,

Andrew