I’ve finally hit a wall with my PC. It still works, but everything runs so painfully slowly. My productivity is seriously cut just because of all the time I waste waiting for it to work. The last straw has come recently in 2 events – my Sunday afternoon work session (grad school papers and whatnot) nearly ground to a halt thanks to a virus scan that I didn’t ask for. And starting today, I get the little Microsoft update thingy showing up on the task bar. When I click on it, it starts to download something, but then it says something like “this update cannot be installed”. That’s fine. But then it reappears again!! So I’ve basically had it.
I’ve decided to buy a Mac. I may have to wait a couple months to afford it, but I’m definitely doing it soon. I know you guys are all Mac users, so I need your advice on which product to buy. I really only use my computer for internet, music, and office-y things. But I would also like to be able to edit video of concerts and such (from my Mini-DV camcorder) and burn them onto DVD – that’s a requirement for my grad program that I’m now struggling with. Additionally, I have lots of old files in Word and Excel that I’ll still need to get at – do Macs come with any sort of Office, or do I have to buy it separately? And what sort of sound system comes with a Mac? Should I think about investing in something superior?
So, which system would I have to get to fulfill these requirements? Right now I’m leaning towards a basic iMac, but I’m not sure if it fits the bill.
I hate to bug you guys with this stuff, but none of this jumped out as obvious on the Apple website.
~brian responds with:
Andy,
Hey if you don’t recognize the name, I’m Jake’s roommate from college. I also used to work for Apple. I’d be happy to answer any questions for you.
For what you’re describing, any Mac currently sold would be able to do what you need, out-of-the-box, hardware wise. The big decisions, hardware-wise are display size and sheer speed. One tip, and this goes for any computer – buy as much RAM as you can afford now. Modern systems are RAM hungry.
I don’t know your price range, but if you’re looking for a desktop, an iMac would be your best bet. I have a 24” intel iMac at work, and it’s wonderful, and stealthfully powerful. You could absolutely edit DV and burn DVDs on such a machine. I’d recommend at least the 20” size for this. Included on the machine is iMovie and iDVD which will magically detect your camera (when attached by FireWire) and download your video. Of course, if you’re doing a lot of video, you’ll want as much Hard Drive (HDD) space as possible, and likely, a FireWire 800 external drive for backup. FW800 is the fastest type of external drive available, and speed is key for video. I like LaCie brand – very dependable (I used them extensively at Apple, plus now in my current job). If you have to go cheap here, you can find drives at macsales.com OWC has a house brand that people tend to like.
For Word+Excel – You can buy a student version of MS Office for the Mac at any AppleStore, $150. Includes Word, Excel, PPT, Entourage (compare to Outlook). Can read/write pretty much any Office file from a PC – make sure you update it with the included updater app, though, for max compatibility.
That said, that version of Office is several years old. The next version is due in January. It will be Intel-native, meaning it’ll be much faster (it can’t be much slower – artifact of the last version being written long ago).
I should add that I’m in grad school, too, and I don’t use Office at all. I use Apple’s iWork suite – Pages (word processing), Keynote (slideware – compare to PPT, but 100x better) and Numbers (new take on spreadsheets). These apps open and can export to MS Office file types. Translation’s not perfect, but for most things, it should work fine. If you’re into complex Excel spreadsheets, you may want to stick w/ Excel – there are certain things Numbers cannot export. For creating from scratch, these apps make beautiful documents easily. They’re actually enjoyable to use. I use Pages, and it’s wonderful for papers. Keynote is the best slideware on the planet, bar none. I also do a lot of less formal stuff in good old TextEdit. (Apple’s version of Notepad – but it doesn’t suck, has spellcheck and formatting options)
Also be aware of Google Docs – a free online suite of software that does these three things.
Hope this helps, feel free to email me if you need some more info.
Best,
~b
(fwiw – my main machine is a MacBookPro 2.33, 2GB, 160GB 256MB VRAM)
· Nov 30, 12:59 PM
~brian responds with:
It may be true that when you buy MS Office for Mac now, they’ll send you a free copy of 2008 when it’s released. Do some research.
I feel I should add these links which I stumbled over this morning:
Versions of Office: Mac 2008
Official Office: Mac 2008 Page from MS
· Nov 30, 01:57 PM
Tyler responds with:
Yeay Andy! It will be my pleasure to welcome you to the Dark Side!
I second everything Brian said.
Any Mac will do everything you mentioned above. I have an iMac (as you know) and it rocks. And don’t forget, in addition to the video editing software Brian mentioned (iMovie and iDVD), it also comes with GarageBand! I KNOW you’ll love playing with that.
I agree also that you’ll need more to add a second gig of RAM, but don’t buy it from Apple. They charge an arm and a leg for RAM. Jimmy recommended getting RAM from NewEgg.com. When the time comes, ask him and he’ll be able to direct you to the right kind.
As for sound, the iMac comes with a decent internal speaker, but for really good audio you’ll want to add external speakers. Good ones can be found for roughly $100, like this lovely pair of Bose speakers.
Plus, with a Mac, we can use iChat and video chat with one another. Oh, the possibilities…...
Don’t forget, you get an education discount through Apple, both in-store or online. Oh, the jealousy.
If you think you’d need a laptop, the MacBooks and MacBook Pros are very nice and either would suit your needs just fine. I however don’t have much need for a laptop and FAR prefer using a desktop system. Any of the iMacs would be great. If you can afford the 24”, it’s one sexy piece of widescreen computing ass. But the 20” is great too. That’s what I have. (Of course the 24” didn’t come out until AFTER I bought mine, darnit!)
You could definitely get by with Google Docs, as Brian mentioned. And there’s also OpenOffice, a free office suite. I haven’t used it personnaly, but my Dad recommends it. I haven’t used iWork, but everyone who uses it seems to love it.
Since you live in New York, you should go to the sexy new glass-cube Apple Store on 5th Avenue.
Yeay!!!! Update us when you can.
· Nov 30, 02:26 PM
Iak responds with:
Well I don’t have a lot to add to the discussion. Guess I should have responded first thing this morning.
Personally I’m a laptop fan (my next machine will be a MacBook Pro) but a desktop is perfectly acceptable of course. Especially if you want a big ass screen and don’t want to spend extra for an external monitor.
I second Tyler’s recommendation to not get memory directly from Apple. It’s easy enough to install and costs a lot less from other places (I usually buy memory from datamem.com).
I haven’t looked at speakers in a long while but you can get a lot more power than what’s built in for a reasonable price.
And as was previously mentioned, make sure you get the education discount. :-)
Good luck saving up! Keep us updated.
· Nov 30, 05:05 PM
Andy responds with:
Thank you all for the advice! I investigated the education discount: basically I get $100 off most big-ticket things, so I think I’m gonna go with the better 20” iMac. I’ll only be doing video transfers about once a semester, so I don’t need a super amount of space and power. I’ll definitely be getting a new speaker system (maybe Santa will take care of that for me!) and possibly some more RAM as well.
The big question now is: when should I buy it? It’ll have to happen either between December 10-20 or January 2-16 in order to be useful rather than distracting for next semester – I have a January term class, 2 spring classes, and many many program notes to write! I’ll probably go to the Apple store in Manhattan to find out what works best. I have been there before, and it is truly awesome!
Actually, anyone who’s free the weekend of the 15th-16th can probably come with! Although I’m also planning on doing lots of celebratory end-of-semester drinking that weekend. See The 12 bars of Christmas and you’ll see what I mean. Again, you should come with!
And now my PC is insisting that it needs to restart in order to finish installing a crucial update. I should probably bend to its whim. Sigh.
· Dec 1, 11:14 PM
Tyler responds with:
Oh, I’d love to come with you. That Apple Store looks kick-ass, and the 12 Bars of Christmas thingy looks like a blast! Too bad I’m not coming up ‘till the following weekend. :(
In terms of when to buy it, I’d go with the December option. That’ll give you more time to learn the nuances of OS X. It’s a super-easy operating system, but there’s still a little bit of a learning curve when switching from Windows.
· Dec 3, 01:26 PM
Jim responds with:
Mr. Pease – I think that everyone else has touched on just about all the important points accurately. I think an iMac would suite you very well unless you really need the portability of the Macbook (Pro). I would indeed recommend that you buy the higher end 20”. Frankly, from the sounds of what you’re trying to do with it, I doubt your money would be well spent on the 24”. It is a truly sublime panel, but you’d benefit from spending the extra money on more RAM and an external disk as Brian recommended before you’d truly benefit from the 24 glorious inches.
I can help with the RAM nerdyness as TyTy had pointed out. Don’t buy the upgrade kits from Apple; they will rip you off big time. Apple purchases all of their RAM OEM from Crucial or Samsung. If you rip the Apple sticker off of one of their SO-DIMMs, you’ll most likely find the Crucial sticker underneath. Hence, I recommend that you buy the exact same Crucial stick at (usually half the price from a reputable dealer.) Additionally, don’t even bother buying “Apple Compatible” RAM. The only issue I have with Apple (sometimes) is that the minute you slap “Apple” in the description, the price inflates like a lactose-intolerant fat man drinking a gallon of milk. They’ll turn right around and sell you the exact same Crucial or Samsung stick that Apple wants to sell you, only this time a different sticker will be on top of it hiding the fact that it’s all the exact same stuff.
Now, here comes the trick—you have a decision to make in the RAM department. I agree with Brian’s comment that you want to buy as much as possible, but there are some considerations that need to be made. First, do you want to just jump to the max (4GBs) and be done with it and have the best of the best, or would you be OK with jumping up to 2GBs and then 2 years or so from now, literally throwing that away and jumping up to 4GBs? The reason I ask this is explained below:
The top end 20” model still only comes with 1GB-and that is configured as 1×1GB stick. Though you have the option to upgrade it to 3GBs with a 1×1GB + 1×2GB configuration, you actually don’t benefit in some areas the same way you would if you upgrade it to 2GBs with a 2×1GB stick configuration. For the nerdy, this is what happens: when you run two identical sticks of RAM in any modern PC (the iMac is not excluded), a feature called memory-interleaving is enabled. Effectively here’s what happens: the system accesses the RAM in an overlapped or interleaved manner that allows it to effectively double the throughput that it can achieve through the pipe. I.e., you can now move data from RAM to CPU at twice the speed. So, while there are obvious speed gains by having 3GBs of ram (you avoid swapping to slow-ass disk), sometimes you’ll actually have lower performance with 3GBs in a non-interleaving configuration than you would with 2GBs interleaved.
Right, I know—geeky as hell. So, in a nutshell, here’s the ultimate question: will you benefit more from interleaving or more from having oodles of RAM (or do you just want to go poor)? Now this is a tough one since only you + some time geeking out can really answer it, however I’m going to stab in the dark and say that you may actually be better off sticking with 2GBs rather than bringing it up to 3.
The logic I’m using is this: on a day to day basis, I really only ever use about 800MBs to a 2GBs or so max—and that’s with never rebooting and running six virtual desktops and a crapload of apps. Sarah typically runs around the same on her 2GB 20” iMac (and she’s always running a Windows XP VM in Fusion.) I only ever really starting chopping into my 4GBs when I’m processing a wedding or working on a ginormous enlargement. Or, quite frequently when I’m transcoding a video + working on a ginormous print + processing a wedding all at the same time. ;) GAWD I love the quad…
Given that guess, I’m going to say that you’d probably be better off running an interleaved configuration than a non. The occasional video editing will likely push the 2GBs, but I think you would probably be OK. Now, of course, if you feel rich, you could skip all of this and do the following: buy the iMac, buy two matched 2GB sticks of RAM from a reputable dealer, pull out the 1GB stick that came with the unit and swap the 2×2GB sticks in. If everything works, burn ‘er in for a week and sell the 1GBer for $20-30 on craigslist or ebay. This would give you 4GBs of interleaved RAM and you would have a few assurances: 1 – you’re just about NEVER going to swap (at least for the next 2-3 years likely), 2 – you’re going to have some great longevity from the system w/o having to really play with it again, 3 – you’re now a little poorer than you were, but everyone on the block will envy you. :)
OTH—1GB sticks are ASS cheap right now (~$30 (yes Ty, don’t cry… I feel the same way)), so you could just jump to 2GBs for $30 and accept that 2-4 years down the road, you’ll likely end up pitching both sticks and replacing them with 2×2GBs.
Wow, since this is a novel, I’m going to cut it short. Either route you decide to take, please don’t hesitate to use me for a recommendation on what RAM to purchase. I’ll send you a direct link to the exact RAM I would recommend and you can buy it. I’ve upgraded Sarah’s box + helped Ty upgrade his box with the exact same stuff that I’ll suggest to you and we’re all happy campers.
K, so there ya go. :: cricket :: :: cricket ::
Jim
· Dec 3, 05:18 PM
Andy responds with:
Wow Jimmy, what an essay! Here’s what I got from it:
“Get more RAM. Have it match. 2×2GB>2×1GB, but you won’t really need 4 for a while. Actually, a 1GB stick is cheap, so just do that.”
...but with so much extra Jimmy flourish on top – I love it!
Random: Remember when our hard drives were less than 2 GB? In fact, I can remember when our computers at school didn’t even have hard drives! I think, actually, I remember a quote being posted on the wall of the computer lab at CRHS that said something to the effect of “There will never be a need for more that 256K of memory in computing ever” attributed to Bill Gates! And now look how far we’ve come…
Anyhow, it looks like I’m gonna do it very soon! I may even go next Tuesday, unless JAKE responds and wants to come with me over the weekend of the 15th-16th…
Oh, one more thing – what are your best suggestions for transferring documents and music from my old PC to the soon-to-be new machine? Is there some sort of way to hook them up via USB? Or should I just use our little mini wireless network in the apartment? Or is there a better way (given that I have neither external hard drive nor DVD burner on the old machine)?
· Dec 3, 07:55 PM
Tyler responds with:
I’ll let one of the tech-savvy guys answer that last question. But I’ll throw in this little memory that I recently shared with Jimmy…
We were sitting in Mr. Morrisette’s social studies class in (I’m guessing) sophomore year. RAM was averaging 8 or 16 megs per stick, and hard-drives were just getting into the gigabyte range. I turned to Jim and asked, “Wow. Do you think there’ll ever be a gigabyte or RAM?” and his response was “Nah, it’ll never happen.” Now that we’re in the era of the Terabyte hard drive, the same question seems to present itself….
:)
· Dec 4, 12:02 PM
Jim responds with:
Nah—it’ll never happen. It’s just a passing fad.
:-D
· Dec 5, 03:19 AM
Sarahmonster responds with:
I heart you guys. Good luck with the purchasing! They are shiny and pretty. Yay. ;)
· Dec 5, 04:15 AM
Tyler responds with:
Don’t know if you’ve made your purchase yet, but they just opened a new Apple store on West 14th Street this weekend. Not sure if that’s closer to you or not, but it looks pretty sweet.
apple.com/retail/west14thstreet/gallery/
· Dec 11, 11:05 AM
Andy responds with:
I’m going after school today to the new store. It’s a bit further away, but more easily accessible via our home subway line. Plus I have a Dartmouth friend who works there.
By 8pm tonight, I will once again be a mac person. Joy!
Double joy, actually – I got to school this morning to discover that the Radiohead “In Rainbows” discbox had arrived. It’s beautiful – totally worth my $82, and the 2 month’s wait.
Today is a goooooood day!
· Dec 11, 01:53 PM
andy responds with:
OMG I’m typing this from my new iMac!!! It’s so totally faster than my PC but I’m gonna be spending the next several days moving files over my network and right now I’m waiting for the Apple software updates to upload which could take until midnight but OMG I’M SOOO HAPPY!
(please don’t ever tell anyone that I actually typed OMG)
· Dec 12, 12:49 AM
Tyler responds with:
OMG, Andy’s one of us! Yeay! We’ll have to do an iChat sometime soon. If you don’t have a .Mac account (overpriced), then you can use an AOL IM account. I’m pretty sure you already have one of those… Isn’t it PickledP? Mine’s Tyler9627.
See you soon…
:)
· Dec 12, 11:04 AM