Just purchased a Macbook Pro

[Link00seven]

Hello,

I just purchased a Refurbished 2.4 GHz Macbook Pro. It hasn't showed up in the mail just yet but I have a few questions.

Specs are: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Mac OS 10.5, GeForce 8600M 256MB.

1: If anyone here plays World of Warcraft, how can I expect it to run on this machine? How about other games? Is the graphics card in this machine good enough to run games decently, as well as other video intensive software (Photoshop, for example?)

2: Does anybody know links to good freeware mac software? I'm switching from PC, but I am familiar and like Mac's but I am looking for software such as FTP clients, a word processor (not buying MS Office would be awesome) and other such software?

3: Is this overall a good machine? I paid $1649 for it refurbished. I thought about getting the newest 15" MBP for $2499 but didn't really see a huge leap in specs vs the extra money I would've spent to get the new one vs the refurbished.

4: Just in case I need to use Windows XP for whatever reason, can anyone vouch for how well Boot Camp works? What about software such as Parallels?

5: Any other tips for a new MBP user?

Thanks for reading & answering my questions. I look forward to getting this new machine. One hell of an upgrade from what I have currently...an old Compaq (1.4 GHz AMD...its about 8 years old and runs as such.)

 

[soms]

1.) WoW will run fine, as well most other games that aren't too graphics intensive. I have basically the same machine as you and get 50-65fps in WoW.
3.) That seems like a pretty good deal you got for it.
4.) Boot Camp works great, I haven't tried parallels however. Except for the odd driver issue in XP, boot camp works fine.
5.) Perhaps look into getting 4gb of RAM, as its cheap now and it does help if you are going to multitask a lot. Otherwise enjoy the new MBP!

 

[mgacam2]

1. I have the 2.2 which is slower with a slower graphics card and i run WoW completely MAXED resolution, textures, the whole deal. Not a single hiccup. Games all run at a decent setting, I'v played Bioshock, COD4 and even Crysis.

2.Not sure about FTP clients, but Neo Office is one of the best free open source versions of office out there.

3.I wouldn't trade this computer for anything in the world except for another mac. Macbook Pro's and OS X were made for each other. It works way to well for me to go back to windows, and i was a die hard windows pc gamer before.

4. It's a proven fact that Windows on a macbook pro with Apple drivers actually works BETTER then similar/same speced computers with microsoft drivers. That being said except for the graphics card driver, update that to Nvidia's latest. The only hiccup I'v seen is the 2 finger scrolling is more sensitive, but trust me you won't be using windows. After using OS X youll be re buying all your games in it. I completely removed my XP partition. It's a waste of space

5. There are alot of threads about this latly, seems with the new peyrn release there are alot of mac newbs, refer to my response in this thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/449279/

 

[Link00seven]

Thanks for the quick responses and the link. I've been looking to get a MBP for awhile now and the price jumped out at me (especially since I've needed a laptop for school and wanted a Mac.)