Advice Reqd for New Macbook OSX Please

[thejackinthepac]

Hi. I'm after a bit of advice about OSX Mountain / Mountain Lion please.

I'm debating whether to get a Macbook Pro or a Macbook Air, and both are listed on the apple site as coming with Mountain Lion. I currently have 10.5.8 Leopard on an old 2gb ram macbook and need a faster laptop.

I know Snow Leopard was pretty much well received by all, but Lion seems to have as many disappointed reviews are positive ones - hence perhaps the reason for Mountain Lion coming along?

I don't need a laptop/system that can run a hundred different apps at once, or is all about having "fancy bells n whistles"; I need a system that runs fast, mostly for web browsing, photo/video/document work, no video games and doesn't give me the spinning color wheel for 10 mins every time I try to do more than 1 thing at the same time - can someone who has been using Mountain Lion give me some feedback about it please? Is it better or worse than Snow Leopard or Lion? Whats different about it? etc etc

(I'm aware any new macbook will have it on as default and "downgrading" may not be wise, and I'd rather stick with MBPro or MBAir than go back to a windows machine, although some new netbooks seem pretty quick).

Thanks in advance for the OSX feedback.

 

[arjen92]

I think you mean "some ultrabooks look really fast". Netbooks are getting less popular and I feel like they are disappearing again.

No, they did not make Mountain Lion because Lion was disappointing. They just keep improving and changing things because that's how a company works and makes money.

So a new OS is going to come within 2 years.

They didn't change that much though in Lion (and Mountain Lion). Personally, I hate mission control. Expose was working awesome in tiger and Leopard. But with Lion they just wrecked it. That's my personal opinion.

The best thing to do is to check it out yourself in the stores. Do you mind the changes? Do you even notice them. I think not. If you think I'm wrong, prove me wrong by going to a store and checking them out yourself.

Also, have you thought about upgrading your current macbook? 2 GB RAM these days is not a lot and the problems you're describing (can't run many programs simultaneously) can be easily solved by upgrading your RAM. It's an easy and cheap solution to get your mac running faster again.

If you're still set on getting a new macbook, I would advise the Macbook Air. Again go to a store, make a video in iMovie and see how long it takes to render on both. If you're really upset about the render times on the macbook Air you can go for the Macbook Pro.