macbook for college

gramhar

hey am thinking of buying a macbook for college, the black 2.4Ghz, 250gb hard drive, 4gb!! is this a good choice, will it be compatible in college?
Id prefer to buya good notebook now and have it!!! many thanks!!:)

forbairt

gramhar wrote: »

hey am thinking of buying a macbook for college, the black 2.4Ghz, 250gb hard drive, 4gb!! is this a good choice, will it be compatible in college?
Id prefer to buya good notebook now and have it!!! many thanks!!:)

What college ...

yes / no ...



powerful enough machine ... you're maxing out the options .. I'd pick up the extra ram from crucial and save yourself a fortune ...

I'd pick up an external drive as well ...

MS Office ... should be able to save to older formats that can be read by other MS Office windows based software ...

so ... personal opinion not a bad machine... will you want it for games however ?

gramhar

nope, dont intend to use it for gaming, specifically for research, presentation, itunes and photos

should i go black or white??

gramhar

forbairt wrote: »

What college ...

sorry trinity!!

forbairt

gramhar wrote: »

should i go black or white??

(I'll avoid the bad joke that just begs to be said)

and this may sound like a stupid question ... but which do you prefer ?

I went silver (MBP)

Kid Nothing

white is generally a smarter bet, you can pick up the extra memory and hard drive room fairly cheaply from crucial, kmplett, etc

gramhar

well considering I'm going to have it for quite some time, I think its an okay question to ask!!
Of course, I have a favourite colour but isn't that what boards is about, getting a second opinion!!

I think I'll go black!:D

forbairt

gramhar wrote: »

well considering I'm going to have it for quite some time, I think its an okay question to ask!!
Of course, I have a favourite colour but isn't that what boards is about, getting a second opinion!!

No thats peer pressure

gramhar

amull87 wrote: »

white is generally a smarter bet, you can pick up the extra memory and hard drive room fairly cheaply from crucial, kmplett, etc

although i rang mac today, and they do do a white 4gb and with student discount it works out at 1304e vat included

forbairt

gramhar wrote: »

although i rang mac today, and they do do a white 4gb and with student discount it works out at 1304e vat included

from the website

€1,199.00 for 2.4ghz MB ... 2 gb ram ... and 160gb drive ...

that is inc vat and excluding any other offers so I don't find 1304 that great a deal to be honest

gramhar

forbairt wrote: »

from the website

€1,199.00 for 2.4ghz MB ... 2 gb ram ... and 160gb drive ...

that is inc vat and excluding any other offers so I don't find 1304 that great a deal to be honest

Did I say it was a good deal:D

the 1304e offer has a 4 gb ram and 250gb..
..making a difference of €105

so for an extra €105, you get more ram + bigger hard-drive

forbairt

gramhar wrote: »

so for an extra €105, you get more ram + bigger hard-drive

Personally I'd see what a student discount would drop the machine I mentioned by ... then you can say for 105 + the discount you get ...

Breezer

gramhar wrote: »

Did I say it was a good deal:D

the 1304e offer has a 4 gb ram and 250gb..
..making a difference of €105

so for an extra €105, you get more ram + bigger hard-drive

grahamhar, you'd be mad to buy a bigger hard drive or extra RAM from Apple. Buy it off Crucial.com, you'll save yourself a fortune.

2.4GHz White MacBook with the regular student discount (Trinity may offer a better discount, UCD do): €1,126.51.

4GB RAM from Crucial - €64.61.

250GB Hard drive from Komplett.ie: €70

Total: €1261.12

Admittedly it's not a huge saving on the price you quoted, but are you sure you have that right? On the Apple website it lists a MacBook with the specs you provided as €1,361.25. Plus this way you get an extra hard drive and RAM, which you can sell to recoup a few quid.

As regards white/black, there is absolutely no difference other than the black is more expensive. The white model can be configured identically for less money, either with Apple or with third party parts. If you prefer the colour black, and feel it's worth the money, then buy it, but don't buy it for the specs.

Also, I'd seriously advise waiting until you see what discount Trinity are offering. With the UCD discount, the above system would cost €1213.93. Also Apple is expected to refresh its laptop range on 14th October, so I'd advise waiting till then if you don't absolutely need the laptop right now.

-Blanco-

Gramhar

Do you need it urgently or can you hang on for awhile? Mac are rumored to be releasing the new macbook range before the end of the year. You could probably pick up the current models cheaper when the new ones are released.

Red Alert

Mac's are grand in TCD I'd say. Also take a look at refurbed MBP's - you might be able to get one cheaper with the 4 Gigs there too.

gramhar

nks a million for all your help guys, I might just wait a round a while and see what thay bring out!! nd if not il get the black 2gb and upgrade from kemplett!! is is hard to add??
id love one now but Ill hang on, thanks a mill, oh ps, tcd give a 10% discount, thanks again!!

gramhar

i bet you the new macbooks will be crazy expensive thou, but as mentions, the old mabcooks might drop down in price!!

J-blk

gramhar wrote: »

i bet you the new macbooks will be crazy expensive thou

Not necessarily. Apple tends to replace models with equally priced new models but better specs. So you might end up getting something much closer to the current high end model for the price of the lower end model. And as you said, the older MacBooks will get a price break (probably showing up on the Refurb store).

The various gadget blogs are reporting the rumor that an Apple event will take place on the 14th of October to announce new Macs - I'd wait until then if I was you.

gramhar

J-blk wrote: »

Not necessarily. Apple tends to replace models with equally priced new models but better specs. So you might end up getting something much closer to the current high end model for the price of the lower end model. And as you said, the older MacBooks will get a price break (probably showing up on the Refurb store).

The various gadget blogs are reporting the rumor that an Apple event will take place on the 14th of October to announce new Macs - I'd wait until then if I was you.

excellent, but will they be coming out at that tine, or just announcing that they are on the way, its just that I start college soon, and Iv never used a mac before, so it will take a few days to adjust to!!

Breezer

gramhar wrote: »

excellent, but will they be coming out at that tine, or just announcing that they are on the way, its just that I start college soon, and Iv never used a mac before, so it will take a few days to adjust to!!

Most likely coming out that day, it may take a week or two for them to ship though.

Realistically for the first week or two in college you'll probably need a web browser and some sort of office software. Web browsing is pretty much the same and point your browser at http://neooffice.org for free office software until you feel more comfortable and start making decisions on apps you want to buy (not that I'm suggesting you have to buy office software, NeoOffice and other free apps are fantastic and you may find them perfectly adequate for your needs).

J-blk

gramhar wrote: »

excellent, but will they be coming out at that tine, or just announcing that they are on the way, its just that I start college soon, and Iv never used a mac before, so it will take a few days to adjust to!!

Like Breezer said, it could be up to a couple of weeks from announcement to shipping (I think that was the case with the MacBook Air) but in some cases, you can buy the new models 24 hours later. Unfortunately, we don't have any official Apple stores in Ireland, which would renew their stock the fastest after an announcement, so the Apple website would be your best bet.

The learning curve on a Mac for the basic stuff at least is not very steep and you'll adjust to it very quickly I think. And even if not, you'll find a lot of helpful people here to answer from the simplest to the most complicated questions that you may have.

If you can hold off until the next product refresh, I'd advise you to. You'll be gutted to buy a new Mac now with replacements possibly coming a month down the line .

NiSmO

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forbairt

NiSmO wrote: »

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For programming for the most part no ...

BUT ... you can dual boot them. What you'd be required to install would be XP or Vista ... and it'll cost you 100+ quid probably for a license of that as well.

Red Alert

The new macs are considered generally very good for programming - my only experience with them is C, Fortran and a smattering of Python. But the XCode environment is quite good, and the GNU compiler suite is installed as standard on Macs. If you're not into XCode, there's also another IDE called Eclipse that'll do C, Java and a lot more languages too.

The only exception to this, of course, is that they won't run visual studio natively. Best solution to this is to install Parallel's desktop and install XP onto the virtual machine. Believe me, it's a lot better and safer than dual booting. You've got Windows in a Window on the desktop. And performance-wise it's fine - Visual Studio is pretty heavy and I've no slowdown on it.

J-blk

As Red Alert said, Macs can be very good for programming - I do a ton of scripting in Ruby for work and I much prefer using a Mac. Besides Eclipse, there's also the NetBeans IDE which handles Java and Ruby (and other languages I think) and you get access to the best editor ever, TextMate. The various scripting languages like Ruby, Perl and Python all have support "out of the box" so to speak - and in most cases you can use them straight away. And using a VM (Fusion or Parallels) is great - I have Fusion set up with both Windows XP and Ubuntu VMs which make it very easy to test my code across all three platforms. Much better than dual/triple booting and works great if you have a lot of memory.

Red Alert

I've had no hassle at all with 2GB of RAM doing that. Just make sure you optimize for the performance of the VM and you'll be fine.

NiSmO

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forbairt

BTW I should have originally said I assumed computer science would be heavy on the .net / visual studio side of things.

I'm actually doing web / webapp dev on one and its great for that. I've a VM set up if I need any windows apps / non mac software.

gramhar

Hey, decided to order a white macbook tonight!! I valued your opinions on waiting untill October but I am really happy with the current specs, and I just want to get used to it and have a laptop!! Thanks for all the help though...really appreciated:) x

J-blk

Enjoy it, I'm sure you'll love it! Yeah, I know waiting can be hard for things like these and if you are happy with what you got then that's all that matters. The current generation of MacBooks are very nice anyway. Which one did you end up going for? The 2.1Ghz or the 2.4Ghz mid-level one?

gramhar

J-blk wrote: »

Enjoy it, I'm sure you'll love it! Yeah, I know waiting can be hard for things like these and if you are happy with what you got then that's all that matters. The current generation of MacBooks are very nice anyway. Which one did you end up going for? The 2.1Ghz or the 2.4Ghz mid-level one?

Thanks!! I got the 2.4Ghz and upped it to a 250gb hardrive!! way cheaper for the white, and with the student discount I was satisified!!

mikemac

Congrats OP, you'll love it and shouldn't take too long to get delivered.

You'll be getting envious looks if you take it into college for sure! Word to wise, guard it with your life if you take it into college, I've seen too many laptops robbed in our library when people left their desk for only a second

Enjoy and come back here if you any questions, you will have.
The basics are easy to learn and you'll see that everything "just works" and seems to make sense

NiSmO

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gramhar

NiSmO wrote: »

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em 3 business days, but sed iit should be here by the 26th/27th of sept!!!
cheers guys, nd I will guard it!!:D

Dublinstiofán

gramhar wrote: »

em 3 business days, but sed iit should be here by the 26th/27th of sept!!!
cheers guys, nd I will guard it!!:D

Should have talked to your campus rep they can save you a little bit more.

gramhar

Dublinstiofán wrote: »

Should have talked to your campus rep they can save you a little bit more.

Em, they don't think there was much of a difference last near, it was pretty much the 10% with mac

DHYNZY

I too bought a Mac last year and go to TCD.

Its very effective as long as you download Firefox (only compatible browser in TCD on Mac). In order to set it up you'll have to go to the IS services.


Best of luck with your new Macbook :P

The Black Oil

Safari works on a Macbook in TCD though you do have to go through FF to set up your machine on the TCD network, initially.

dory

The Black Oil wrote: »

Safari works on a Macbook in TCD though you do have to go through FF to set up your machine on the TCD network, initially.

gramhar wrote: »

Em, they don't think there was much of a difference last near, it was pretty much the 10% with mac

Well just for future reference.....
Normally the low end mac book is €999
With student discount it's €938.96
Through your university it's €899

Nothing crazy, but a bit more than 10%. Makes more of a difference when you go for a more high end thing.

merkuree

Gramhar, you may be interested in this piece of software.

http://www.usefulfruit.com/pearnote/

It is a glorified note taking package with integrated audio recording and tagging. Allows you to record lectures and then replay them while editing your notes while listening to the audio playback. Great idea.

It works very well for meetings as well.

bigstar

hey im thinking of getting that same black mac 2gig memory 250 gig harddrive. its 1260 from college (dcu) but its 1160 from dabs.ie. can you trust these sites. also i was reading what was written in this thread about adding extra ram and hard drive yourself is this easy to do, im not too computer savvy, not an idiot either

J-blk

Dabs.ie is a large (and reputable) UK based retailer - I've gotten lots of stuff off them. Any warranty issues that may come up, you'll probably end up dealing with Apple directly anyway.

Both the RAM and hard drive are very easy to change yourself in a MacBook (the hard drive is a pain to change in the MacBook Pro). For RAM, I'd recommend Crucial.com and you can get larger hard drives from Dabs or Komplett.ie.

gramhar

Hey, I havn't been on boards as much recently! But I Just wanted to say, I got the macbook, its amazing, I Love it!!!
Thanks a million for all your help, It was really appreciated and incredibly helpful!!

J-blk

Good to hear you're getting on fine.

If you had bought a Windows laptop you'd probably be on here every day trying to sort out some new problem (ok, Windows is not that bad but it's no Mac OS X) .

bigstar

thanks for the info im gonna get me a nice matt black apple

Creamy Goodness

just to add i use a macbook for college for computer science.

unless you need something like autoCAD or other silly software that is windows only, macs are fine for college.

glad to hear you're getting on well with it.

Frankmagnet

Hi
I just have a question for the person who said that ucd students get a discount on macs.
My gf is in ucd and i am thinking about getting a macbook. If she gets it for me with her discount and would she need a credit card to buy it? She doesnt have one at the moment and the mac i want is 1300e so I doubt many students have that as a limit on a credit card anyway.

Hope you can help. Thanks

Sad Professor

I think you can pay by cheque and laser card as well.

Breezer

Laser card is fine. 3V card is another possibility although I'm not sure if you can put that much on them. Cheque probably isn't an option since you've to go through the UCD Connect website, but you could always try ringing them and talking to them, mentioning that you're a student.

Incidentally, if you have your own credit/debit card you can use that, it doesn't actually have to be her that purchases it, you'll just need to use her log in details on UCD Connect.

Frankmagnet

Thanks lads

If I can pay with my own laser card then thats brilliant. Now I just have to wait a week or so to see if the Macbook line is updated or not.

Thanks for your help