so im buying a mac laptop, need some help

[jerseyballer15]

i want to record music. edit music. and make small films.

other than that, all i wanna do is download music from limewire, surf the web, use aim, and do my homework.

what would i need to do this. as far as ram. i know ill need an external harddrive. what else is reccomended for the mac? or does any1 know of any alternatives?

[Klassy Guy]

I am a pc user, but have done heavy research on macs, I recommend 512 megs of memory, should allow you to do anything imagineable with music, mix, edit, etc. Garageband is supposed to be fantastic. As far as a external hard drive you can find a rather portable one that holds 60 gigs, it is called a ipod, and trust me they are awesome. So on top of a 40-whatever gig drive in the computer, you can have 60 gigs more. However I have no idea how people can have so much music, 1 meg equals one minute (about that) that is about 65000 minutes (1 gig=1024 meg) in just the ipod. But whatever floats your boat.

[jerseyballer15]

ipod? what r u talking about.......... i need to save my BANDS MUSIC. as in, bass drums guitar. not mp3 files. RAW music. therefore id need some sort of external hard drive. ontop of my 100 gig hard drive.

[Hep]

you can find a rather portable one that holds 60 gigs, it is called a ipod
lol funniest thing today

[dynastySSS]

u could still store raw music.....itd just be under a diffrent file

[warpedx]

I had several snappy remarks thought up, but I'm going to refrain from posting any of them. I'm sure I would piss of each and every Mac user on these boards, and I know of at least one.
Damn I hate Macs.
If you're getting 100 gigs plus another external, you should be alright. Raw music can add up fast. Start thinking about what software you'd want to use, then option your computer out based on that.

[jerseyballer15]

im gonna use garageband

[Klassy Guy]

Ummm, if you save music on your computer it WILL be converted into a digital format, unless your computer records onto records, which is very unlikely due to the immense size of records. Ipods actually use mp4 a much higher quality format then mp3, they also play some other formats though, as long as it works with itunes.

[jerseyballer15]

yes, but i cant edit the muisc while its on the ipod............ and a 160 gb external harddrive is only 170$, while an ipod is half of that is about twice as much

[matthepepe]

if you're attempting to get a professional result dont cheap yourself on the computer, cant go wrong w/ a dually g5 w/ 8 gigs of ram :) really 1-2 gigs of ram would be sufficient.

[Klassy Guy]

1 gig will be more then enough, 2 gigs would be over the top, to the point that you would need at least 2 keyboards and 4 arms to even approach that level. Honestly I run a firewall, internet, itunes, and encarta on 256 megs, and it works. Don't forget your hard drive has something like 364 megs of ram embedded in it, very slow ram, but it works for overflow. My recommendation would be a mac desktop, simply because of the g5, a g4 in the laptop will be fine, but the g5 is simply beautiful. My dad has 2 imacs with g5s (the new kind) at his office with 512 megs of ram and they work flawlessely. If you really need the notebook then get it. The reason I brought up the ipod was because of the notebook, portablility and portablilty. The hard drive is a unknown size to me so I only imagine it is bigger, so it would be less portable. Whatever you do, editing will be great on a mac. And just out of curiousity will you use 160 gigs of hard drive space because that is about 113 days of music, which is a crapload?

[jerseyballer15]

nah, the harddrive im lookin at is like, small. like, the about the same size as an ipod mini, just thicker. i kinda need that laptop cause i cant record in my room. cant have my band up here. go to a friends house. i dont need it to be PROFEESIONAL per say, with 4 arms. but i wanna be able to record the bass, guitar then mic the drums. and record all seperatly, and put it together and adjust it. i dont wanna have to record all at the same time, because the interface is wayyyy to expensive. i can get more with a g5, for about 100$ less. but i dunno. how big is the g5? is it a lot of wires? the problem with most desktops is there are TONS of wires. if its one or 2 i wouldnt mine. let me get some info on the g5. i cant find any good info anywhere

[Klassy Guy]

Oh wow, that is tiny for a hard drive. If you need the computer to be portable and want an apple, I hate to say this, but wait. Apple just signed a deal with intel to make better processors then the g5. The g5 is great but it uses to much juice and produces too much heat to be used in a laptop. So with intel on board developing a processor, If you can wait then do it, but if you need a computer in a gurry. The g5 imac is rather small depending on screen size. As of lots of wires there is only one, power. Other then that the computer is self contained. Any usb,etc. device will need more cords though to plug it in. I'd say the g5 imac weighs 18.5 lbs (apple site) so if you don't mind lugging it around then it is a wonderful computer.

[Identity Crisis]

Mac laptops are the way to go as far as laptops are concerned, I looked at them when buying my toshiba, I dont know what made me switch back to PC but i did...

Have you looked at at media center, high end PC laptops? I dont do much researchor reading about laptops, but im sure there is something out there comprable in price with the needed power. I just dont know about the software.

As far as needing an external, I recommend doing some homework, and buying a 200-300 gb internal hard drive, and then buying an enclosure for it This can be cheaper, and work just as well as if you spent the extra money on an "external HD"

I did that when my pc died and all I had was my laptop w/ 40gb drive. just dont leave the HD on all the time, use it for storage, keep plenty of space on your laptops drive to do the editing, and recording you need, then transfer it over.

Hope that helps, there are other options besides mac, it is a good one, but not always the best..


oh try www.smalldog.com usually they have decent prices.
Or if you are fortunate enough to have a mac store near you, and have a student ID, go there and they give you 10-15% off of your purchase, I don't think there is a limit on how much you can spend with the discount

[shakeydounut87]

well..i have both pc and mac laptops.

for pc, i ahve the Dell Precision M70..

and for mac, i have the 15'' Powerbook G4.
i would definetly say go for the mac, i have much less problems with it than i do the pc, and just overall, it's a better machine. i think at least.

[The Undead]

i cannot stand macs...

i use a pc for gaming, and general use, but i have a laptop that runs linux, i reccomend linux for music, personally, it is just awesome, there is a little bit of a learning curve but other wise, it is jsut awesome.

[Sparco]

Keep in mind that outside of the 17" powerbook, none of the other ibooks or powerbooks out there are designed to be gaming platforms. If you're buying a mac and you're an avid gamer, you're on the wrong platform. You can build a much nicer gaming platform for a whole less off a pee cee platform.

Personally, the iLife software suite has some great utilities that are built right in as you've already discovered (garage band, iMovie HD, iPhoto, etc.). Remember, the important thing with a mac is RAM more so then processor. I have an iBook running a 1.42mhz processor with 2gb of RAM that can smoke a 1.67mhz processor using 512mb or 1gb of RAM on an application level. By "smoke" I mean a few seconds.

Remember, that the OS X platform runs off Unix and at the end of the day a lot of your performance gain is going to be in file swap capabilities which translates directly into RAM.

There are plenty of great external HD options out there but often times an external HD option is not the most reliable. I strongly recommend that if you decide to store files on an external HD that you also have an additional location where those files are stored. I can't tell you how many times I've taken a call from a user here at work that lost their external HD and thus all its content.

[The Undead]

the thing that gets to me about macs, is the one mouse button.
my amd fx-55 runs awesome on windows, ive got in duel booting with linux.

only advantage about macs, is they look clean...

[jerseyballer15]

i wouldnt lose an external hard drive, im NOT using it for gaming, i USED to game but not anymore. i think im gonna wait and see what intel+mac come out with. im in no hurry. the id prefer it before march 06, so i got plenty of time to wait.

[Sparco]

the thing that gets to me about macs, is the one mouse button.

Where have you been? The mighty mouse has been out for months. Any USB mouse has worked on my Mac machines since OS 9.

By default, yes, it's a single click mouse. But have you ever seen a savvy mac users fly through navigating a GUI or a terminal? We're all slaves to the mouse, I for one will never go back to using a right mouse button. I can clearly perform all the same actions without it, in half the time.

[The Undead]

i havent used a mac since 5th grade