Possibly getting a Macbook...

It all depends how much your 'rents are willing to spend.
I would say 2GB RAM is nice to have especially if you are going to run windows apps in Parallels. Both RAM and HD can be upgraded pretty easily in a macbook.

 

if your parents are paying, what the hell, go for it man. otherwise i think it's fine for what you're looking to do. it's easy to upgrade later on too, so it's not like you're locked into it for life

 

You can do both with Apple or through 3rd parties. You will save some money getting the lowest spec MacBook and updating the hard disk and memory yourself and then selling the old parts. If you do that, however, Apples warranty will not cover the new parts, you will have to use the manufacturers warranty for those parts.

I have 2gigs of RAM and most things fly. The only thing the MacBook has a problem with is playing games that require advanced graphics cards. I don't play games so I don't care but you might.

 

i reckon get 1.5GB RAM (swap out one 512MB stick for a gig). It's a bit cheaper, and I find i never touch more than 1.5GB anyway. As for HDD stuff, yeah go nuts. 120 or 160GB should be enough (for now )

 

I am in the exact same boat as you...Grade 12 graudate, University this September.

I am getting a the top White Macbook with 160 gb HD and 2 gb Ram in 2 weeks. + free iPod Nano 4gb.

 

Agreed, it's cheaper to buy 2 gigs from crucial, take the apple RAM out and throw it in the trash, than it is to upgrade the RAM from the apple site.

 

Just bought my black macbook for the same reason as you. I do the same kinda stuff and although 2gb is not necessary, its a nice addition to have. And when you have a lot of programs running you can notice that it never slows down and is one beautiful machine.

 

I've been thinking of upgrading from 1.25 to 2GB of RAM in my MB. But is it worth it? I don't use RAM consuming apps, but when I went from 512 to 1.25 the change was awesome.

Would it be similar from 1.25 to 2?


Thanks.

 

If you have the money, then go for it. You wont notice a major difference using individual applications, but if you have a bunch of applications open at once, you will notice it.

 

For your uses 1GB will be fine for now, you can always upgrade if needed, but since you have a lot of music I would spend the money on the hard drive space (maybe an external?).

You will enjoy using a Mac, let us know what you decide

 

Although you should be ok with 1GB, as 3rd-party RAM is pretty cheap I would get some myself - you may not 'need' it exactly, but it won't hurt either

 

I'd say go for 2gb as well. If you want to do any stuff with virtualisation (Parallels/VMWare) then you really need over a gig. On my macbook (the low end revC one) I have a 384Mb Windows VM and it makes OS X run *very* slowly (lots of paging).

In the UK it's £54 for 2gig of RAM from Crucial so not very expensive ;-).

As for the disk space, 80gig is not a lot if you want to do any bootcamping, as a vista partition will take up at least 15gig (that's how much the OS requires) and an XP one needs at least 5... add your apps onto that and you're using up a large bit of space! However the MB hard disk is user-replacable, so spend some extra money on a 120gig/160gig SATA disk, install it and then put the 80gig in a £5 external USB enclosure and you have more space for less money. And somewhere where you can store backups/movies/mp3s/whatever.

so my advice is go for the low-end MB, and upgrade the components. I'm not sure you can justify spending the difference for .16 Ghz CPU (which is negligable) and a SuperDrive... unless DVD burning is something you want!

bohrsatom - new macbook owner for 3 weeks and loving it (mostly) .

 

Just a thought, but since you say you have a lot of music, why not use/buy an iPod for your music collection, and use the computer for everything else? If you went this route, you could buy the computer stock and upgrade the ram and hard drive yourself if you think its necessary.

 

good idea, but how much is exactly "a lot" of music. 20 gigs? 60? over 100? Depends on the bitrate.

You just buy the lowest stock, and the upgrade the other stuff yourself (RAM and HDD). You'll save tons. I got 2 GB RAM in mine with a 120 GB HDD, just get the big stuff so you don't have to worry about it later. You parents are paying for it anyways. And you get a free nano, you can either keep it or sell it for some cash.

 

Same as everyone else pretty much, Get the base macbook, and order a 1 GB stick elsewhere on the internet so that when you're macbook comes to you're doorstep, you can swap out a stick of ram and put the 1 GB in giving you 1.5 gb of ram. that should be plenty for a few years for what you intend to do. as far as the hard drive goes, makes sure u get atleast 80 gigs.. u can always upgrade that later if u find you're starting to run a little low

 

Given how reasonable RAM prices are, I would upgrade to 2GB - especially as there's meant to be a slight deterioration in graphical performance when you used unmatched sticks (although quite a few people are doing so quite happily!)