Thursday, April 27, 2006

We Have a Winner...

...or if not, something has at least taken a commanding lead.

About a month and a half ago, in a post called Laptop or Contacts?, I was debating the merits of those two items in terms of one of them becoming my newest "toy" in the near future, and I appreciate all the comments I received. I haven't actually done anything of substance toward procuring either item, but today, my parents (who are visiting for a short time this week) told me out of the blue that I'll be getting a new computer for my birthday in little over a month! Laptop wins! (Unless, that is, I happen to get contacts on my own between now and then. As I said in the earlier post, the wild-card in all this would be getting one of the two as a gift, which might allow me to have both of them before long.)

So, now that I have a probable winner, I throw open the floor for suggestions again. As I told some friends tonight, I'm 99% sure that the computer will be a laptop and not a desktop, and I'm 120% sure that it will be a Mac. So my questions are basically aimed at my fellow Mac users: What model should I get? Does size matter? Any special features I should look for? (Comments from Gates World missionaries trying to "convert" me to the Dark Side of the Force will be welcomed strictly for amusement purposes.)

This is gonna be really, really cool...

Creative Financing 101: Somehow, a lady in Pennsylvania bought a $328,000 home, despite having only 92 cents in her bank account. (Yes, she got caught after the checks bounced higher than a rubber ball.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What model should I get?
Get the 15.4" MacBook Pro with the 2.0 GHz Processor. If you're insane like me, you should upgrade the processor to 2.16Ghz and hard drive to 120Gig. Your RAM should be fine. I have a 2.41GHz processor and a 250Gig hard drive that work just fine with 1Gig of RAM.

Does size matter?
In this case.. heck yes. From personal experience, the 12" Apple laptops are a little frustrating after a while. The compact size is great until you sit down to type a lengthy document. Even with my small, skinny, girly fingers I found myself fumbling for the correct keys. The 17" may sound awesome because it's so huge. But it has added weight from the bigger screen and overall size. If you're going to be carrying it around from home to work on a regular basis, this probably isn't the best one for you. Therefore, 15.4" is the best. It's big enough that you won't get hand cramps from typing, and small enough to fit in a backpack/briefcase without having to be crammed in there.

Any special features I should look for?
How about a special feature where you get a 2nd laptop for free and give it to me. :D

My inner-Jew is screaming, "Don't forget that you should have an education discount since you work at CCCC!!!"

Get a Mighty Mouse. They're amazing.

Don't get anything less that 1Gig of RAM. The general rule is nothing less that 512MB, but I find you end up needing more anyway, so just start out with more than you currently require.

*waves watch infront of your face*
You're getting veeerrryyy sleeepy. You will buy BootCamp and put XP Pro on your laptop. Then you will spend hours mindlessly playing PC video games, and using words like "pwn" and "frag" in everyday conversations. You will complain to Apple that they don't use the superior AMD Athalon processor. Finally, you will disregard everyone else's comments as G has built you the ultimate Mac laptop.
*Claps hands to wake you from the trance*

Shawn said...

I second on the mouse, for I have one myself and it makes everything a lot easier. I have a 15" display and something smaller than that I think would be uncomfortable. The processors max out way beyond what mine does now (1.5GHz) but I'd go with an Intel version (that is, a MacBook Pro) because it's the next thing they are switching to, and you're going to have that increased speed as well. The Powerbooks are pretty much dead now as I can only see they have a 12" version which is too small for what you would want to do. If you do go for the Intel, expect a lag in certain programs as they are not "universally" coded yet. Transcribe is ready for Intel (though it wouldn't require much speed) but I don't think any notation software is there yet, but with Rosetta you can go ahead and shell out $ for the Intel processor and wait for updates from certain programs. Whatever you get you will love it, and it will be ridiculously fast and you'll be one happy Mac fan again. Mine is about 2 years old and still shits and gets. Up your RAM, I guess if you'd like just for something even faster. Getting a faster spinning hard drive will make everything faster too. Fast, fast, fast! Oh, and I'd recommend getting AppleCare as I did not, and when I had a problem with my Powerbook no one wanted to help me. If I got a warranty from Apple, things would have been fixed for free and lot sooner than they actually did. Good luck!