Just got my Macbook (Switcher) :), few Q's

[Jinsou]

Hello, how's everyone doing.

This is my story. I work at a local retailer as a tech service advisor
i get all kinds of computers daily, and i've never owned a mac until now
but i've seen quite a few and know the most common issues with them.
But still the amount of macs i get is less than 1/4 of the pc's i get. long time iPod user. Apple has caught my attention for a few years now and now i'm a proud owner of a macbook. 2.2/leopard/1gb/160hdd

ok, now for the Q's.
-I'm very used to see the way tiger loaded(Quite fast), is it just me or is leopard taking more time to load?
-Since i switched, most of my video files are in .avi, is there any way i can edit this files in iMovie? flip4mac still doesn't support iLife '08 if I'm not mistaken.
-Do you guys suggest a 2gb upgrade? since this new models go up to 4.. i wont be using hardcore apps to drain that much memory.. the usual college stuff(doing a major in engineering).
-Ok, it has happened to me frequently. When i turn on my macbook and i dont have an active internet connection sometimes the time is not accurate. the apple website tells me its ok sometimes for this to happen. but still its been happening way to frequently. maybe the Efi battery has issues? whatcha guys think
-Oh and, installed bootcamp and everything is great. But, sometimes when I'm using the mousepad it will go in an inaccurate direction when i try to highly something or select something.

Thanks for the time, long time reader of the page. new to the forums

 

[xUKHCx]

ok, now for the Q's.
-I'm very used to see the way tiger loaded(Quite fast), is it just me or is leopard taking more time to load?
-Since i switched, most of my video files are in .avi, is there any way i can edit this files in iMovie? flip4mac still doesn't support iLife '08 if I'm not mistaken.
-Do you guys suggest a 2gb upgrade? since this new models go up to 4.. i wont be using hardcore apps to drain that much memory.. the usual college stuff(doing a major in engineering).
-Ok, it has happened to me frequently. When i turn on my macbook and i dont have an active internet connection sometimes the time is not accurate. the apple website tells me its ok sometimes for this to happen. but still its been happening way to frequently. maybe the Efi battery has issues? whatcha guys think
-Oh and, installed bootcamp and everything is great. But, sometimes when I'm using the mousepad it will go in an inaccurate direction when i try to highly something or select something.

Thanks for the time, long time reader of the page. new to the forums

1.) Leopard boot time is way way faster in my experience.
2.) dunno
3.) 2.5 GBs in mine and that is more than enough for my needs, chemical engineering student.
4.) Is this after you have come out of bootcamp
5.) dunno.

 

[mankar4]

As far as the time issue, it always happens for a few days after you install boot camp. your computer will get the hang of it. at least mine did. not a battery issue.

 

[carl201167]

Visual Hub is a fantastic tool for converting .avi files to other formats (and it does more besides)

 

[Makosuke]

-Since i switched, most of my video files are in .avi, is there any way i can edit this files in iMovie? flip4mac still doesn't support iLife '08 if I'm not mistaken.

I wanted to add that actually flip4mac doesn't have anything to do with AVI files--flip4mac is for .wmv--that is the Windows Media container format and video/audio codecs.

Although AVI files can use Windows Media codecs, they almost never do--these days by far the most common ones are divx and xvid (with MP3 audio), plus possibly some other h263/h264/MP4 variants. Quicktime understands how to play AVI files on its own, and the Divx codec (or Perian, or a couple of more obscure codecs) handles divx, xvid and almost all the related variants.

The actual answer to your question, thus, is "no and yes". Depending on what version you're using, iMovie doesn't edit most things natively--that is, just off the raw files. However, as it'll import anything Quicktime can import, it shouldn't have any problem at all with AVI files--just import them (I believe all you have to do is drag the file to the clips area in '06). Takes more space to do the editing, but works fine.

If your files ARE in .wmv format for some reason, then the answer is the same except that you need to pay for the "Pro" version of flip4mac, which can also transcode .wmv files into another format. With this, it should be easy enough to import your video into iMovie to edit. I've done this myself.

-Do you guys suggest a 2gb upgrade? since this new models go up to 4.. i wont be using hardcore apps to drain that much memory.. the usual college stuff(doing a major in engineering).

I'll second that 2GB is enough for most uses. I push my computer pretty hard, and 2GB is sufficient for everything except heavy-duty Photoshop in Rosetta (that is, the old, emulated version of Photoshop on an Intel Mac), which is a notorious memory hog.

Slightly more related to what you do, I manage the computers at a university energy research lab, and the only machine here with more than 1.5GB is the Photoshop box. We do plenty of analysis and graphing of data (admittedly not HUGE datasets, but into the 100K record range), light-duty CAD, and all the usual Powerpoint stuff.