Looking at switching to Mac

[lilweeds]

I am in the market for a new Mac. My 2 year old Dell is a real piece and looking for a good upgrade.

All of what I do is related to web surfing and programs related to my landscaping business. I do not use big design software, just basic Quickbook and a scheduling program.

There is nothing that I have found that is comparable to my scheduling software made for Mac. Daylite comes close but it isn't there, so running one of the VM programs with Windows (XP will do me fine) is a must as far as I am concerned.

My question goes to the build of the machine. I like speed, and an SSD has peaked my interest. My current machine only has a 120 gig hard drive, and I only have 25 gig on my machine. I keep music and stuff like that on a separate machine at the present time and may dump that machine too and just use an external wireless hard drive.

How much space does Snow Leopard use? Parallels? Fusion? I assume my 25 gigs plus the apple OS should take up more the 50 gigs? Will a 128 SSD do it for me?

I am still not sure between the 15 and 13, but I think that will mostly come down to how much money I decide to drop on this machine.

One more thing, will 4 gigs of RAM do it?

 

[Tiki35]

I bet the Intel G2 80GB SSD will be fine for your needs. It's fine for mine and I use Parallel's daily.
Regarding the RAM, I would buy the $239 8GB RAM from macsales.com and sell your existing 4GB that you will have for like $80 on craigslist.
I found Parallels almost unusable with 4GB of RAM until I upgraded to a SSD, and now it's good, but I will be upgrading to 8GB.
I have the 15 inch, but if I were more mobile with it, I would have chosen the 13 inch.

 

[lilweeds]

What brand SSD is Apple using?

 

[Tiki35]

I believe it's a Samsung. I would for sure go with the Intel.

 

[lilweeds]

Well guys I did it, made the switch. Now for a new question I found the intel SSD and another which is labeled the same as the intel, but is by A DATA? Is it the same? The specs say it is.

Also, Time Machine or an AEBS with a usb hard drive?

 

[emiljan]

I think time machine is a great backup solution as long as you have a huge terabyte hd to backup up to.

 

[robotmonkey]

Well guys I did it, made the switch. Now for a new question I found the intel SSD and another which is labeled the same as the intel, but is by A DATA? Is it the same? The specs say it is.

Also, Time Machine or an AEBS with a usb hard drive?

Did you get the 15 or the 13?

 

[lilweeds]

Got the 13, I am going to get an SSD in the next few days as well as some more RAM. After doing some more research online, I think I'll stick with the Intel instead of the A DATA.

Is online backup something that might be worthwhile to backup the time capsule?

 

[willieva]

Got the 13, I am going to get an SSD in the next few days as well as some more RAM. After doing some more research online, I think I'll stick with the Intel instead of the A DATA.

Is online backup something that might be worthwhile to backup the time capsule?

If you're running windoze in a vm then time machine and an online backup shouldn't be your only solution. The files associated with virtual machines change constantly and you'll be doing multi-gig backups every time. You might want to look into carboncopy or superduper plus another backup system.

Using an online backup system that will work with attached drives would be a good way to have bootable backups with redundancy.

 

[Benito]

I'm using VM Ware Fusion to run Windows XP. You asked about how much space it takes. The smallest that it allows me to partition for it is 20 G. I was super surprised about that when I moved my apps and OS over to my new SSD. I think in reality it should be closer to 10 G, but VM Ware won't let me shrink it.

 

[lilweeds]

Of the two which works better fusion or parallels?

Which online back up service seems to work the best?

 

[DisneyRicky]

Which online back up service seems to work the best?

I like dropbox, because it's all done without any second thoughts. Just save the file, and it's on all your computers...simplicity, just like the computer your using

 

[johnnymg]

Got the 13, I am going to get an SSD in the next few days as well as some more RAM. After doing some more research online, I think I'll stick with the Intel instead of the A DATA.

Is online backup something that might be worthwhile to backup the time capsule?

Just to confuse you some more I'd recommend checking out the Crucial SSD's.

cheers
JohnG

 

[Libertine Lush]

Of the two which works better fusion or parallels?

Which online back up service seems to work the best?

Before the recent Fusion update just weeks ago, Parallels was found to perform significantly faster by reviewers. I believe Walt Mossberg of the Wallstreet Journal, however, said Parallels has a lot of stability issues. But the recent Fusion update makes some very bold claims about speed improvements, so perhaps it's closed the gap a bit. Or better.

For online backup, Dropbox is the most often touted one of recent. People love it. Haven't tried it myself, but going by reputation, I think it's a safe bet.