Hello readers. As I promised in the previous post, I am unveiling to you my new 13.3” White Macbook. It’s the Santa Rosa 3 Edition, which means it has 144mb of video memory(instead of 64mb like in previous models), 1gb of ram and an Intel 2 Core Duo Processor. I am very excited I got one at last. I invested pretty much in my PC desktop computer and I was a total fool. Apple does things so much better. The look, the finish the Mac OS interface, everything looks and behaves wonderfully. It comes preinstalled with Leopard, iLife ’08 and iWork ‘08(trial).
As a new Mac user here are my thoughts. If you are willing to buy a mac, don’t go launch yourself in a spending frenzy. Opt for a middle-class, middle-specs one(if you are a proffesional video editor you probably should go for top of the line products). The main inconvenience I have is RAM, HDD space and something I never thought about. My wrist hurts if I type a lot. The bottom edge of the macbook is kind of “sharp” and disturbing sometimes. That’s about it. The rest is all good. It works like a charm. Display is crystal clear. Sound? Good, basic daily usage sound. If you want a party, forget it, get external speakers people! A side note: it does get hot sometimes, but these latest editions don’t fry eggs like some previous ones did.
My desktop is an Intel 2,6GHz E6600 Core Duo with 4GB of ram, an Nvidia 8800GT and a 7200 rpm 320 GB HDD. Why did I say this? Well, my macbook boots faster and can handle with just 1GB, a large number of applications and still run smooth like butter. Windows PCs just can’t do that, with all their RAM and power and tweaking. Apple computers manage RAM differently. What can I say, thank you Steve Jobs.
CAUTION for Apple laptop buyers. Do not buy laptops or configure with RAM from Apple. 4GB of RAM can get you spending a whopping 1000$. Instead get one with 512mb or 1gb and take the exact specs(frequency and all) and buy 1 or 2 pieces of 2gb from Kingston or Kingmax or any other manufacturer, for almost 100$. Save 900$. I really don’t know why RAM from Apple is so expensive but anyway, seriously think what I’m saying. You’ll have the same speeds, same performance as you would with their pieces of hardware. I currently have 1gb and want to upgrade to 4gb. Installing the RAM yourself is an easy process which I’ll be recording soon and posting, for all you viewers who want more from their macbook. If you’re a regular user(movies, music, documents, internet, 1gb is more than enough). About warranty, well, good news. HDD replacement and RAM upgrade will not void your warranty. Fantastic!
As I said, I am a passionate photographer, and using photoshop with really large files can take up a lot of RAM so the more the better. Also I recently started learning about video formats and all kinds of video-related info and I want to buy final cut express HD 4. I love imovie, don’t get me wrong, I just want to widen my tools palette and give my movies somewhat of a pop. That’s about all for today viewers. In my future tech posts, I’ll show you how to change your RAM and later on, after I get really acquainted with my macbook I’ll post an in depth review. Bye for now!
