A soon-to-be MacBookPro owner....

My darling, dear husband has agreed that I can get a MacBook Pro to replace my G4...! Yes. Now I have some questions:
1.) do I get one now or wait for MacWorld? At MacWorld, new and improved 'stuff' is often introduced so I wonder if it would be worth it to wait. Apple has a sale on the 15", which is what I want, with this configuration: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?fnode=h ome/specialdeals/mac&nplm=FA610LL/A
2.) will I be able to hook up the MBP to my nice, big monitor? What cables do I need?
3.) is 2G of RAM enough? I plan on doing the usual computer stuff (Mail, Quicken, Safari, iWork, iLife '08 but also Photoshop Elements). Is it easy to install more memory after the fact for me, a consumer? How much memory does this model max out at?
4.) I have 2 external hard drives that I will want to hook up to it- a LaCie and OWC Mercury Elite. Any issues with them and a MBP?
5.) I also have a Logitech USB wireless keyboard and mouse- will they work just fine?
I guess that's all I have questions about but if there is anything you want to chime in on, just do so. I have never had a laptop before! Looking forward to it. I think today we might head to the Apple Store to look at the computer, just to touch it and ask questions but I consider the audience here at the forums to have some good advice. Thanks for any tips and help, Judy

mrstee,
You are correct that new revisions are often announced around the big Apple "events." Whether you choose to buy now or to wait is entirely up to you, and we are not allowed to speculate about upcoming revisions. Keep in mind, however, that there is always a "bigger and better" thing around the corner, no matter when you buy, and allowing yourself to be lured into the "waiting game" can be dangerous. Anything you purchase now will work just as well 2 years from now as it does the day you buy it.
Yes, you will be able to connect your new Macbook Pro to your monitor, and you can use the external monitor in either mirrored or "Extended Desktop" mode.
2 GBs of RAM will be plenty for your stated usage. If you ever find that you might like more, it is very easy to install it yourself. Also, third-party RAM is much more economical than RAM purchased directly from Apple.
No issues with any external hard drives, that I am aware of, and your wireless keyboard/mouse should work fine.
Scott

Similar Messages

Yet Another Soon to be MBP Owner in Need of Guidence

Hello all,
Believe it or not this is yet another post from a college student in the process of purchasing a new MBP who's appealing to the venerable Apple discussion board community for guidance. My dilemma is not that I can't decide on what MBP I want or what features I need, I've already decided on a top of the line model with the 7200 RPM hard drive and a Crucial ram upgrade, it's that I can't decide when would be the best time to make the purchase given the WWDC keynote on the 7th of August. I would like to get the most bang for my three grand but I need have the computer up and running by the twenty-first with Windows installed to run AutoCad. Would you recommend waiting until the 7th to order the computer and see it the MBP's are updated with the hope an updated MBP would be able to get to me in time or should I buy now with the knowledge that I'll be buying a computer that will be updated, but not outdated, soon?
Thanks for your time,
Eric
PowerBook 12-inch 867

I am also a college student... and I was going to wait for the new merom, but I decided against it... I just think the likelyhood of them released before september is unlikely in my head... but you never know... But I looked at it this way... I wanted a MBP bad, despite all the problems I heard about them (my mbp has no problems to this day).... I figured if I waited for the new releases, the only thing that would change is the fact that it's basically a new computer, and with new computers come with new problems... I also figured, the likelyhood of the computers being released before my school started was slim, so I bought it now. I am very happy with my MBP right now, and you have to think of it this way, there will always be upgrades, whos to say that after the merom has been released, something new will becoming after that... I find it less painful to buy a MBP in july, and have the meroms be released months later, then purchasing it in september, and having them be released a possible weeks later... a little less painful, but that's my input, do what you want, I have a 17" MBP , week 26, and I am a happy camper!

Help!!! Computer died and soon will be the owner....

Help!! Help!!
System died and need help..
System used to work seamlessly but 2 days back something happened. When working on the pc half way through, system resets itself (like someone pressed the reset button). Quite often, thought was virus attack.. update my norton and scanned throughly --> No Virus Detected. Panic sets in and check bios... nothing was changed as b4..
Doomsday --- still trying to find the fault and all the sudden blackout.. System resets but constant in black screen ,cd-rom drive blinks as normal, cooler fan running, but harddisk no motion at all. D bracket shows memory error(ram?). Tried removing all PCI cards and cables to cdrom and floppy, remaining only motherboard( K7T266 Pro2 ), CPU ( athlon xp 1600+ ), video card ( nvidea 64 mb ) and 256mb DDR ram.
Pray it will work.. but it didn't.... D Bracket still shows same fault, removed ram and try booting up still same problem and shows same fault..
Can anyone out there help with advise?? Really appreciate.. Cos going crazy without my computer.. Thanks Thanks!!!
;( [size=15]

I did... all the 3 slots gave me the same response..
Shouldn't be my power supply for it been working for 1 year plus already... now guess my concern would be the ram,motherboard and harddisk...
haiz.. a major headache..

Advice for Soon-to-be MacPro Owner. Need Recs for Best Practices...

I'll be getting a Quad Core 3 Ghz with 1GB of RAM, a 250Gig HD, the ATI X1900 card. It will be my first mac after five years (replacing a well-used G4 Tibook 1Ghz).
First the pressing questions: Thanks to the advice of many on this board, I'll be buying 4GB of RAM from Crucial (and upgrading the HD down the road when needs warrant).
1) Am I able to add the new RAM with the 1G that the system comes with? Or will they be incompatible, requiring me to uninstall the shipped RAM?
Another HUGE issue I've been struggling with is whether or not to batch migrate the entire MacPro with everything that's on my TiBook. I have so many legacy apps, fonts that I probably don't use any more and probably have contributed to intermittent crashes and performance issues. I'm leaning towards fresh installs of my most crucial apps: photoshop w/ plugins, lightroom, firefox with extensions and just slowly and systematically re-installing software as the need arises.
Apart from that...I'd like to get a consensus as to new system best practices. What should I be doing/buying to ensure and establish a clean, maintenance-lite, high-performance running machine?

I believe you will end up with 2x512mb ram from the Apple store. If you want to add 4gb more you'll want to get 4x1gb ram sticks. 5gb ram is never an "optimal" amount but people talk like it's bad or something but it's simply that the last gig of ram isn't accessed quite as fast. You'll want to change the placement so the 4x1 sticks are "first" and will be all paired up nicely so your other two 512 sticks only get accessed when needed. A little searching here will turn up explanations for how best to populate the ram for your situation. It's still better to have 5 gigs where the 5th gig of ram isn't quite as fast than 4. They will not be incompatible but you WILL want to uninstall the original RAM, then put in the 4gigs into the optimal slots then add the other two 512 chips.
Do fresh installs. Absolutely. Then only add those fonts that you really need. If you use a ton of fonts I'd get some font checking app that will verify them.
I don't use RAID for my home machine. I use 4 internal 500gig drives. One is my boot, the other is my data (although it is now full and I'll be adding a pair of external FW). Each HD has a mirror backup drive. I use SuperDuper to create a clone of my Boot drive only after a period of a week or two of rock solid performance following any system update. Then I don't touch it till another update or installation of an app followed by a few weeks of solid performance with all of my critical apps. That allows me to update quicktime or a security update without concern...because some of those updates really cause havoc with people. If I have a problem (and it has happened) I just boot from my other drive and clone that known-good drive back to the other. I also backup my data drive "manually" with Superduper.
You will get higher performance with Raid of course, but doing that requires three drives (two for performance and one for backup) just for data-scratch, as well as two more for boot and backup of boot. Some folks can fit all their boot and data on one drive but photoshop and many other apps (FCP) really prefer data to be on a separate disk. My setup isn't the absolute fastest, but for me it's a very solid, low maintenance,good performing setup.

IR Workflow - Channel Swapping

I am a soon-to-be MacBookPro owner- making the switch from PC to Mac. My computer and Aperture are on the way. On my PC, I use ACDSee Pro to manage my photos and do 90% of my editing. I'm sure Aperture will work for most of my needs save one: channel swapping.
I do a fair amount of IR work. My workflow currently involves switching out of ACDSee Pro into GIMP to do the red-blue channel swapping necessary to get the false color results I like in my IR images. Is there a better alternative for me as I move to Aperture on my Mac? I am not going to pay for something like Photoshop just to do channel swapping and some (rare) layer work. I was wondering if there is any Mac-oriented shareware like GIMP that would play nicely with Aperture? Or, is there an Aperture plug-in that can do channel swapping?
I also, but only occasionally, have need to work with layers and again rely on GIMP. If there is an affordable alternative that would work well with Aperture, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Ideally the solution would be able to handle channel swapping and layering.
It seems I could stay with GIMP for my needs, but I've seen some posts indicating GIMP doesn't play well with Aperture so am hoping for a decent alternative.
Thanks

Thanks, DLS. I was planning on giving GIMP a try and if it works for me, I'll stick with it. I saw some folks had problems and others didn't so I was just planning for the worst case by coming up with a backup.
I didn't consider Elements because the latest PC version I have does not have a way to swap channels.
Will keep Pixelmator in mind. Downloaded the manual and it certainly does look like it will swap channels. Does layers too so I'll give the trial version a whirl if GIMP gives me any problems.

External Hard Drive Issues

I'm a new MacBookPro owner, and I also recently purchased a SANSUNG HD501LJ Media SATA II 500 External Hard Drive. I've had problems with my computer locking up either when I first install the hard drive into the expresscard slot or when it's been connected for a while. I am in the midst of moving all of my content from the external hard drive ot my internal so that I can run First Aid or Erase it completely if necessary. Does anyone have any idea what it might be, outside of needing to replace the hard drive?
I should say, I don't think its limited to this, but I have only used this hard drive for Motion needs so far. I didn't post in the Motion 2.0 boards because the hard drive problems seems to affect the whole computer.
Oh, in case this helps:
MacBook Pro 17"
2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB 667 MHZ DDR2 SDRAM
MacBookPro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

hi Jonathan!
it tells me that the folder "iTunes" could not be found or created, and is required to start the program.
good gracious ... okay, your
b registry
is still convinced that the folder is still on the external HD (or the path to the folder still runs through the hard drive). i'm assuming here that the current location of that folder is the default one on the C drive?
if so, try the technique that used to work for us with 4.9 (scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the relevant post in the thread):
b noir, "The iTunes Wont Work &/or Wont Install First Aid Kit" #10, 01:36pm Sep 7, 2005 CDT
if no joy with that, post back. if toonz is around and sees you, she might be able to help guide you through any additional bells and whistles.
love, b

Installing Windows 7 on IMAC 27 256G SSD 2 TB HD Core I7 8G Ram

I am a relative computer novice and purchased in Aug 2010 the lastest IMAC 27" with a 256G SSD and 2TB HD Core I7 withe 8G Ram. Here are my questions:
1. I wish to install Windows 7 on the SSD using Bootcamp. I would then like a recommendation as to whether to install my other programs (MS Office 2010, Quicken, Norton360, et. al.) on either a) the SSD or b)the 2TB Hard Drive.
If I install Windows 7 on the SSD, then how would you recommend partitioning the SSD between OSX and Windows 7? Is there a way to put Windows 7 on the SSD and my other programs (MS Office 2010, Quicken, et. al.) on the 2TB HD?
I'm looking for guidance on the best way to set up this computer. I want the boot up speed of the SSD if possible. The majority of my work is on Windows 7. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thx.

I just got everything working the last 2 days.
I gave it a try with the HDD still under GUID and had made one partition in HFS and one in Fat32.
And like a miracle everything went smooth,no problems at all with the Win7 install under Bootcamp!
So it looks like the new Imacs got a new motherboard and Win7 now installs without a problem though the second drive has GUID.
The only minor inconvenience I see is,that after booting in Win7 the speakers are muted,but one click to demute and everything works fine.MacOS starts with speakers on as usual.I read somewhere,that MacbookPro owners mentioned exactly the same problem and it is as yet unsolved.
As far as I can see there are two types of audio devices,one is Cirrus,the other WS-Audio.
I also sidestepped the bluetooth issues by using a usb keyboard and mouse from my Win PC.Only ejecting of the Win7 DVD didnt work ,but one boot in OSX took care of that too.
I am really happy with my first Mac and thanks again for your help
clamic

When are movies and TV shows going to be available on iTunes Switzerland ?

Hello,
I am from Switzerland and I was wondering when we will be able to purchase movies and TV shows on our iTunes store (both in French and German).
Thanks for your answer.
Best regards.
Zeekin

Zeekin wrote:
I am from Switzerland and I was wondering when we will be able to purchase movies and TV shows on our iTunes store (both in French and German).
as soon as the content-owners allow Apple to sell them in CH.
JGG

What are the normal Boot time?/Wake from sleep time? for MB?

Looking to buy a MacBook for my wife to replace her old Dell D-420. The Dell still works fine but takes forever to boot and to wake from hibernation. I was given an old iBook a few weeks ago and was amazed at how fast it woke from sleep mode (the boot times were pretty snappy too). So my question is. What is the "normal" wake from sleep time on a MacBook? How long does a cold boot take?
BTW: Steve isn't going to surprise us with an updated MacBook next week is he??
Thanks
Soon to be MacBook owner.

lancia is right- 56 second sound about right, my 2.0 GHz MacBook boots in about 49 seconds.
If you want your MacBook to boot up faster, you can reset the PRAM (parameter random access memory). What this does is that it resets all the devices it searches for when it starts up: forgets about them, literally
To do this, press down the command (the buttons next to the space bar) , option, P, and R keys at the same time when you turn on your MacBook. Press these keys until you hear the tone a second time. Make sure to do it quick, because after you hear the tone it won't work.
Hope this helps,
Wookams
To your BTW question:
Almost certainly not, but I still recommend waiting a couple months extra because Apple notebooks usually update themselves every 200 days or so. I was disappointed from learning this, but hey...

Cursor is erasing/distorting text/everything when scrolling

I just installed 2 1tb HD's in my G5 tower. No biggie.
I installed Leopard in one and and migrated from the old HD.
I am having issues with my cursor.
Whenever i scroll it distorts, erases, moves text, images whatever it comes across.
Tried the mighty mouse and a wireless. same thing.
Tried repairing disk permissions and repairing disk. No problems found.
Any ideas???

Same text distortion problem! After I just installed Leopard. I had the same thing happen on Tiger which was installed on two separate drives! One was fine and the other one did this same "text distort and replicate" problem and would leave white boxes (when scrolling down through screened backgrounds). Now I have installed Leopard on a clean formatted drive and its back! If I click and drag over it-it re-renders the text back to normal. Both versions of Tiger are updated the same to 10.4.11
I have read discussions of MacBookPro owners who thought it was a problem specific only to there laptops but it is clearly wider spread than that. It is a minor but extremely annoying glitch to work with.........I hope somebody figures it out!

Using MacBook Charger

I just got a new MacBook for my wife(btw, very nice machine) and I noticed the battery charger is significantly smaller than my MacBook Pro.
I also saw that the battery charger for the MacBook Pro is rated as 85W versus 60W in the MacBook.
My question is, can I use the MacBook charger to charge my MacBook Pro? It would be nice if I could do this as I can carry a lighter charger during travel.
Comments?
Thanks.

Thanks. Seems like the MacBook charger can charge MacBook Pro!!!
I tried it and I saw the light was on when connecting the MacBook adapter into my MacBookPro so I assume this is indeed working/charging.
In this case, if a MacBookPro owner wants to buy a second adapter, why should anyone buy a BIGGER and HEAVY adapter (in MacBook Pro) than a much smaller one in MacBook? And what is the purpose of having a 80W adapter when 60W is enough???

Hard drive setup question....

Hi-
I'm looking for a little advice.... I will soon be the proud owner of a new Mac Pro, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to setup all of the extraneous hard drives I have accumulated over the last year or so….
I have a 160GB drive pulled from my broken iMac G5 (can I even put that inside the Mac Pro?)
A 250GB drive coming installed in the new Mac Pro
A 350GB drive given to me by a friend (pulled from his Mac Pro)
A 750GB drive also coming installed in the new Mac Pro
And a 500GB external drive.
My thought was to setup a striped RAID set (RAID 0) with the 250GB and 350GB drives, knowing I would loose 100GB, but end up with a fast 500GB drive… I would use this drive for my home folders, apps, etc… My basic work drive.
I would use the 750GB drive for my music, video files and photos.
I would use the 500GB external drive as a Time Machine Backup
And the 160GB drive as a clean system, to boot up into if needed…..
Is this the best setup? Am I missing something? Should I be doing something else with the drives? Is there any way NOT to loose that 100GB on the raid drives?
Any advice would be appreciated!

$83 buys a fast 110MB/sec WD Caviar 640GB.
http://www.barefeats.com/harper14.html
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD6400AAKS/
I would not even think of putting two unlike drives, and they won't be any better than the above.
$79 buys a SATA drive case with FW800/400 interface for your emergency drives. Great for the small emergency boot drive.
Save and skip on buying 750GB from Apple.
But do what you must - after buying Mac Pro, you may not have the funds, and you do want to have more than stock 2GB RAM.
Apple OEM drives, other than the 750GB are consumer grade 8MB/sec and I would not use it for boot drive, keep it as backup in that external case.

Mail 4.2, snow leopard, mail without message content

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rebuild your whole mail index. quit Mail and delete the file home directory/library/mail/envelope index. start mail and say yes when it asks to import your messages.

Apple TV in Europe?

Hi and hello out there, here's a question from a first-timer:
Does anyone have any idea when movie and tv broadcasts will be available to rent or buy in the Netherlands???? A positive answer would seriously tempt me to purchase apple TV, because without that specific content it just doesn't seem wise to even think about it.
Thanx.

Flessel wrote:
Does anyone have any idea when movie and tv broadcasts will be available to rent or buy in the Netherlands????
it will be available - as soon as the content-owners allow Apple to sell/rent this content in the Netherlands.
because without that specific content it just doesn't seem wise to even think about it.
there are still other uses for the TV. to name a few: watch your home made videos on your HDTV, watch your photos, watch youtube videos, stream music to it.
JGG

Where exactly does your publication go?

I've been thinking to download iBooks author from the mac app store. However I would like to know where exactly does your publication go when you upload it? I've tried looking on the bookstore and the magazine store (or whatever it's called), but I only seem to see publications from established authors.

Mine shipped from the same place on May 19. I received it today in the USA. Yours should be there soon!
-Bmer
Mac Owners Support Group
Join Us @ MacOSG.com
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A soon-to-be MacBookPro owner....

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