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Two quick questions about eMacs

J

johnbro23

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
First is... do you think that the eMacs with 1.25 GHz and 768 MB memory (getting a 512 MB stick from crucial) will be fast enough to do what John Mayer was doing at Macworld San Francisco when he was soloing over the song he made? Thats what I'm looking foward to doing most on my Mac, so I'm just asking if it will work smoothly.

Second, does the apple store put tax on things, even if you don't live in California? If so, how much is it?

Thanks for your help.
 
Yes and Yes. A sales rep at 1-800-MY-APPLE will be able to tell you what your local sales tax rate is.
 
now this may just be for laptops, I'm not sure but I've heard you will need a pre-amp for best and clearest sound quality. I'm going to try a line in guitar adapter first before I purchase a pre-amp. As far as the specs from what I've heard it should work perfectly for what you want to do, I'm in the process as we speak of buying a pb myself.

I was just asking a friend of mine over msn from Cali who just purchased an ipod mini and he said he was charged %7 in taxes.

hope this helps!
 
FistfulofAngst said:
now this may just be for laptops, I'm not sure but I've heard you will need a pre-amp for best and clearest sound quality. I'm going to try a line in guitar adapter first before I purchase a pre-amp. As far as the specs from what I've heard it should work perfectly for what you want to do, I'm in the process as we speak of buying a pb myself.

I was just asking a friend of mine over msn from Cali who just purchased an ipod mini and he said he was charged %7 in taxes.

hope this helps!
Click to expand...

Yea, I cant wait to get my new Mac and play around on it (esp. Garageband). I didnt expect any tax because on eBay it's only taxed if you're in the same state as the seller is. Thats cool though, its not gonna keep me from getting it!
 
Sales tax is charged on any purchase if the seller has a physical presence in the state where the buyer makes the purchase. Since Apple has a presence in all 50 states, they are legally obligated to charge sales tax on any sale. On eBay, most sellers are only present in one state, and therefore only have to charge sales tax of buyers in that one state.
 
My roommate uses a G4 800 iBook and a Preamp on his gibson sg. It all seems to work awesome in Cubase and Garageband.
 
California has a new evil deal for its residents. They are collecting tax on any out of state mail/phone/internet purchases you made and didn't already pay tax on. No fun. Worse considering it wasn't widely known until people started doing their taxes in 2004.

Somebody mentioned Ebay. If you're buying from a private party you shouldn't be paying sales tax. Some Ebay vendors will require you to pay tax legitimately but mostly it's a big scam. Padding the shipping charges and charging sales tax are the 2 biggest Ebay scams.

Emacs are certainly powerful enough to make good use of Garage Band. But follow the advice already given and run your guitar through a preamp. You do want to hear it, don't you?
 
Thanks for the advice, I think I'll just buy it from a local reseller since sales tax will be the same.

Does OS X come with Microsoft Office? Such as word, excel, etc.? Those are necessary apps that I hope are included.
 
johnbro23 said:
Thanks for the advice, I think I'll just buy it from a local reseller since sales tax will be the same.

Does OS X come with Microsoft Office? Such as word, excel, etc.? Those are necessary apps that I hope are included.
Click to expand...

no it only comes with a trial version (30 days I believe) It does come with appleworks though. (true its old and ugly but it works.) 🙂
 
yoman said:
no it only comes with a trial version (30 days I believe) It does come with appleworks though. (true its old and ugly but it works.) 🙂
Click to expand...

Wow, thats crap. I just checked the Apple website and it says Microsoft Office is $400. Thats like just basic apps that you'd expect to come with a computer. Does apple have decent apps like that like Word and Excel that are compatible with PCs that come with OS X?
 
johnbro23 said:
Wow, thats crap. I just checked the Apple website and it says Microsoft Office is $400. Thats like just basic apps that you'd expect to come with a computer. Does apple have decent apps like that like Word and Excel that are compatible with PCs that come with OS X?
Click to expand...

Just so you know, Office is not considered a "basic" app. It is considered a pro app and no manufacturer bundles Office with their computers. The PCs all come with Works. And $400 is the same price for a full version of Office on the PCs as well, but MS does do upgrade versions for Windows. Also, Appleworks is compatible with most Office documents, though I think it may screw up the formatting of more complicated documents.
 
Re: MS office

Office is expensive, but it is a great set of programs. Are you in school, or do you know anyone who is? The Office Student / Teacher edition is an excellent value at approx $150 (shop around, for example Costco.com sells it cheaper than Apple). The suite includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Entourage. Plus with 2004 coming out, you could probably find a cheap version of Office X somewhere.

Just my $.02.

-alywa
 
Office

textedit is now word compatible
no bells and whistles, but it will read them and edit them nicely.

If you are a cheapass, download openoffice. it is really pretty decent, you just miss out on a lot of the visual basic macros and such. but well worth the asking price... free.

office really is a pretty nice suite of applications though.

my .02
 
What is AppleWorks? Does it have basic word and excel? Cuz thats all I need and it seems silly to spend $400 for something I'll hardly use.
 
AppleWorks is a basic suite of productivity software. It does the following:
Word Processing
Spreadsheet
Presentation
Database
Drawing
Painting

Click here for more info on AppleWorks
 
johnbro23 said:
Wow, thats crap. I just checked the Apple website and it says Microsoft Office is $400. Thats like just basic apps that you'd expect to come with a computer. Does apple have decent apps like that like Word and Excel that are compatible with PCs that come with OS X?
Click to expand...

Microsoft Office is not a basic app although most people buy it and just use the basic features--it a pro app and you can live without it anyway. Your eMac will come with AppleWorks, which is more basic but still powerful enough.
 
Horrortaxi said:
Microsoft Office is not a basic app although most people buy it and just use the basic features--it a pro app and you can live without it anyway. Your eMac will come with AppleWorks, which is more basic but still powerful enough.
Click to expand...

Thats what I wanted to hear. I guess Microsoft Office isnt right for me. If I need to do some complicated stuff, we're keeping our PC, so I can do it on that. Thanks for all your help. I cant wait to get my first mac!
 
I just went down to my local Apple store (not an official one, just a reseller) and was blown away. Those computers look twice as good in person. I've heard people talk about how the eMacs are ugly compared to the rest of the Apple line, but I thought they looked rather elegant for lack of better words.

It was so easy to use too. Within 5 minutes I had already figure out that it has those basic apps I was talking about and makind my first composition on Garageband. I was playing around with everything (expose! 😀 )

I fogot to ask the guy... theres this little light thing by the drive bay. Is that a button or what? I never got around to opening the actual drive so was that the button to tell it to open? If so, thats sweet.

One more thing, sorry if I'm just rambling, but I'm up in there air on whether or not to go with the superdrive option or not. I'm upgrading the Hard Drive no matter what, so the difference for me between SD and CD is $150. Anyone think its a must-have?
 
johnbro23 said:
I just went down to my local Apple store (not an official one, just a reseller) and was blown away. Those computers look twice as good in person. I've heard people talk about how the eMacs are ugly compared to the rest of the Apple line, but I thought they looked rather elegant for lack of better words.

It was so easy to use too. Within 5 minutes I had already figure out that it has those basic apps I was talking about and makind my first composition on Garageband. I was playing around with everything (expose! 😀 )

I fogot to ask the guy... theres this little light thing by the drive bay. Is that a button or what? I never got around to opening the actual drive so was that the button to tell it to open? If so, thats sweet.

One more thing, sorry if I'm just rambling, but I'm up in there air on whether or not to go with the superdrive option or not. I'm upgrading the Hard Drive no matter what, so the difference for me between SD and CD is $150. Anyone think its a must-have?
Click to expand...

the little light sudo button is actually your light letting you know when the computer is on - and when it's asleep, it'll fade in and out, like your emac is snoring. if you've ever seen the apple lcd's do it, it's the same business, 'cept on our emacs, it's *not* a button - it's just the light. the button is behind the ports on the side of the machine...

and for superdrive? handy, but not necessary. from what i've heard (i do not have one myself) most people use it a few times a year, but (again, from what i've heard - don't have one) it's somewhat slower when ripping and burning cd's than the combo drive. so basically, pick what is more important to you. and with the easter egg found in iDVD, you can use a non-apple dvd burner...

just make sure that they give you the full iLife package, including iDVD if you only get the combo drive.

matt
 
mkaake said:
the little light sudo button is actually your light letting you know when the computer is on - and when it's asleep, it'll fade in and out, like your emac is snoring.
Click to expand...

There's an sudo button??? And, to think, I have been typing it by hand all these years!!!
 
DGFan said:
There's an sudo button??? And, to think, I have been typing it by hand all these years!!!
Click to expand...


man, join the 21st century... where have you been?? 🙂

here's a shout out to all of the homonyms out there and the people who don't check their posts before submitting them... 😉

matt
 
eMac Garageband fun

I got my eMac a few months ago, so it is pre the latest revision (so only 1 GHz). I got a gig of Ram in it and it runs Garageband really well. As others have, I would recommend an audio interface. Not only does it make it easy to get your lines in, but you get better outs. You'll need monitors or a stereo system to really be able to hear what you're doing, the little emac speakers aren't going to cut it.

If you can spare the money, get the superdrive. You won't use it much, but when you do it's a godsend. I've only used it for backing up files or for giving people large numbers of files, and being able to put over 4 1/2 gigs on each is much much better than burning a stack of cds.
 
I just got my Mac just under 48 hours ago and I've already done things that were never possible with my PC. I've burned a CD, which, since after my PC crashed, it lost the CD burning software, that didnt let me burn any CD's. Windows Media Player didnt work either. I couldnt be happier with my mac. Its so easy its unreal. Its like this is how it should be. I got the souped up eMac with the superdrive, bluetooth, and airport. I couldnt beleive how easy it was to get on the internet. On a PC, you'd have to set up all kinds of configuration options and probably spend an hour or two talking to a dell or microsoft guy tring to figure it out. It was like 2 clicks and you're online.

I'm very satisfied. I'm a switcher and I'm not looking back.
 
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