69 replies to this topic

[teacher]

I see I have been remiss and have yet to post about my Mac(s).  This summer I purchased the MacBook Pro with the 2.0 Mhz specs.  It has 1 GB of RAM and at some point I intend to up it, but based upon Scot's experience and what I have read I will be careful when I do it.  In the meantime there has been absolutely nothing that has made me say I should increase my RAM as of yet.Today we bought hubby's Christmas/Thanksgiving/Whatever Excuse present.  He is now the proud owner of the last month model of a CoreDuo iMac 20".  Unfortunately this model only has 512 of RAM.  Since his intended usage is Solitaire, E-Mail and Internet, I think it is sufficient.  The sleek white monitor hooked him.  I made him try the keyboard first to see what he thought.  I could not believe that he became hooked so quickly.   I mentioned the iMac over coffee and less than half an hour later he owned one.    Someone tried to talk to him about training and support.  He laughed and pointed at me.  :DFrom zero to two in four months.  I think Scot has me beat on that count though.

[Scot]

Julia, I have a RAM recommendation for you. This actually comes from Ken Mingis, Computerworld's resident Mac expert. A little company called DMS,  in New Hampshire, sells Mac memory that is very low cost  and has zero problems. Ken has bought from them numerous times, and I bought the extra 1GB SIMM for my MBP 15" Core Duo 2.0GHz machine from them. No problems. The SIMM in my other MBP 15 is from Kensington, a memory company I trust implicitly -- no problems there either. The difference in price is something like $40. Try DMS.Good luck with your husband's iMac.Now that I've had my MBP C2D 17" for 5 days, you can't pry it out of my hands. -- ScotP.S. For the moment we have 5 Macs in the house; we recently got an eval. unit at Computerworld of the Core 2 Duo MacBook 13. Since this is the model I've been thinking about buying for my 15-year-old next summer (after Leopard arrives), I brought home the loaner so he could check it out. He liked it, but he's not very picky about computers. He's keen on GarageBand though. Anyway, we'll go back to 4 Macs next week. Unless I buy another one (not gonna happen this year!)

[teacher]

Cool.  My adopted daughter from next door has the 13" model of an earlier flavor (from the year she started college 2 1/2 years ago).  She loves it but I just can't handle the keyboard size.  It drives me crazy to use it.  All of my other complaints with hers have been changed by Mac along the way (like the connection for the power unit). I have bookmarked the RAM site.  They have the 1GB stick for my MacBook Pro at $100.  I do believe I will get that.  The new iMac for hubby is in my basket and I will place the order on Friday after I return the dud tomorrow.

[teacher]

I am typing this from hubby's iMac.  Do you realize just how big the 20" screen is?  I know, 20 inches.    It looks huge in comparison to my MacBook Pro with the 15 inch screen.  We thought we were leaving the store with our full refund when the head Mac Salesperson remembered he had a brand new iMac with the core duo 2 processor,  1GB ram. 250GB hard drive and the 2.16 processsor speed (all standard)  in a box that looked almost like a forklift went through it.  He got the general manager to sell it to me at their cost which made it very sweet.  Needless to say we checked it over closely for any possible damage.  There is not so much as a smudge on it.   It works great.  I am busy doing the updates and installing Office:Mac on it.  So it is official, we are a two Mac family.  When daughter comes home on Friday she is going to freak.  Then when my IT brother and my HP repairman brothers come at Christmas they are going to think I am not going to heaven.........

[ross549]

20" is nice huh? ;)Adam

[teacher]

ross549, on Nov 22 2006, 08:46 PM, said:

20" is nice huh? Adam

That would be putting it mildly.  I would not know what to do with the 24".  The 20 completely fills the monitor space on my desk.

[zlim]

Quote

The 20 completely fills the monitor space on my desk.

Time to look for another computer desk.  

[teacher]

zlim, on Nov 23 2006, 12:20 AM, said:

Time to look for another computer desk.  

Actually I moved it to hubby's desk which is completely open.  He wanted room to see the deer in the yard so he is happy.  

[ross549]

Ah, so you had it on your desk so you could "test" it and "break it in?"

[Jeremy Avalon]

I have... *flips machine over to read*...*flips back to type*A PowerBook G3 400Mhz, 384 RAM. And an 8MB video card.And it's... six years old. A Pismo, of course.Running 10.3.9 just fine. [insert "what a poet" joke here]And that is why I complain about FireWire being dropped from iPods. Stupid USB 1.1.

[LilBambi]

They took firewire support from the new iPods? If so, that's sad and doesn't sound like a wise move ... unless Apple intends to discontinue firewire for some reason ... but why would they do that when it's the fastest ports available really.

[ross549]

USB 2.0 is faster at 480mbit/sec. Firewire is 400mbit/sec. Besides, the Mac has USB 2.0 ports......

[LilBambi]

Well, I will just post this:

Quote

In the very near future, the FireWire specification will increase speeds to 800 and then 1600 Mbps and finally top out somewhere around 3.2 Gbps (gigabits per second) in the next few years. In comparison, the current implementation of USB runs at 1.5 to 12 Mbps, too slow for any video capabilities, and USB 2.0, will top out at 480 Mbps. You’ll want to read the USB article to get the skinny on USB 2.0.

From this article:Want speed? FireWire has it!http://www.powerthin...s/article6.htmlThe aren't going to do that now?

[ross549]

I doubt they would, since no one is really using firewire 800, and 90% of the PCs out there have USB 2.0. I'd bet the hard drive in an ipod is not very fast anyway. Do you know anyone with firewire 800 ports on their PC?

[inform]

I have recently Upgraded all of my Macs. I now have a 15" MacBook Pro Intel 2 Duo and a 20" iMac Intel 2 Duo.

[LilBambi]

Awesome inform!! Bet you are enjoying those new Core 2 Duos!

[Jeremy Avalon]

... "CAUTION: Slippery With Drool." :)Yes, the one problem with owning such high-quality machines is we can't all afford to keep upgrading them.

Edited by Jeremy Avalon, 17 December 2006 - 01:33 AM.

[LilBambi]

The Mini's here!! I am playing with it and having a blast!It's already got OS X Tiger too! :thumbsup:Boy is this guy fast for being a PowerPC G4 1.42Ghz with 32MB ATI video and 1GB RAM!They really did an awesome job on these!

[Buckster]

Hi all . . .Been a Mac guy since Feb. 1984. Owned almost every model. Current list as follows:PowerMac G5 2.3 Ghz Dual Processor, 250 GB SATA HD, 6 GB RAM, Airport Extreme, Superdrive, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, Firewire 400. Firewire 800, ATI Radeon 9650 w/ 256 MB VRAM, 500 GB Ext. SATA HD, Mac OSX 10.4.7, Virtual PC running Windows XP Pro SP2MacBook 2.0 Ghz Core Duo Intel Processor (Black), 2 GB RAM, 80 GB HD, Superdrive, Mac OSX 10.4.7, Parallels running Windows 2000 Pro.Twentieth Anniversary Mac with Sonnet G3 Upgrade, 256 MB RAM, Ethernet cardPowerBook 180Mac Classic IIMac LCPowerMac 7200a couple more . . .

[Mac Guy]

I've owned Mac's and PC's since the Apple II+ and an 8086 pc with twin 5.25" floppy drives running MS-DOS 2.11. And while I've never owned a mainframe, I've worked on a few of those too.My current Mac is a 17" iMac 2.16Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo. It is also my Windows XP Pro computer. I use Parallels to run Windows on my Mac. With the new coherence feature, Windows applications just part of the Mac. Parallels provided this upgrade free. It was significant enough they could have nicked me for a few bucks, but they didn't. Thanks Parallels.I find it interesting that some people will look at both platforms and come to the conclusion that OS X is a vastly different product than Windows XP or Vista, yet others don't see an appreciable difference between the two. I think there is some job security issues at work here that cause some people to not want to accept the difference. But there's a group of people that get it, and another group that doesn't. It's not related to technical knowledge or ability.  Many novices get it, many don't. Many savvy technicians get it, many don't.I think I've got the best of both worlds with my iMac.