advice on upgrading

spidermonkey

i currently have an ppc imac g5,
its a 17inch model with superdrive, 512mb of ram and 160gb hdd.
im toying with the idea of upgrading,
was thinking about the white 2.16ghz macbook, 1gb ram with 120gb hdd.

its not necessary at the moment, will need it for next sept as the college macs suck.

but what would you suggest,
performance wise is is better? any idea when the next wave of updated apple hardware is out? might hold off till then

Sad Professor

Well the macbooks were just updated so now is definitely a good time to buy. I assume your going to hold on to the imac as your desktop and use the macbook for college/portability, right?

Performance wise there may not be a huge difference if all you're doing is web browsing/email but with the intel processor you'll be able to install bootcamp/xp.

I'd recommend you consider getting a bit more RAM though. 1GB will do for now but if/when you upgrade to Leopard the extra memory will make a difference. Just remember that the macbook comes with both slots filled so if you decide the buy the RAM separately you'll have to replace both chips.

And if you keep the imac you should probably get more RAM for it, as 512 really isn't enough imo.

K.O.Kiki

The only reason to get a laptop is if you are reasonably certain that

• You want portability (e.g. the ability to take your machine and type from any seat in the house/in college)
• You can stomach the reduced specs -- i.e. the Macbook won't have a "proper" graphics card, and comes with smaller HDD & smaller screen.
  On the flipside, it does have a much faster dual-core CPU.

If you can live with those, go for it! The Macbook is a great product.

If, however, I've dissuaded you from a laptop upgrade your Mac with as much RAM as you can afford, an nice big external HDD & maybe an Elgato turbo.264 if you have an iPod you want to convert videos for

spidermonkey

cool thanks for the info, might wait till leopard comes out and stuff it with ram and a bigger hdd so. cheers!

condra

Personally, I wouldnt advise anyone to get a laptop unless they absolutely needed portability. As desktop replacements, they are an ergenomic nightmare.

womoma

womoma wrote:

Personally, I wouldnt advise anyone to get a laptop unless they absolutely needed portability. As desktop replacements, they are an ergenomic nightmare.

I tend to slouch and be totally lazy when using mine. Not a good idea. I once ended up with a cramp that lasted three days! :eek:

Now I'm looking at desktops again! Hehe.

spidermonkey

Karsini wrote:

Not a good idea. I once ended up with a cramp that lasted three days! :eek:

portable porn...


ya will definatly keep the imac, might just pickup an ibook g4 at the end of summer and beef up the ram.
the fourth year mac labs in college are rubbish, they have about 20 imac g3's!! with usb1, and with the size of some of the files i produce i am not waiting for them to load off my portable hdd. did it once, never again.:mad:


thanks for the heads-up and advice!!