The cheapest place to get a Mac?

Patricide

Hey all, after using Logic during my time in the last recording studio I worked in I have fallen in love with Macs and Logic itself. I now want...no scratch that NEED to get my hands on a semi decent mac for home recording purposes.

Ive got about 700 notes to splurge and im looking for ANY way i can get a mac with around 2.0 ghz or more, and at least 2gb of ram with a 72000rpm hardrive(around 300gb would be good).

Im open to getting it cheap and upgrading it myself, heading up to the north and getting it second hand, as long as it works. So i ask ye. Can it be done?

Patricide

docdolittle wrote: »

I thought the price of a mac was regulated everywhere by Apple?

It is, but as currency rates fluxuate so do the gaps between pricing. For example right now you can get a 320gb mac mini in england or NI for 700 euro while the same thing here is 799. A hundred euros a pretty big difference....

Im just looking for any sites such as dabs.ie that do special deals or anything like that on macs themselves, memory upgrades etc.

Sad Professor

You're not really going to find anywhere doing deals on Macs. So for 700 euro, if you want a new Mac you're limited to the Mac Mini. However, I see Dabs is selling the white Macbook for 786. Or you could go up to Belfast and get it from the Applestore for a little less.

If you want an iMac or new Macbook, you'll have to go the second hand route. Maybe keep an eye on Adverts. Or Ebay. Or the Apple refurb store.

My advice would be to save a little more and get a new Macbook or iMac from up North. I'm afraid it's impossible to splurge on a Mac with 700 euro.

hideous ape

Well if you are a student or know one then you can get a Student Discount so thats another bit chipped off the total cost:)
I don't know if you could use the Student Discount in the Retail Store in Belfast, might be worth calling them to find out.

Look down the lefthand side for the Education Store:

http://store.apple.com/ie

As has already been said a MacBook or an iMac will work excellent with Logic.

cornbb

A new or 2nd hand Mac Mini would do the trick. Install the extra RAM and a nice fast HDD yourself, you should even have some spare money to splurge on a big screen (which will definitely help you to use Logic efficiently)

Patricide

Ok lads, Currently typing this from sinagapore airport. Managed to find a Mac mini 2gb for 786 Singapore dollars which is about 400 Euro. Im gonna get that on my way home from austraillia and then get the ram and the hardrive at home.

Anyone have any recomendations on where to get the ram and a nice fast hard drive that wont be likly to overheat the mac mini!

decob

ram: memoryc.com or crucial.com/eu/

harddisk: komplett or memoryc.com

spannerotoole

You could try building your own machine and installing OSX on it there. There are hardware guides on the internet. Try and get a processor that supports the SSE3 Extensions for optimum performance.

For a list of compatible components
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.5.6
will show you a list of hardware that is known to work or not work

Good Luck.

Alternatively Try a Windows machine with Reason 4

Breezer

spannerotoole wrote: »

You could try building your own machine and installing OSX on it there.

Not to be recommended. Not supported by Apple, may or may not be illegal, and most importantly your machine/part of your machine (e.g. sound input or output) may stop working if you update OS X at any point.

spannerotoole

In my own experience, Macs don't work well with 24bit Audio doesn't work insofar as it causes a mac to freeze. The problem has been identified as a problem with CoreAudio and applications not made by apple (Reason or Cubase for example)

Hobbes

You can get a mac mini for the spec you mentioned for 599 euros (free shipping) on apple store. Student discount will get you approx 40 euros off that. The new ones you can't really upgrade though.