1. Should I get a Pro, or go with the regular MacBook? 2. PC user going to Mac, help?

[sportsfrk214]

Ok so I have two seperate things to ask about here. I am a PC/Windows user, always have been, but I've decided I'm ready to make the big switch to Mac. I love my iPod Touch and I'm convinced that Apple just makes superior products.

Well anyway, I'm going to get either the new MacBook or MacBook Pro, and I'm trying to decide which. The price difference is steep, so I need some advice. A big thing for me is the lack of Firewire on the MacBook. I'm a filmmaker, and I need FireWire to get my video onto my laptop. Is there any kind of device that will allow me to get this video onto a MacBook through the USB, or do I need a Pro? Also, I plan on buying Final Cut Studio, and editing HD video. So again, can I do this with a MacBook, or do I need a Pro?

My other questions refer to making the switch to Mac. As much as I'm ready to leave Windows behind, the fact of the matter remains that there are several programs I have that I can not live without, and they only run on Windows. I've read about Boot Camp and it seems like a great way to be able to switch to Mac, but have Windows available for those few programs. Is Boot Camp a reliable program? It seems to be, but I've heard too many horror stories about hard drive partitioning. Can anyone offer any insight?

I would appreciate any help anyone could provide

 

[clyde2801]

If you require firewire on a mac portable, it's either the white macbook or the macbook pro. If you're wanting to do heavy lifting processorwise, then it's the pro.

Boot camp is fairly solid and stable. Same for VMware Fusion or parallels. Good luck.

 

[Vulcan]

If you need firewire, it's either the whitebook or the pro. While the WhiteBook will run those apps, the pro will run them much better due to its much better graphics card.

 

[Ampidire]

I'd say pro, keep your eye open on Nov 28th for black friday deals, should be 100 or 150 off.

The base model MBP would fit your needs just fine.

 

[convergent]

I just made the switch recently too. I would say to look for some good deals on the last generation MBP. I just bought a 2.6Ghz one for $1500 new from B&H Photo. The older ones have 2 firewire ports instead of one, and the regular dual-link DVI port... I use all of them.

As far as the switch, I highly recommend you buy a copy of "Switching to the Mac - Leopard Edition" form The Missing Manual series. Its a great reference book in the switch.

For your windows programs, I've gone with VMWare Fusion, and amazing program. I don't do video, but am running some photography software that requires a USB key and it works great... and totally seamless with the Mac stuff. I've not messed with boot camp yet, and don't think I'll need to go there unless I'm going to run some high end games.

 

[cg165]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

Ok so I have two seperate things to ask about here. I am a PC/Windows user, always have been, but I've decided I'm ready to make the big switch to Mac. I love my iPod Touch and I'm convinced that Apple just makes superior products.

Well anyway, I'm going to get either the new MacBook or MacBook Pro, and I'm trying to decide which. The price difference is steep, so I need some advice. A big thing for me is the lack of Firewire on the MacBook. I'm a filmmaker, and I need FireWire to get my video onto my laptop. Is there any kind of device that will allow me to get this video onto a MacBook through the USB, or do I need a Pro? Also, I plan on buying Final Cut Studio, and editing HD video. So again, can I do this with a MacBook, or do I need a Pro?

My other questions refer to making the switch to Mac. As much as I'm ready to leave Windows behind, the fact of the matter remains that there are several programs I have that I can not live without, and they only run on Windows. I've read about Boot Camp and it seems like a great way to be able to switch to Mac, but have Windows available for those few programs. Is Boot Camp a reliable program? It seems to be, but I've heard too many horror stories about hard drive partitioning. Can anyone offer any insight?

I would appreciate any help anyone could provide

I recommend the pro for you because of the FireWire, better video card, screen quality and size.

Bootcamp is reliable and don't worry, it's really easy to partition a drive using
Bootcamp to install windows. It's amazing to read posts about people screwing it up. When you do it, it asks where you want to install windows and one of the options says "bootcamp" so you just pick that one haha.

I've used windows my whole life and didn't know osx very well at all a month ago, now I'm already wanting to go into windows less and less. Go for the pro, you won't regret it. Just give it some time to learn leopard, it is different than windows.

 

[clyde2801]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)
It's amazing to read posts about people screwing it up. When you do it, it asks where you want to install windows and one of the options says "bootcamp" so you just pick that one haha.

It's easy, so long as you read the instructions for boot camp that it asks you to print. I glossed over them, counting on the whole 'it just works' Mac philosophy. After reinstalling osx and looking over the instructions carefully the second time, I figured out that I had to have my windows disk format the bootcamp petiton to either NTFS or FAT32. Lesson learned; thank God for backups.

 

[guitarmaster18]

Eh in all honesty, all BootCamp does is create a compatible windows partition (NTFS or FAT32). People always seem to think that it's magically "emulating" or "enabling" windows. Installing Windows on a mac is no different than installing windows on a PC, you just need correctly formatted disk space to run it on. And just like any other PC, you must install drivers for the hardware on the Mac by using the BootCamp drivers (these are included on your restore disk that came with your mac).

Anyway, go for the pro. The only other Apple notebook that offers firewire is the WhiteBook, and you will probably find that horribly slow, mainly it's graphics card (the GMA is garbage.) With the MacBook Pro, you'll be getting a fairly nice discrete card, the 9600 is NVidia's high-mid range card. Overall, you would be much happier with a MacBook Pro and either the new or old one would suit you very well.

 

[CaffeMacchiato]

Ok so I have two seperate things to ask about here. I am a PC/Windows user, always have been, but I've decided I'm ready to make the big switch to Mac. I love my iPod Touch and I'm convinced that Apple just makes superior products.

Well anyway, I'm going to get either the new MacBook or MacBook Pro, and I'm trying to decide which. The price difference is steep, so I need some advice. A big thing for me is the lack of Firewire on the MacBook. I'm a filmmaker, and I need FireWire to get my video onto my laptop. Is there any kind of device that will allow me to get this video onto a MacBook through the USB, or do I need a Pro? Also, I plan on buying Final Cut Studio, and editing HD video. So again, can I do this with a MacBook, or do I need a Pro?

My other questions refer to making the switch to Mac. As much as I'm ready to leave Windows behind, the fact of the matter remains that there are several programs I have that I can not live without, and they only run on Windows. I've read about Boot Camp and it seems like a great way to be able to switch to Mac, but have Windows available for those few programs. Is Boot Camp a reliable program? It seems to be, but I've heard too many horror stories about hard drive partitioning. Can anyone offer any insight?

I would appreciate any help anyone could provide

Buy MBP, because the screen quality for MB sucks. Even when they are using the same 9400M, they look very different. Go and see it for yourself. I consider MB expensive for that kind of low quality screen, while MBP reasonably less expensive. Although, you should get 4 Gig of ram, not 2. Since you might run VMware (or Parallel) for a lot of windows programs which does not exist for MAC (still, and perhaps forever not).

The XP/Vista drivers for MBP needs to be improved, hence dualboot is not recommended. For example, the XP/Vista can only use the 9600 graphics card, making the system heat up very quickly, even when you are doing nothing but editing a text file.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Go for the MBP for all of the reasons suggested by previous posters (better performance, more power, FireWire, a far better screen, etc).

If money is an issue, I'd suggest going for a refurb MBP, as they have all of the advantages of a new machine, are tested and tried and come with Apple's warranty. In any case, I'm a switcher, and I bought a MBP last April and am very happy with it.

Cheers and good luck