Another bunch of questions

[Spitroast Panda]

Hi, I am looking at making the jump to the fruity side, as it were, but have a few questions, if any of you dont mind? Some probably sound daft, and they probably ARE daft, but as a M$ customer for 20 years, they sound sensible to me.

1. What, if any, does the difference in processor speed make in day-to-day activity? For example, a 15" mbp (got the lingo already! ) can be bought with 2.0 or 2.2 GHz processor. Does it make THAT much difference, as it wouldnt on a PC

2. Processor speed again, why are Macs set at a lower speed than PCs? The PC I am using now is a 2.3GHz C2D processor, and is about 2 years old (Told you they would be daft questions)

3. Likely going to have to get it bootcamped for some windows only software (Sage line 50, etc). Im guessing the 64bit version of windows 7 would suffice or 32bit?

4. Long term, the house will become "Appled", but initially, was looking at a 21" imac, and either a 11/13" mba or 13/15" mbp. Which is likely to be better for me? (Not that you know me, but basic browsing for "stuff", usual things people do on their computers, dont video/music edit, but wife is getting a DSLR camera at xmas)

5. And I assume I will be able to have all the household touches/iphones/ipads, etc linked together in the home network?

6. Will there be any issues with having me on the mac, and the kids on PCs, networking-wise? I cant see why there would be, but you never know.

7. How reliable are the batteries with them being built in? I get the whole build quality thing about apple kit, but do the batteries last, or am i looking at expensive battery replacements every couple of years?

 

[Hellhammer]

1. In everyday tasks, the CPU won't matter. Any modern CPU is sufficient for those tasks.

2. Frequency isn't the only thing. Your PC has a Core 2 Duo, which is based on Core microarchitecture from 2006. The CPUs in MBPs are based on Sandy Bridge architecture, which is much faster clock for clock than when compared to Core. Other than that, your C2D is dual core, whereas the CPUs in 15" MBP are quad core. On top of that, there is Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost, which increase the performance even more.

3. 64-bit is better since it can utilize all of your RAM. Take a look at virtualizing too, it's great if the apps you need aren't too intensive.

4. If you're going to get an iMac anyway, then I would seriously look into MBA. The only big difference is the storage, you can only get up to 256GB. Other than that, it's pretty much the same as 13" MBP, just smaller. Really depends on what you look for. You can always consider a NAS or other network storage so you can access your data anywhere on the house, on any device.

5. Yes.

6. File sharing is a bit more complicated but nothing you couldn't do.

7. In general the batteries are good. My MBA is soon 1-year old and it's at 93% health with 167 cycles.

 

[Spitroast Panda]

Thanks for the swift response, Hellhammer!

So the air would be the 1 to go for, mobility-wise, as on this pc I have only used just over 100 gig in 2 years! (And most of that will be windows!) So I dont think storage will be much of an issue, but I guess i can simply transfer stuff to the imac?

Bugger, now i'm gonna have to go to all the trouble of getting to the apple store and force myself to have yet another look at the 11 and the 13" mba's now! [/sarcasm] Likely will get the 13" as compared to my 15" dell, they both feel (as much as i can attempt to lift them off the desk at the apple shop), they are both ridiculously light!

 

[jmpnop]

1. The performance of the two CPU's is nearly identical but the GPU in the 2.2GHz model is a LOT better than the 2.0GHz one.

2. They are quad-core processors. Even the comparable Windows-based PC's have the same CPU clock.

3. 32-bit doesn't address RAM more than 3GB, 64-bit highly recommended.

4. MBA would be ideal for you. It isn't as powerful as MBP 15" but can handle light photo/video editing.

5. Yes.

6. Like HH said, file sharing is a difficult.

7. They are of good quality, they won't die out as fast as some of the Windows laptops.

 

[Hellhammer]

So the air would be the 1 to go for, mobility-wise, as on this pc I have only used just over 100 gig in 2 years! (And most of that will be windows!) So I dont think storage will be much of an issue, but I guess i can simply transfer stuff to the imac?

Yes, of course. Just enable file sharing and you can access the files on any device, assuming the iMac is online. That is what I do. I have a PC (used to have a 24" iMac) and access the files on my MBA when needed.