Need help deciding laptop for college

[paulbennett95]

So I'm going to college for Physics, and I'm deciding on what to do for a laptop.

I currently have a Macbook from early 2008 that's on 10.7 Lion, which is as high as it can go. It has the core 2 duo 2.4 GHz processor and 2GB of RAM and the HDD is 160GB.

Does that laptop sound suitable for use in college? I have a Windows PC for any gaming, but could I also feasibly use my Macbook for Garage Band, editing videos, or programming? I might minor in Computer Science so I need to know if I can smoothly run X Code and Eclipse.

So I'm wondering, should I simply upgrade the RAM on my current Macbook from 2GB to 4GB, or should I save up and buy a new Macbook?

 

[vistadude]

I think you'll be fine with your macbook for email and word, and your gaming desktop for everything else. I doubt you'll code on your macbook, it takes too much effort, a strained back and wrists to type on a notebook, even if it's the 17 inch model.

At some point, if you feel that your macbook is too slow, you can always get a new one at that point. If it feels fast enough now, I'd stick with it.

 

[paulbennett95]

I think you'll be fine with your macbook for email and word, and your gaming desktop for everything else. I doubt you'll code on your macbook, it takes too much effort, a strained back and wrists to type on a notebook, even if it's the 17 inch model.

At some point, if you feel that your macbook is too slow, you can always get a new one at that point. If it feels fast enough now, I'd stick with it.

Thanks for the response, I've decided against buying a new MacBook. After using my MacBook for a while (currently using it now) I've figured it's fine for me. I'm replacing the battery (while watching a YT video at 53% battery, I had 35 minutes remaining) and upgrading the RAM once I get a job, but otherwise this MacBook is sufficient (although I would like to use gestures on the trackpad, but alas it's not supported for me)

If anyone feels like responding to another question, I currently have Lion installed on my Mac, and ML isn't supported, but there are work-arounds for it, so my question is, should I bother upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion? Is it any better, is there any killer features, etc? I doubt I'll find a work-around for Mavericks (although it looks cool and I'd love to use it) but if ML is any better than Lion I'll make the plunge.

EDIT: Also, can anyone with experience tell me if my processor/graphics (GMA X3100 144 MB) will be sufficient to edit videos and music (ie iMovie and GarageBand?) I don't expect it to do videos quickly, but will my Mac be too insufficient to even bother?