Any MacBook users. I'm probably going to get one within the next couple of months. I cant decide between the 13" Aluminium or the 13" White.
9 months ago.
16 comments so far
I'm not really bothered about the aluminium unibody or the extra 40gig HDD that comes with that version so the question is "is the new style glass touch pad all that great" would you spend an extra £200/ $300 mainly for the trackpad? This will be my first ever Mac of any kind.
@warza I will have a play about with both before I make a purchase it's just that with never having touched a Mac in my life I'll probably spend more time in store testing them out and thinking "what am I doing" rather than "oh this one seems nicer than the other".
Hey I'm a PC user of 15 years, looks don't come into it :-) Thanks for the info about them becoming stained over time though. The reason I said earlier that the aluminium body wasn't something that would influence my decision is because I'm either going to love or hate using a mac. If I love it I'll upgrade to a better one within 12 months and if I hate it I'll sell it within 6 months, this is why I'm wanting to spend as little as possible on my intitial purchase. But if the new glass multi touch/gesture trackpad is so much better than the old style that it would maybe sway my decission between love and hate then I would rather spend a bit extra in the beginning. If it's just a nice advancment in trackpad design but nothing that you couldnt live without then I'd rather save the £200.
Buy the cheapest and it may last you longer than you expected. I went from Windows and Linux to an Ibook g4 three years ago. It served me much better than I had expected for two years. I upgraded to the macbook pro though, for dvd authoring etc. (although now video compression is more accurate.
I was a long time windows user too and the transition was really easy. It only takes a few days to get comfortable with mac :-)
Thanks for that input @warza . I've always upgraded my laptops every 12/18 months so was expecting to probably have to do the same with Mac. With working in education I can get a discount which brings the price of the white one down to £632, thats just about within the realm of "yeh I don't mind taking a chance with a new os and hardware for that price", it's just under an extra 1/3 on top of that for the aluminium at £817 which is quite a jump.
I'll still have a play about with both instore before making my final decission, but unless I see a huge difference between the trackpad on the two then I will probably go for the white one.
Well I've gone and done it. In the trafford centre Manchester, just walked out of the apple store with a white MacBook. In an hours time I'll be back home playing with it, my first ever Mac :-)
@steves71: Good stuff! I don't what the gamlbe is, it's easy as pie to be honest. If u forget about how windows works and keep urself open to doing some things differently you'll start noticing the benefits.
Stick 4Gb of ram in that baby and see the difference in performance! :P
I was with my parents when I got it, it's an early birthday pressie but I'm paying half towards it. In the 10 mind it took to sort out the discount, pay for it and walk out my dad was playing with a 24" iMac. Like me he has never used one before and he came away saying it was easier and nicer to use than a windows desktop, so if he can say that after 10mins I'm sure I'll soon get used to the few small differences.
I'd be interested in how you get on with it, what the Software s like and what free software is around. I'm very fond of the iPhone and it makes me think I might like all things Apple
@waveydavey001 I've spent about 90 minutes playing around with it so far and I love it, its so easy to use, not much different to Windows at all except for the single mouse button, the equivalent to a right click is either control + click or a 2 finger tap on the touchpad which is much easier than it is in Windows. The software that comes pre-installed is really good and will replace the third party software I'm used to. iLife is a really good suit of apps for photos and videos (not looked at garage band yet), for what I usually use Photoshop and Video Studio 11 for iLife will replace those easily. I've not yet installed firefox, I'm going to use Safari for a bit first.
The built in contacts, calendar and mail app work well, setting those up to sync with mobileme and my iphone took just a couple of minutes. At the moment I'm just copying my music collection over from an external HDD.
As I spend most of my time either on the internet, playing movies/music or editing/ organizing photos and videos everything I really need is pre-installed straight out of the box........ and one HUGE advantage....... its not full of crapware that needs removing :-) The only thing I'm going to need to install later today is a bit torrent app, and at somepoint in the future iWorks but that can wait as it not essential for me just yet, I may even try open office again first and see how that performs on the mac.
Moving to Apple is one of the easiest things to do. So many things just work, including wifi among other things. it's also much better for video, everything simply works.
If you like Air apps then it doesn't matter that you've changed computer as everything is available there too.
I paid for both my macs myself though, as opposed to windows machines...
@warza you're right about the wifi and that one the one thing that I was a bit worried about. It was so easy, auto detected the router without me having to go into any wifi connection settings I just entered the password and that was it, online within 10 seconds. I haven't yet come across any hardware that I was hoping would work but hasn't, in fact its been the opposite. I didn't think my old 20gig 4g ipod photo would work because I thought back then you either bought a windows or mac ipod but it's working fine :-)
16 comments so far
I'm not really bothered about the aluminium unibody or the extra 40gig HDD that comes with that version so the question is "is the new style glass touch pad all that great" would you spend an extra £200/ $300 mainly for the trackpad? This will be my first ever Mac of any kind.
9 months ago by steves71
Drop into an apple store and play with both machines, Easier to decide then.
9 months ago by warza
@warza I will have a play about with both before I make a purchase it's just that with never having touched a Mac in my life I'll probably spend more time in store testing them out and thinking "what am I doing" rather than "oh this one seems nicer than the other".
9 months ago by steves71
Allu is probably better, doesn't get as dirty, white macbooks have tended to get stained over time.
9 months ago by warza
Hey I'm a PC user of 15 years, looks don't come into it :-) Thanks for the info about them becoming stained over time though. The reason I said earlier that the aluminium body wasn't something that would influence my decision is because I'm either going to love or hate using a mac. If I love it I'll upgrade to a better one within 12 months and if I hate it I'll sell it within 6 months, this is why I'm wanting to spend as little as possible on my intitial purchase. But if the new glass multi touch/gesture trackpad is so much better than the old style that it would maybe sway my decission between love and hate then I would rather spend a bit extra in the beginning. If it's just a nice advancment in trackpad design but nothing that you couldnt live without then I'd rather save the £200.
9 months ago by steves71
Buy the cheapest and it may last you longer than you expected. I went from Windows and Linux to an Ibook g4 three years ago. It served me much better than I had expected for two years. I upgraded to the macbook pro though, for dvd authoring etc. (although now video compression is more accurate.
I was a long time windows user too and the transition was really easy. It only takes a few days to get comfortable with mac :-)
9 months ago by warza
Thanks for that input @warza . I've always upgraded my laptops every 12/18 months so was expecting to probably have to do the same with Mac. With working in education I can get a discount which brings the price of the white one down to £632, thats just about within the realm of "yeh I don't mind taking a chance with a new os and hardware for that price", it's just under an extra 1/3 on top of that for the aluminium at £817 which is quite a jump.
I'll still have a play about with both instore before making my final decission, but unless I see a huge difference between the trackpad on the two then I will probably go for the white one.
9 months ago by steves71
Well I've gone and done it. In the trafford centre Manchester, just walked out of the apple store with a white MacBook. In an hours time I'll be back home playing with it, my first ever Mac :-)
8 months, 3 weeks ago by steves71
@steves71: Good stuff! I don't what the gamlbe is, it's easy as pie to be honest. If u forget about how windows works and keep urself open to doing some things differently you'll start noticing the benefits.
Stick 4Gb of ram in that baby and see the difference in performance! :P
8 months, 3 weeks ago by adonisdemon
I was with my parents when I got it, it's an early birthday pressie but I'm paying half towards it. In the 10 mind it took to sort out the discount, pay for it and walk out my dad was playing with a 24" iMac. Like me he has never used one before and he came away saying it was easier and nicer to use than a windows desktop, so if he can say that after 10mins I'm sure I'll soon get used to the few small differences.
8 months, 3 weeks ago by steves71
I'd be interested in how you get on with it, what the Software s like and what free software is around. I'm very fond of the iPhone and it makes me think I might like all things Apple
8 months, 3 weeks ago by WaveyDavey001
@waveydavey001 I've spent about 90 minutes playing around with it so far and I love it, its so easy to use, not much different to Windows at all except for the single mouse button, the equivalent to a right click is either control + click or a 2 finger tap on the touchpad which is much easier than it is in Windows. The software that comes pre-installed is really good and will replace the third party software I'm used to. iLife is a really good suit of apps for photos and videos (not looked at garage band yet), for what I usually use Photoshop and Video Studio 11 for iLife will replace those easily. I've not yet installed firefox, I'm going to use Safari for a bit first.
The built in contacts, calendar and mail app work well, setting those up to sync with mobileme and my iphone took just a couple of minutes. At the moment I'm just copying my music collection over from an external HDD.
As I spend most of my time either on the internet, playing movies/music or editing/ organizing photos and videos everything I really need is pre-installed straight out of the box........ and one HUGE advantage....... its not full of crapware that needs removing :-) The only thing I'm going to need to install later today is a bit torrent app, and at somepoint in the future iWorks but that can wait as it not essential for me just yet, I may even try open office again first and see how that performs on the mac.
8 months, 3 weeks ago by steves71
Moving to Apple is one of the easiest things to do. So many things just work, including wifi among other things. it's also much better for video, everything simply works.
If you like Air apps then it doesn't matter that you've changed computer as everything is available there too.
I paid for both my macs myself though, as opposed to windows machines...
8 months, 3 weeks ago by warza
@warza you're right about the wifi and that one the one thing that I was a bit worried about. It was so easy, auto detected the router without me having to go into any wifi connection settings I just entered the password and that was it, online within 10 seconds. I haven't yet come across any hardware that I was hoping would work but hasn't, in fact its been the opposite. I didn't think my old 20gig 4g ipod photo would work because I thought back then you either bought a windows or mac ipod but it's working fine :-)
8 months, 3 weeks ago by steves71
An ipod should work with a mac though ;-)
8 months, 3 weeks ago by warza
theoretically speaking, that is
8 months, 3 weeks ago by edythemighty