New Macbook - is Superdrive worth £130 more?

[gockemtoad]

Hi there

Been chugging along with my old G3 iMac and decided to take the plunge and get a new Macbook. For someone like me, the new updates are great as I can get more for less. However - I'm interested in the lowest end machine which is £699 in the UK. The next one up is £130 more. Could I get some advice? I can upgrade the £699 machine to 2Gb and up the hard disk to 120Gb for about the same amount. How much would an external Superdrive be? I've never had need to burn DVDs but don't want to be excluded from doing so should the desire arise. Thoughts?

[psychofreak]

Here (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?index=blended&keywords=external%20dvd%20burner&_encoding=UTF8) are Amazon's external DVD burners :)

[gockemtoad]

Here (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?index=blended&keywords=external%20dvd%20burner&_encoding=UTF8) are Amazon's external DVD burners :)

Cheers. Do these work with the Macbook? For some reason I always feel vary of getting peripherals for the Mac. Are there any installation problems or would they just be recognised as a system drive?

[Father Jack]

I use an external DVD burner with my Mac Mini. It's a LaCie with Firewire connection. No problem.

:)

[AppleMatt]

No. I've had a SuperDrive for years and rarely burn using it. In-fact the only things I've burnt were so big that they needed dual-layer disks and an external burner anyway.

I really, really wouldn't bother for £130 unless you need to burn on the move, for example if you're running a small home movies transfer service or similar.

AppleMatt

[Eraserhead]

Here (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?index=blended&keywords=external%20dvd%20burner&_encoding=UTF8) are Amazon's external DVD burners :)


I wish I'd thought of the external DVD Burner option for my Macbook CD (I have the Superdrive model).

[Vidd]

I don't think that the Superdrive is worth the extra in this case, unless you also want the black casing. ;)

Save the money and invest it in RAM/storage/software!

[gnasher729]

Hi there

Been chugging along with my old G3 iMac and decided to take the plunge and get a new Macbook. For someone like me, the new updates are great as I can get more for less. However - I'm interested in the lowest end machine which is £699 in the UK. The next one up is £130 more. Could I get some advice? I can upgrade the £699 machine to 2Gb and up the hard disk to 120Gb for about the same amount. How much would an external Superdrive be? I've never had need to burn DVDs but don't want to be excluded from doing so should the desire arise. Thoughts?

You need a DVD burner for two things: To make backups, and to create actual DVDs for playing on a DVD player. If you have no intention of creating DVDs, you can backup small amounts of data on CDs (plenty for anything but photos, music, videos), and for large amounts of data you can get an external 250GB harddisk for under £60 which might be a much better solution for backups.

[markfc]

I didn't think it was worth it to be honest, I have an iMac at home, i just want a portable mac so I splashed the £699 on the bottom model.


Hi there

Been chugging along with my old G3 iMac and decided to take the plunge and get a new Macbook. For someone like me, the new updates are great as I can get more for less. However - I'm interested in the lowest end machine which is £699 in the UK. The next one up is £130 more. Could I get some advice? I can upgrade the £699 machine to 2Gb and up the hard disk to 120Gb for about the same amount. How much would an external Superdrive be? I've never had need to burn DVDs but don't want to be excluded from doing so should the desire arise. Thoughts?