Buying first Macbook

id hold off on buying office (its not preinstalled) because a new version is slated to be released that will be universal binary (works faster with intel macs) buying office now would be a waste of money as the update is supposed to be out in months (unless you need it right away in which case you might try and find some free alternates untll the office 08 release)

as far as buying the macbook, nows a pretty good time, you can check the buyers guide at macrumors and it will give you the date of the last revision and an indicator if its a good time to buy (i believe it says it is)

i like the black, but if style doesnt matter to you then it is a waste of money (only like 50 dollars more now) as far as upgrading, i originally upped to 1 gig (i ahve the core duo) and plan on upgrading to 2 before i start law school next fall, it depends on what you are using the laptop for, some who know more about the price ranges can hop in and let you know if its worth your $$ to upgrade with apple or go the separate route.

good luck and enjoy

when i got mine i got it as a gift so i can't really tell you prices (or if it was included) but my Microsoft Office came in a seperate box with my printer cables (have you already bought it bc if not you should look at NeoOffice bc it's free) i don't think there wil be any drastic changes soon to the proccessor. if you are going to upgrade your ram anyway i would do it when you buy so you don't have to use a little ram for any amount of time (i have 2 gigs and it really flies) for an external hard drive i have the Maxtor One Touch III 300 gigs and it works great. people tell me all i have to do is push a button and it will back up my hard drive but i haven't tried it bc i only want to back up certain stuff. it is a USB tho so if you will be changing large amounts of data between each back up you might want to look for a firewire drive (your initial backup will be slow no matter what kind you get) i got the black and i have to say it looks pretty darn cool and i love it

First of all, welcome to the discussions!

While your Mac will come with a ton of useful software preinstalled, a full version of Office is not one of them. There is a trial version, but it will need to be purchased to have the full version unlocked.

Apple doesn't allow us to speculate on their boards, but the MBs have been relatively recently updated, so now is a fine time to buy if the current configurations meet your needs.

Speaking of which, it is really hard to make a recommendation on RAM of HD space without knowing what you plan to do with your Mac. The extra RAM may benefit you, but it may also be a waste of cash.

I am a huge fan of the Mercury Elite Pro drives from OWC found HERE. Whatever you decide to do, make sure the drive has the Oxford 911 chipset and avoid the cheaper and more common Prolific chipset. The Oxford chipset is much more stable and reliable in both Macs and PCs alike.

Personally, I like the BlackBook, but you do pay a $50 premium for the black. You can configure the white model the same way as the black and the difference is $50 - just for color. If you want to save a few bucks, take a look at the refurbished units from Apple. I bought a first gen BlackBook back in July and it arrived in perfect condition and has performed flawlessly each and every day since them.

1. There will be a test drive of office installed, be sure to trash it before istalling a full version.

2. Now is a great time if you need one, can't tell you about new stuff or we'd have to shoot you.

3. Do the RAM upgrade later, you can find it cheaper than a custom build, and it is trickier to return a bto if you need to.

4. OWC, macsales.com, has good stuff. Mercury Elite with Oxford Chipset is oft mentioned here (thanks Eric K, mine is great)

5. You get more than Black for the buck, also capacity.

Joe

I'm planning on using the Macbook for college work
and classes. Writing papers and other things. Also
plan on watching movies and video and possibly doing
some photo-editing, web browsing. I've got a custom
built PC right now that I've just become a little
bored with, and I really want a small/cool laptop to
take to class and help out with my writing of papers.
Thanks a lot

have you played with the keyboard at all? im a student as well and absolutely love the setup (separated keys) its really comfortable to type on (although some people who dont use correct typing ergonomics complain the corners are rather sharp)

You may want to hold off on the MacBook if you're planning to use a wireless connection. A lot of them have massive problems with connections. See the Internet and Networking forum for details.

iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Pay no attention to him they released a update that fixes all the wireless problems today. Not to mention I have had no problems at all with my book and i think you will find that to be the general case. I think now is a great time to buy! Go for it!

I'm wireless right now typing this reply. No problems

Are you talking about this update, which some people are reporting made the problem worse? I can't find a more recent update on the Apple site. If they've got an update that will make my MacBook connect without problems, I'd be happy to install that.



iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

They update released today should fix all your problems, if it does not i would venture to say that your book has a more complex hardware issue. If after that update you are still having problems i would try archive and install, then still if that didn't work i would get in contact with apple. With that said, the wireless issue has been a problem for a small amount of people no reason to shy away from buying a book at this time.

What kind of external hard drive are you after. Are you just after a big external drive which will stay at home or are you after an portable external drive that you can take with you. I currently have a LaCie Porsche 80gb drive and it has both firewire and usb interfaces. Its small, lightweight and barely makes any noise at all. Here is the link to the LaCie site and the portable hard drives so have a look here. I know a few people with similar hard drives to mine and there all fine. http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10036


Dib.

Just bought MacBook 13,with Airport,no problems....
My son uses his MacPro with Airport for school and swears by it,converted me to use the Mac.

13" MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.8)

If you're not in a rush, you may want to wait for the release of the new Airport base station in February that'll be using the new "n" technology. Some people think the problems are caused by the "n"-ready cards in the new MacBook Core 2 Duos not playing nice with older base stations and routers. (Other people point to the problems starting with OS X 10.4.8, so who knows? Maybe it's both.) It could be worth waiting to see if the problems disappear with that base station.

I'm not going to install the new upgrade yet myself, given the number of people reporting problems with it on both the MacBook and MacBook Pro forums. I'll wait until the bugs are worked out.

The nice thing about the MacBook is it can run Windows. A number of users affected by the wireless problems said the problems don't happen when the MacBook is running Windows, which points to an OS — and fixable — problem. I don't have Windows, so I can't comment on that.

Potential wireless problems aside, the MacBook is a nice little computer. It's light and sleek, and the two-finger scrollable trackpad is genius — as is the magnetic cord.

As for links, I just use href code to insert them. It's very simple. Just hit Google to learn how.

iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)

iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.2)