just got MBP, couple of questions!!

1. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/681399/ via MRoogle (http://mroogle.*************/)

2. No, unless you have to work with lots and lots of Word or Excel documents and need 100% compatibility, which iWork can't really offer and which results in formatting hiccups.

3. No. You could even put 40GB or even 400GB of movies on the HDD and it wouldn't slow down. Just make sure to have at least 10% of the HDD's capacity free (50GB free on a 500GB HDD), better would be 20%.

shyam09 said:

1. i am a college student (well going to be) which program is best for taking lecture notes [note. i do have iwork]
http://onsoftware.en.softonic.com/5-mac-alternatives-to-onenote
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

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Neither is better than the other. It depends on you.

2. since i have iwork, i really dont need office 2011, right?

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There's lots of debate about iWork vs. Office. iWork documents still do not have 100% compatibility with Office... and your professors are going to be using Office. If that matters to you, you may want to get Office. Your university might offer it at a steep discount.

3. is it bad to put movies on the HDD of a mac. like will it eventually slow down the computer? i have about a little more than 4 GB (which wont fit on a stupid DVD!)-- or should i just burn (they are multiple files) on to 2 DVDs?

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Is it bad to use your Hard Drive? No, it's not.

In the future, search Mroogle for answers to your questions. You'll find answers a lot faster.

shyam09 said:

so thank you all who respond to these questions!
1. i am a college student (well going to be) which program is best for taking lecture notes [note. i do have iwork]
http://onsoftware.en.softonic.com/5-mac-alternatives-to-onenote
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

2. since i have iwork, i really dont need office 2011, right?

3. is it bad to put movies on the HDD of a mac. like will it eventually slow down the computer? i have about a little more than 4 GB (which wont fit on a stupid DVD!)-- or should i just burn (they are multiple files) on to 2 DVDs?

**if i have anymore, ill post it up.. thanks everyone.. really really appreciate it!

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1. Honestly just for simple note-taking the built in TextEdit should be fine.
2. Some universities require that you use Office.
3. The only way storing movies on your drive will slow it down is if it reaches the point that you have less than ~20% drive space remaining.

shyam09 said:

so thank you all who respond to these questions!
1. i am a college student (well going to be) which program is best for taking lecture notes [note. i do have iwork]
http://onsoftware.en.softonic.com/5-mac-alternatives-to-onenote
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

Click to expand...

Pages should be good enough.

2. since i have iwork, i really dont need office 2011, right?

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iWork should be good for you. It's compatible with MS Office. Or you could download for free, OpenOffice from openoffice.org.

3. is it bad to put movies on the HDD of a mac. like will it eventually slow down the computer? i have about a little more than 4 GB (which wont fit on a stupid DVD!)-- or should i just burn (they are multiple files) on to 2 DVDs?

**if i have anymore, ill post it up.. thanks everyone.. really really appreciate it!

Click to expand...

No it's not bad to put movies on the HDD. Just make sure you don't let the HDD space drop below 10% at the most. Once you get around 10% you will notice a big drag in performance.

I am a college student so I will try to help.

Program wise, you don't need either of them unless you are doing work which specifically requires them. Using Word or another word processor and the Cornell Method of Note Taking is fine. It isn't the program, it is the skill. You obviously don't write everything an instructor says so with skill you only record the key points. You can also record the notes in some classes but check before you do this as some professors are really against this.

You are going to need Office simply on the basis of compatibility. When you complete documents, there are going to be compatibility issues without Office. Instructors want electronic copies (they are rarely Mac-smart) and there are a few companies that you upload your paper to in order to verify it isn't not plagiarized; not all of these support iWork. Undergrad professors are not going to do anything other than fail you if you send them something they cannot open. Also, many professors suck with computers and you don't want them getting frustrated before they grade your paper which is 30% of the final grade.

Movie wise, don't worry about it, but BACK UP EVERYTHING!!!! Professors will flip **** if you tell them you lost data due to a (fill in the blank). You may want to consider a SSD on the basis of greater reliability, greater durability, and better battery life, and then use an external hard drive for movies and less important things.

I have used a laptop in class since I was in middle-school in the late 1990s. If you have any questions on utilizing it to plan for success, let me know. I have a learning disability which makes it nearly impossible to write neatly and quickly and so a laptop has been my bridge to succeeding. While I don't know everything to utilizing a laptop to education success, I do know a lot and next year I will graduate with my PhD, so I suppose I've done something right.

Ive been in college for a year and half now, only had my mac for the last semester and I find I dont really use it all that much for actual note taking as many classes like math require all these stupid symbols and everything else its just easier to do it on paper. I have iWork but I have never used it for school work, my teachers usually require a digital version and im not even gonna try sending them an iWork document. I have sent openoffice to them before without any problems before I got Office. - If your doing the work for yourself or just printing things out, iWork will be fine but if you have to do digital OR work with other people and transfer documents between each other it will me MUCH easier to stay with office.

Its fine to store that on your HDD, 4gb is nothing to a HDD today. Also, SSD arent really more reliable than a standard HDD. SSD die without warning and I have read alot about this and then your data is gone because it was all digital. They have come a long way since they first came out but with any electronic, keep backups because my friend has had 4 HDD die in a year.

Backup no matter what but why do you say SSD's are not more reliable even when you said your friend has 4 HDD's fail on him in a single year? Look at Google's HDD study...yes, a crappy SSD can't hold a match to an enterprise level HDD but the established SDD's but the better SSD's are among the most capable and reliable storage systems and great for computers you are going to keep for a long time.

NickZac said:

Backup no matter what but why do you say SSD's are not more reliable even when you said your friend has 4 HDD's fail on him in a single year? Look at Google's HDD study...yes, a crappy SSD can't hold a match to an enterprise level HDD but the established SDD's but the better SSD's are among the most capable and reliable storage systems and great for computers you are going to keep for a long time.

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Yes he had 4 fail in under a year, but I have never had one fail and I know many people that have never had one fail, but most of the time when they fail it isnt instant and you can still grab your data off.

tjb1 said:

Yes he had 4 fail in under a year, but I have never had one fail and I know many people that have never had one fail, but most of the time when they fail it isnt instant and you can still grab your data off.

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Larger studies have shown that both SSD's and HDD's will die without warning. SMART does not work nearly as well as anticipated (about 60% of the time it does not alert at all before a HDD drive failure). Data extraction of a HDD is not certain and can be very expensive (with a SSD obviously it isnt an option at all). However, especially for college, a SSD is ideal solely because it has far more shock resistance than even the best HDD's and if you take a laptop to class, it will be exposed to conditions which can destroy a HDD.

NickZac said:

Larger studies have shown that both SSD's and HDD's will die without warning. SMART does not work nearly as well as anticipated (about 60% of the time it does not alert at all before a HDD drive failure). Data extraction of a HDD is not certain and can be very expensive (with a SSD obviously it isnt an option at all). However, especially for college, a SSD is ideal solely because it has far more shock resistance than even the best HDD's and if you take a laptop to class, it will be exposed to conditions which can destroy a HDD.

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Im not saying SSDs are bad, just giving the op more info on them. I myself am getting an OWC Mercury Pro for christmas to use along with my momentus xt in the optibay. Im not sure either if you have read the other threads about theft recovery programs, I recommend installing Prey from www.preyproject.com its free and it can do alot to help you recover you laptop if its stolen.

Putting it on now. thanks!

tjb1 said:

Im not saying SSDs are bad, just giving the op more info on them. I myself am getting an OWC Mercury Pro for christmas to use along with my momentus xt in the optibay. Im not sure either if you have read the other threads about theft recovery programs, I recommend installing Prey from www.preyproject.com its free and it can do alot to help you recover you laptop if its stolen.

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I would get office. You can normally get it cheap through your school and It's nice to have. I rarely use iWork since Office is the most widely used productivity software among colleges. To avoid problems with file transfer, I would just use Office.