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Thread ID: 83055	2007-09-18 00:01:00	New Laptop, Mac vs XP Questions.	Enigmur (10547)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
592064	2007-09-18 00:01:00	Hi everyone, I am going to be buying a laptop in the next month. I am trying to decide between an Intel MacBook, or an HP. Basically the Mac is better value for money until you add the 3yr warranty, and that is like $450, as opposed to the HP which is like $110. Possibly the main reason for getting the Mac over the HP is that I am hopefully going to be doing an audio engineering course next year, where every computer is a Mac – so it would make things much easier for me there. I play music and am interested in the multimedia side of the Mac. At the moment, the Mac comes in about $350 more than the XP HP laptop, but the Mac has a 2ghz Core 2 duo instead of a 1.8ghz. With a 3 year warranty, I don’t really need to worry as much about how tough the MacBook is, as it will be covered. Now my question is basically what sort of compatibility will I have between a MacBook and my XP desktop at home? Basically I will be using the MacBook for simple things like word processing, music, audio recording ect. I will definitely install Bootcamp so I can directly use XP on there when I want. But when I am using OS-X, would I be able to connect wirelessly to my XP desktop and for example, access music or view word documents (I use OpenOffice). Basically if I can get bootcamp working as XP on my mac, it should be fine for this sort of thing, but I am curious as to what I will be able to do when it is running as a Mac. Another question is what sort of backup solutions are available for the Mac? I use Ghost at home on my XP box, but I have a copy of TrueImage there too. Would I be able to do a full disk image backup of the Mac while using bootcamp? Thanks for any help you Mac Guru’s Cheers!	Enigmur (10547)
592065	2007-09-18 01:11:00	I'll just try to charge in before WMG does :) You will have no trouble with word processing, you can install MS Office if you want to, or go with OpenOffice/NeoOffice. For playing music you can use iTunes (and I expect that there are heaps of other players out there too, but iTunes has been good enough for me). I can't really help with audio recording as I've never needed to do it. One piece of advice is to wait if you can, because the new Leopard OS is coming out some time next month (although it may not make it to NZ until November). Hope this helps :)	Nermal (7077)
592066	2007-09-18 01:34:00	No contest, Get the Mac. Though my view is not based on the OS, Just the fact that HP suck more so then Apple. And that alone takes a supreme effort. Ignore the scumbag warrenty crap,They are still required to honour the CGA.	Metla (12)
592067	2007-09-18 01:36:00	Thanks for the reply. I really don’t see a downside since I can run bootcamp, and access what I need on my Windows PC. I just looked at Leopard and it looks pretty cool, do you think it will cause a move in pricing on MacBooks? I guess when it comes down to it; it doesn’t really matter if I wait. I want a laptop now, and it would be useful getting to know OS X – but I can probably hold off. November seems so far away… I don’t want to wait a couple of months to find out it is going to cost me even more than what I’m looking at now. I guess I’m just trying to figure out whether it will be worth waiting that long for, I’ve been wanting to get a laptop all year. If it is going to be heaps and heaps better than Tiger, I might wait. But if it is just a bunch of new tools and features I think I’ll get a Tiger MacBook.	Enigmur (10547)
592068	2007-09-18 02:20:00	I'll just try to charge in before WMG does :) Only too happy to let you do the talking Nermal. :) I'll just add Garageband-composing your music iWork08-compatible with MS Office Vector Works VMWare/Parallels/Bootcamp It looks like the GUI is going to be the biggest change - the Cover Flow effect in iTunes is moving into Leopard. Have a read... www.blogmaverick.com	winmacguy (3367)
592069	2007-09-18 02:39:00	No contest, Get the Mac. Though my view is not based on the OS, Just the fact that HP suck more so then Apple. And that alone takes a supreme effort. Ignore the scumbag warrenty crap,They are still required to honour the CGA. No way HP sucks more than Apple. HP Products are well made and well priced. No contest there at all. BTW, for you requirements, do get the Mac. There should be no problems whatsoever switching between your XP and Mac computers.	beeswax34 (63)
592070	2007-09-18 02:42:00	Hey WMG, was waiting for you to pop in. Yeah, obviously GarageBand is a real positive point for me, It is such a simple and quality program for recording. I’ve read a bit about Leopard today and funnily enough, there are mixed opinions… A question I am seeing pop up is one that I am also curious about – and that is whether all the new features being added are really making the OS better. On the Apple site it says that they have made it work better 64-bit, and also changed some things for the OS to work better on multicore. These sorts of things interest me more than the ability to do all sorts of little tricks with the desktop. I’m after a fast and stable OS, I’m a boring windows user by nature and probably wont touch 75% of the little gadgets OS X offers. I inquired about the new OS on MacBooks at totallymac, and they said that hopefully they are shipping Leopard around the start of November in NZ – but they aren’t sure for certain. I just hope that the new OS isn’t piles of crap loaded on the old one.	Enigmur (10547)
592071	2007-09-18 03:02:00	Bit of advice, don't buy Leopard the moment it comes out. Wait till 10.5.1 or .2 before you buy it so that the bugs get worked out of it or keep an eye on macrumors.com as soon as it is available to see what the other members say about it when they buy it. I currently use Tiger (10.4) which is absolutely fine. I think Nermal is on 10.3, forum member plod is also on a brand new iMac running OS X version 10.4 (same as me) When Apple bought the NeXT OS of Steve Jobs in 1996-7 they basically started from scratch with a clean sheet of paper to bring out OS X - unlike Vista which has to support millions of lines of legacy code. For more info you might want to check out some of the discussions on macrumors.com where you will probably get a bunch of questions answered as well. The main gadgets I use on Tiger are some of the desktop widgets and the search function in Spotlight. I haven't had any need to use Automator so far. I have a Parallels v2.0 on my iMac running XP Pro with 512MB RAM allocated and it runs fine, although from what I have heard VMWare is much better. Parallels is currently up to v3.0 Have a read online.wsj.com	winmacguy (3367)
592072	2007-09-18 03:15:00	Cheers for that, I wasn’t really too keen on buying in on a brand new OS. I’m sure it wouldn’t be as bad as early adoption of Vista or XP – but it’s really not something I’m comfortable doing. By the sound of it, Tiger is a good OS – plus it’s done it’s time to mature and iron out the kinks. I think you’re probably right about it being fine for what I want it for, I very nearly bought Vista as soon as it came out by reading biased MS brown-nose reviews. I think I’m quite happy to do without Leopard for the time being, plus it means I am going to have a lot of time to get used to macs again before next year (it’s been 3-4 years since I used one). I’ll be sure to check out the mac rumour site too.	Enigmur (10547)
592073	2007-09-18 03:16:00	I’ll be sure to check out the mac rumour site too. You'll need to register if you want to ask any questions and get feed back. Feed back regarding Leopard should be out within and hour or 2 of it going on sale in the US. I believe there is a 10.4.11 update due out very soon if it isn't out already although I think it relates more to the new aluminum iMac than to my one. The adjustment curve from a PC to a Mac is probably only about 20min - 30 min initially and then it is just a matter of picking up the little things as you go along which is probably what you would encounter if you had moved from XP to Vista since Vista is just 10.4 bolted on to XP with more clutter added in between.	winmacguy (3367)
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