Some questions about the Mac.

So recently I have been thinking about buying a laptop for use away from home such as College. And I recently began reading about Mac computers and I really want to switch.

Uses that I have in mind : School work (Microsoft Word/Excel/etc)
Moderate to somewhat High (Not Extreme) gaming enough to run WOW on high smoothly
Music
Watch DVD quality items very very clearly


I have a few questions before I do though

1) Does Mac have Microsoft Word that is supported? Is there an alternative?

2) Which Mac supports my uses? Can I buy a Macbook and upgrade the parts? Such as Graphics?

3) Is it cheaper to upgrade the HDD yourself? Ram?

4) Does Apple allow you to Customize your Mac like Dell allows you to customize your Laptops?

5) Does OS X Leopard come with Microsoft Vista? XP?

6) Also is there a trusted website that sells Legit Macbooks for cheaper? (Not ebay?)

thanks for the help!

 

1. Yes, you can use pages by apple or office 2008 for mac
2. The macbook should handle wow ok. Music and dvd for sure
3. Upgrade the ram yourself, but the hdd is up to you. It is cheaper but you will just have to reload leopard.
4. There are different "trim" levels so to speak.
5. OS X does NOT come with vista or xp. You can run them both on a mac via bootcamp or side by side with virtualbox, crossover, parallels, there are more but i can't remember them off the top of my head.
6. Macmall, there are more out there probably. I would get a mac from their refurbished section. They are cheaper there. And they carry some older models.

 

1. You can get Office for mac, but theres also iwork.

2. Macbook will run WoW, but for much else youd need a Macbook pro. The ram and HD can be upgraded in the macbook, in the pro only the ram is user upgradable (but a lot of people do the HD to)

3. Yup. Lot cheaper to do the ram

4. yup.

5. No. it comes with bootcamp. Look through sams Running Windows on a Mac: Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop & VMware Fusion sticky for more on windows & mac.

6. Probly not. 2 things you can do- student discount, or buy a refurb from apple.

 

I know you are looking at a macbook (which I was also for a LOOONG time). But if you want to game, do check out the xps m1530 from dell- has a little more power, minus apples os . Both are great systems.

 

The MacBook Pro has a actual descrete graphics chip (8600M GT). Go for that, everyone I know that purchased a MacBook ended up either selling it and getting a MacBook Pro or were disappointed. Go for the real thing.

 

Am I allowed to Upgrade the graphics card? If so, is it cheaper to buy a Macbook then upgrade the Ram, the HDD and graphics card? If not whats the specs on the Macbook card usually (I cant find it on the website)

Also how do I get the student discount?

And when you said I can customize the Mac I meant like When your buying it you decide what to put in like 512 Geforce XXXX card, XGB rams. Etc

 

You can only upgrade the ram and hdd on the MacBook. There is no way to upgrade the graphics card. The current generation of macbooks have an Intel X3100. The macbook pro has a 8600.
Hopefully that links works for the student discount.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APP...nd&node=standard/home/shop_mac/family/macbook

 

If you are thinking about gaming, as far as being able to play most games I wouldn't stray from Microsoft...

Also, when it comes to buying from Apple you pay a lot more $$$ for the hardware, so being able to play WoW at those settings will cost you a lot more if you buy Mac...

Hope this helps!

 

There are very, very few latops out there that have upgradable graphics, so pretty much any laptop you buy you'll be stuck with it.

The Macbook uses an intel X3100... really for gaming its a POS, but it should run WoW ok(my buddy runs City of Heroes on his Dell with an X3100 rather well actually). Keep in mind the library of games for Mac is very small, so if you're serious about gaming, but still want to switch to OS X I recommend installing Windows as a second OS just for games, and going with a Macbook Pro, as the Macbook graphics card is simply not meant for playing any games that look prettier than WoW.

Unfortunately Apple sucks in the customization department unless you're buying a desktop Mac Pro... All you can upgrade is the RAM and HDD (do the RAM yourself, seriously, it will save you hundreds of dollars). Other than that the specs of the CPU depends on the model you chose, and the graphics card for all Macbooks is the same. Macbook Pros all use the 8600m GT.

If you really want gaming and customization though, I'd recommend a standard PC as they are much more flexible.... but if you want OS X there isn't much of a choice

There should be a student discount option somewhere on the page when you're buying one, and it asks you to choose what school you attend and give your student ID number. Oh, and I think Macbooks comes with free iPod Touch's still if you buy them from Apple.

 

Hey Arquis I noticed you put your specs of your macbook pro on your sig. I was thinking about getting the same specs. When you game on it is the 256MB VRAM good enough (what games can it handle and not handle in a near high setting)? can you replace this card yourself later if you decide to swap to a 512MB? Did you buy the 2299 one?

 

As previously stated on this thread

- You can NOT upgrade the graphics card on Macbooks / Macbook Pros.

256MB is all that the 8600m GT can address, I'm affraid. The 512MB is just a gimmick, the card is 128bit and cannot address full 512MB.

If it's just WoW you want, the Macbook will do just fine, the Macbook Pro will rock its world. And you don't even need Windows for it.

If you want to play Grid, Assassin's Creed, Bioshock, Crysis and Co., get the Macbook Pro and a copy of Windows and run it through Bootcamp. They all play nicely except for Crysis - you'd have to do with medium/high settings.

As far as Office work, there's Microsoft Office 08 for Mac which is compatible with every format there is, even Windows files.

Music and videos is really no problem. OS X does it better than Windows.

 

ROFLMAO. I would LOVE to hear you try to back this statement up with some statistical evidence...

To me, that seems more of a misconception or completely subjective viewpoint.

Personally, being an audiophile I think you have some explaining to do here because Windows' OSes have been great IMHO for music...

 

3 things to deal with here:

1) The first part about the 8600m gt only being able to address 256MB of ram is COMPLETELY false. it can address 512MB of ram. however, it doesn't have enough bandwidth to take advantage of all that memory in most gaming situations. however, it still exists and it can still use it. just don't expect more than a few percentage points increase in performance. definitely not worth the cost.

2) You should have known better. Don't incite an Operating System War. For the record, don't say something positive and subjective about osx without being ready to be attacked.

3) You should have known better, too. Stop encouraging the OS War. Obviously, it was a subjective viewpoint, as you noted.

Both OSX and Windows can handle music and video just fine.

 

I bought the $3000 one at the time. There is no noticable difference between the 256 and 512 version of the card while playing games. The 8600 simply cant use 512 effectively enough to improve performance in games. As for games, depends sometimes. I play Bioshock at high settings with vsync and get 30 frames. I play CoD4 online with everything on and get 30-60 fps, single player, however can sometimes drop into the 20s on all high settings. I play TF2 with everything maxed out at a pretty decent resolution at 30-60.

What I don't recommend is using Anti-Aliasing with the 8600. It murders performance.

As for replacing the graphics, no you can't. Notebooks aren't like desktops. You can't replace the GPUs by simply swapping. They are fused to the motherboard, and are of a specific size in order to fit in the laptop. Also placing another card would cause all kinds of heat issues.

 

Thanks again, Arquis and everyone else.
I'm still debating if I will need the difference between the Macbook and Macbook Pro. (The graphics card)

Here are the specs I'm looking for.
2.1-2.4 Ghz
2Gb Ram - 4GB Ram
100+ storage Drive
and decent graphics card to play Warcraft 3, WoW smoothly and maybe even some CS / CS: Soure

I mean yes I will game but not any heavy duty gaming like Crysis and Farcry Doom3 Quake4 etc etc. I'm mainly gonna need it for school work, chatting, web browsing and if I get bored then I will game such as Warcraft 3, WoW etc.

Also comparing the specs I want on the Mac to my PC Specs I have will it be better for gaming than my PC at home?

Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80 Ghz
1.87 Ghz, 512 MB Ram
Nvidia Geforce FX5200

With these settings I can play CS:Source, CS 1.6, WC3, D2 (LOD), WoW(not all smooth but good enough) so if I get a Macbook with desired specs would it be better?

 

Well, excuse me for stating my personal opinion about stuff. Isn't this still a free country?

@shoelace_510:
You want evidence? Here you go:
I'm a professional musician working with top software like Reason and Logic.
Reason in particular has crashed for me in Windows, numerous times making me lose projects I've been working on for weeks. Corrupt files and crashing during bouncing/exporting because of bad virtual memory allocation, CPU intense processes.

And YES OS X has NOT crashed once, Reason and Logic have not corrupted ONE file, and NO BSoD, my Macbook Pro has run without a glitch since I got it a year back.

It's not a war. For me OS X has won. It stopped being a war when I can do my job proper and not worry about Windows crashing.

And please, again, excuse me for speaking out from my own experience. I should have just kept my mouth shut, since we're not allowed to speak on this here forum.

@shoelace_510: There's a difference between being an audiophile like yourself, listening to mp3 music, and actually working with CPU intensive synthesis and bouncing where the OS needs to be as stable as it can get, because, like when burning a DVD, if you shut down your machine while it's burning, you can throw the disc away. It's corrupted.

And still, the 8600m GT can not fully utilize 512MB of VRAM. I do stand corrected by MasterChef about my choice of words.

Thank you.

 

I have no problem with a healthy discussion of Mac OS X and Windows in different areas, as long as it stays civilized and doesn't get out of hand . I do want to note that it is often a good idea to say "in my opinion", instead of just saying it, as that helps curtail any possible unnecessary conflicts!

 

all the recent comments about Mac VS PC is noted and I'm still debating about it, back to my question from before are the MAC specs better than my at home PC specs? would it run better?

 

Not sure about the 5200 vs x3100, but other than that, I'd say the dual core in the Macbook is better than the P4 and of course 2GB of RAM > 512MB..

 

The MB should be able to do all the things you said you needed in a laptop. CSS might be a bit of a stretch (might have to be on low settings), but it can do wow and WC3 good enough.

As long as you stick to games that came out a while ago, you should be fine.

 

A MacBook or MacBook Pro would definitely be more powerful than your current desktop. The Core 2 Duos are a lot better than your Pentium 4, and the 2 GB RAM is quite a lot above 512 MB. The graphics card, at least MacBook vs. desktop-wise, I can't call, but if you compare the MacBook Pro to your desktop, definitely the MacBook Pro.

 

Sam,you ROCK...really

 

Thanks for the compliment, Xirurg . What provoked that?

 

well,all of your posts are professional and "at point" and you have a good sense of humor

 

I think humour is important . Its nice to get right to the point so its easy for everyone to understand, but I don't want to be a strict police officer of any sort either, so yeah . I want to keep a friendly yet helpful atmosphere around the forum, its inviting!

 

^^ thanks, very helping with the info, but I want to ask you since you have the apple macbook specs I wanted, do you play any games on it? If so what can you run? thanks.

 

Hi itzkin,

I don't play any games on my MacBook, sorry I can't help about that! I don't run Windows on my Mac either, its just a full Mac machine for me!

 

I wasn't trying to really beef on you here but I just wanted to make sure that the original poster wasn't simply taking your words as unbiased and then saying:"well obviously Mac is better." I can't stand people who are uninformed and fanboys. >.<

Maybe it was just me and I'm sorry if I made you defensive about this.

Also, I haven't had experience with those programs you are talking about, but I do know from business experience that unless you are a musician that is self employed (like I am assuming you are), most businesses use PCs (as shown by IBM's success). Because of this, often high end programs are made to run on PC (and run well).

Hope this helps explain myself and keep everything friendly here.

 

Hmmm, okay sam thanks for the help and everyone else too. I'm thinking about buying a Mac just for school work and just incase I can buy another laptop (ALOT CHEAPER around 700-900) for gaming. rather than dish out 2k for a Mac Pro.

But uhh Sam some questions, How is the overall Mac for you? Crashes? Recommend that over PC? any lags? freezes? etc? Anything I should know about or be aware of? good news? bad news?

Hahaha seems very very repetitive and annoying but I wanna make an informed choice about my Laptop / First Mac. So far Most of the replies I have heard and seen are good, some cases are bad but not VERY extreme.

 

Overall, I love the Mac experience. I've had my MacBook for about a year now, I've had no real issues with it. I really like how I basically don't have to worry about my computer running well (as in, don't have to worry about finding drivers and reinstalling drivers and all that stuff) and just getting to work on the things I need to get done. Definitely I would recommend Mac OS X over Windows, I find the whole user interface and the way things are done seems a lot more logical than it was in Windows.

Good news! Here's two guides I always link to switchers or people considering the switch, it teaches you about how Mac OS X works and how to easily switch to Mac:

www.apple.com/support/switch101
www.apple.com/support/mac101

 

^^ oh yea I saw those on the site, I was always researching about it but all the questions I asked were based on what I saw and wasn't sure of, thanks for the help again ! very very helpful, I think I might decide to switch to the Mac on several reasons 1) I heard more stability and organization 2) little to no viruses (wow? lol) 3) new school, new computer, why not a change? 4) student discount and FREE IPOD lol. (<--- tempts me all the more)

thanks for all the help guys!!!

 

2) That is correct, at the moment there are no viruses in the wild targeting Mac OS X. Its great not having to worry about antivirus!

 

I have a quick question I'll ask here instead of starting a new thread, is the Macbook Pro prone to any overheating issues? Like if I were to type up a paper for a few hours while having 5 other programs open and then after that play WoW for 8 hours straight (lol) would that cause any heat problems?

 

Well, you might not want to have your MBP on your lap , but its not going to cause hardware damage, no!

 

If anything, download an application called smc FanControl and adjust the fan to keep it cooler

 

ok thanks for the responses

 

while this post is about programs, is there a site or list for any cool programs for the Mac? like smc fancontrol, etc thanks

 

It won't cause hardware issues, but really I wouldn't ever take a MBP and use it as an actual laptop because your legs would get BURNED. lol

Yeah, I don't know why Apple made the case such a huge incorporation of its heatsink but it really makes it uncomfortable to work with in most situations.

I mean, why would Apple engineer the MB lineup to deal with heat better than the MBP lineup?? >.< Seems silly to me. lol

Just my $0.02.

 

and not just your legs, eh?

 

I link to a ton of guides on my Mac Switcher's Guide, stickied at the top of this forum and linked in my sig! Yes, I'm being lazy .

 

It's not going to overheat as long as the fans are working. However the whol body of it acts like a heatsink and it gets pretty hot at the hinge so don't be holding it with your hand at the time, lol.

 

Concerning performance, my brother has a 6 month old MacbookPro with nearly the same specs as my XPS and we both play WoW often. I get the maximum of 60 fps that WoW allows w/ all max settings while he gets 30-40 fps on max. Now, maybe he gets better FPS if he runs it in Windows? But I'm not sure. Just wanted to let you know that when running games in OS X versus Vista/XP you will probably see a performance difference despite similar components. Probably a result of having DirectX in Windows.

If i was you, I would get a Macbook for school/work if you like OS X. Since Dell lets you customize, spec out a 'gaming' XPS since you will be able to hand pick everything you want. You could then cut the price a lot by taking a smaller hard drive, no blu-ray, etc. Just make sure to get the gaming essentials - RAM, 256mb 8600gt GPU, decent CPU. I would also highly recommend the LED backlit screen for games.

Many people have gotten some pretty ridiculous XPS gaming rigs for about $1200-1300. Mine was a little more at just under $1600.

 

Yes, he would also be getting 60fps if he ran WoW in Windows rather than in OSX, from what I hear this is down to poor video drivers in OSX.
Which is why I do all my gaming in Windows, everything will perform far better. Gaming in OSX needs alot of work before its really viable.

 

What are some trust worthy sites to buy Ram or hard drives for the Macbook? Is OWC, MacMall reliable? How much do the Ram and 250gb + hard drives run for? So far I've seen around 100 for each are these good prices? or scam prices? Which Mac parts are reliable ?

 

Newegg is a good place, they're reliable and have great prices!

 

Which brand is the best? What have you tried? What works the best? I'm looking for a 4GB Ram kit and a 250gb+ hard drive.

whats the best ram kit brand? and the best sata hard drives?

 

There's no real "best brand", most big name brands are good, just get the cheaper one out of them. I personally like Crucial, Corsair and OCZ.

 

Uhhhhhhh. I looked at newegg and I can't find any internal hard drives, and theres little Ram to look from is there any more sites? The sites I find look fishy or doesn't look like it can be trusted.. thanks !

 

Crucial has its own (quite well designed) website. Prompt shipping, etc. Perfectly satisfied.

 

^^^ Hard Drives as well ?