New Macs

[Simon]

Update - just got told the new toy won't be available until late next week "at the earliest".

Joy.

[MadMax]

'how do you like those apples?!'

[Hannibal]

Well I switched to mac about 10 months ago and it's like a revelation. I run a macmini booting from a 300GB firewire disk, hooked to a 20" cinema display. Took me a little bit to get used to the display but now I love it. I have never installed a virus scanner on the system, have never touched the system in over 10 months and it runs exactly as the day I bought it. it is solid, intuitive, and just downright what using a PC should be about. I currently use it 7 days a week around 6-10hrs a day. Going mac was the best move I ever made, and the more I use it the more I realise windows is a piece of complete shit.

[homercles]

Interested to know the specs of yr mini and what you use it for. A few ppl I know are getting to the upgrade stage again & I don't feel like getting them an Alienware just so they can run Vista.

edit: what do u mean by "used to the display"?

[sky_]

Rocket: Yeah, but it's a fair call. Remember that Linux definitely is more powerful than Windows. The predominant factor against Linux is compatiblity (hardware and software). So I see the review as completely valid.. if only because I've had it thrown in my face over and over again

[Hannibal]

Originally Posted by homercles

Interested to know the specs of yr mini and what you use it for. A few ppl I know are getting to the upgrade stage again & I don't feel like getting them an Alienware just so they can run Vista.

edit: what do u mean by "used to the display"?

My mini is the 1.42 with 1GB ram, airport, dvd burner, and a maxtor one touch2 300GB external firewire disk. I don't advise running the mini on the internal disk unless you get a 7200rpm one. I got a massive performance boost with the external disk, and i use carbon copy cloner and monthly dump my entire system to the mini's internal. This way if my main disk dies I can still bootup the mini with the same system on it. I use the system heavily with a lot of web & graphics apps. As far as what I use it for it perfoms better than my old AMD64 3200 with 2GB ram. The display has a sort of sheen which I think is from the antiglare coating but now I don't notice it anymore and the display is amazing, broad daylight all curtains open and I can see everything crystal clear and can be fairly confident of the color. The best thing of all is just using a system month after month and never having to touch it from an admin standpoint. The sleep function is also wicked, it's an instant on and off, something I tried with my windows system and gave up with..

[homercles]

Hi, I'm a Mac.



Initial impressions:
- wow
- screen is beautiful, kinda like the glossy; crystal clear
- perfect size for portability, 13.3" is great for displaying docs, web pages, etc
- never used Front Row before & with the remote = Great eye candy but functional too. Just need a DVI adapater
- camera is great, nice quality.
- damn fast tho will test ripping, etc later

Now for Boot Camp...

[cheers for that Hannibal]

[Ashley]

All I can say to using OS X for the first 3 hours is....wow.

Screen size is perfect (13.3")
Everythings just so...new!

[homercles]

Boot Camp works brilliantly, even got some games running (HL2 at about 20fps). You need a full install disk (not upgrade) of XP with SP2 but if you only have the upgrade disk you can connect an external CD drive when it asks for the older version of Windows.

Here are some pics I made using iWeb and .mac: http://web.mac.com/jonowallace/iWeb/Site/MacBook.html

That page was ridiculously easy to make. This rocks.

[Kanz]

Looks great, cheers homercles (y)

So games run fine? Never played HL2 before so have NFI 20fps good or bad...

Does it come with Boot Camp? Can you took of somes of BC in action i.e. OS selection screen? Can you be logged into both WinXP and MacOSX at the same time and switch between the two?

Still trying to sell my iBook...

Cheers

[homercles]

That 20fps is playable but I think could drop to a slideshow in heavy battles. Might get better with more RAM (only 512 shared with vid atm). The MacBook Pros are much better for this but of course a lot more expensive.

Boot Camp can be downloaded from here (83MB). It installs to your Applications/Utilities folder.

OS selection is just a screen with 2 pictures that you choose from.

To run both at the same time you need Parallels (haven't tried it yet).

[edit] One more thing about Boot Camp: If you want OS X to be able to read and write to your XP partition, you need to format it as FAT32 not NTFS.

[Kickass]

Originally Posted by homercles

That 20fps is playable but I think could drop to a slideshow in heavy battles. Might get better with more RAM (only 512 shared with vid atm). The MacBook Pros are much better for this but of course a lot more expensive.

Boot Camp can be downloaded from here (83MB). It installs to your Applications/Utilities folder.

OS selection is just a screen with 2 pictures that you choose from.

To run both at the same time you need Parallels (haven't tried it yet).

[edit] One more thing about Boot Camp: If you want OS X to be able to read and write to your XP partition, you need to format it as FAT32 not NTFS.

use mac drive, to access HFS in windows...

i just ran 3dmark03 on my macbook pro - 7275marks =)

do you need .mac to make your own web site>

[homercles]

No you can specify any other site although there a few features that won't be available (can't recall which). .mac is not cheap but I'm just using the 60 day free trial at the moment.

[crocos]

*ahem*

[Foggerty]

Admit it, you're just jelous

Soon, soooooon I shall have a shiny new MacBook.
Just once I finish playing Oblivion, yeah, no more games after that......

[crocos]

Originally Posted by Foggerty

Admit it, you're just jelous

For sure - I don't currently have the spare to buy neat toys like this.

Originally Posted by Foggerty

Just once I finish playing Oblivion, yeah, no more games after that......

...And this is why I'm not TOO cut up about missing out on a Mac.

[homercles]

For me the thing was my current gaming rig is AGP and to play any of the new games would cost a good few thousand to upgrade & run decently so I thought, fuck it, get an XBox instead and be guaranteed high fps at max settings. For everything else, I use the iBook so win-win.

There's something pleasurable about being able to make a great looking website in 5 minutes complete with photos, slideshows, etc.

(every person who has seen this has said, "I want one!" )

[Kidona]

Originally Posted by homercles

There's something pleasurable about being able to make a great looking website in 5 minutes complete with photos, slideshows, etc.

(every person who has seen this has said, "I want one!" )

Have to Agree. It's just so easy sharing stuff using .Mac

I've been a .Mac subscriber for a year now and haven't found anything easier to use in order to publish photos. Open up iPhoto select the pics I want then hit the publish button. Add my captions and select my theme and then it sends me a link to send for everyone to view.

These photos were published within 2-3 minutes using .Mac took longer writing the captions

http://homepage.mac.com/kidona/PhotoAlbum3.html

You should start a new forum for Macs Simon

[Ard Righ]

Originally Posted by sacs

From a review of Vista beta-2: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12932382/

That review has been lambasted all over the internet for the reviewer's lack of a clue as to what he was trying to install, and what he was trying to install it on. As one person pointed out, Mr Krakow doesn't have the best history oftrying to install any software with any range of success :P

The other reviews of Vista Beta 2 have been a lot better, even though problems have still been noted obviously with it being Beta 2

[Hannibal]

Originally Posted by Ard Righ

That review has been lambasted all over the internet for the reviewer's lack of a clue as to what he was trying to install, and what he was trying to install it on. As one person pointed out, Mr Krakow doesn't have the best history oftrying to install any software with any range of success :P

The other reviews of Vista Beta 2 have been a lot better, even though problems have still been noted obviously with it being Beta 2

I've done some looking into Vista and my take on it is that Vista will be Windows ME all over again only worse. People will be phoning up isp's with issues and will get the "oh you have Vista? sorry we don't support vista" lol

[fobski]

I have vista 64 beta 2 running as a test at home on my pc.

has a huge install footprint (like 15 gigs) but i have found that some games already run better under it than on xp (wow is one)

drivers are pretty crap at this stage 2 but i kinda like it


anyway. go back to ya mac talk..

[EvilLumpy]

I hope this hasn't been posted yet

[Foggerty]

Wait wait wait....

FIFTEEN GIGS?!!!!?

That's a typo right? Or a joke? I mean, even with debugging info turned on/included with ALL of the executables that's fucking insane.

[fobski]

no.

it has a 15 gig install footprint without any extra things.

this could because the version is Vista Beta 2 Ultimae 64 OS... but yeah

15 gig footprint

[Ard Righ]

Well, 15gigs is obviously a very big beta, but I'm sure once the debugging is taken out, it would be closer to maybe 3-5gigs or so, depending on which version you got.

Windows XP fresh install is about 1.5gigs roughly, my current SP2 install is only about 1.75GB

[Foggerty]

Ok, I hope that IS debugging info, because its totally insane otherwise.

[fobski]

if you check the vista site the specs are out there

minimum instal requires 16 gig of free space.

debugging or no debugging this is a big bitch

[Genesis]

Originally Posted by fobski

I have vista 64 beta 2 running as a test at home on my pc.

has a huge install footprint (like 15 gigs) but i have found that some games already run better under it than on xp (wow is one)

drivers are pretty crap at this stage 2 but i kinda like it

How hard does hit system resources? I imagine CPU/Memory usage is through the fucken roof?

[Simon]

My Macbook...


...still hasn't arrived. Shit, this'll teach me to let my employer order it for me through a reseller. Should've just hit SUBMIT on the Apple Store website like I was about to.

[Ashley]

How much are you out?

[Kickass]

just hitting the 2nd problem with my macbook pro,

right fan is making a bad sound, taking it in for warrenty again...

and if anyone has read about the whine, every machine has this, and its not that bad

[homercles]

Especially since 90% of the time it's completely silent

[s0nic]

has anyone bought it from NZ?
is it even in stock?

[Simon]

Just in case you were wondering... no. It hasn't.

[Bahamut]

When I worked at an Apple Solutions Reseller in Melbourne, I would generally estimate that the first of the new products would arrive to us about 4 weeks after the ETA on the Apple store.

Sucks to be an ASR in Australia. Apple make more selling through their store, so they give priority to that.

[::Shocker]

Just ordered a white 2.0GHz Macbook with an extra half-gig of RAM. Thankfully the student discount eased the wallet shock a bit

[s0nic]

where would you get the student discount from??

[::Shocker]

http://www.tertiaryit.co.nz - Renaissance's tertiary sales division.

You have to register on the website, and they'll ask you to either fax/email a copy of your Student ID or some other proof of enrolment. Once you've done that, they'll send you an email with your login/password details, and you're in!

[BadNova]

I really would like one of those MacBook Pros but damn if they aren't fucking expensive.

[s0nic]

just out of interest, how much did your macbook (excluding the ram) cost you?