Mac Advice

BFCTom

BFCTom

BFCTom

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Hi guys,

I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to Macs so you'll have to bare with me :p

Right, I'm thinking about getting a Mac (£1,000-ish budget) but before I rush out and buy one I've got a few questions to ask first.

My main question is what would be the best Mac to buy?

I do a lot of graphics and design work on my current PC and I'm on a multimedia course at uni and we do a lot of video editing using Final Cut etc there.

I don't really play games on my PC (Football Manager and WoW occasionally) so I could live without being able to play games on the Mac.

Another question I have is will the software discs I have that I use on my PC work on the Mac? For instance I have the Photoshop disc, would that work on the Mac I might buy? A main factor in me buying or not buying a Mac would be down to having the software installed that I need.

The other option is to just buy a better PC, but I think the Mac might have its advantages for the kind of things I want to do.

Any advice appreciated guys :)
 
I'd say go with an iMac with that budget.

Ring up Apple and say you're a student and you'll get a nice fat 14% discount because you're in uni. As a rough guide, check the Apple store for the iMac you'd like, then instead of looking at the total price, look at the subtotal.. that's what you'll be paying :)

Saying that, the MacBook Pro would suit you if you wanted the extra portability, but it's a tad more expensive.

For the Final Cut rendering then I couldn't recommend a MacBook.. it'll run Final Cut, but the screen is just too small to have that many palettes / windows open.

As for software, no, you can't use the Adobe Photoshop disc from a PC in a Mac, it just doesn't work like that.. although, I believe if you upgraded you could choose a Mac disc instead of the PC, but you still have to pay.

The best way around that would be to use Bootcamp / VMWare Fusion / Parallels to run Photoshop and then boot in to OS X to use Final Cut.

With the HE purchase you'll get 3 years hardware support, so don't buy that if they offer you.. they just want you to buy the extra 2 years phone cover!
 
WoW runs nativley on Mac and as its not graphically intensive, it should run fine on a macbook or whatever (gonna try it out soon on my Macbook)
 
Thanks for the replies so far.

I don't really need the portability of a Macbook but I'm not totally against the idea either.

I'm a bit gutted about the software aspect of it all though. The main reason I would go down the Mac route would be to use all my editing packages on one system. I probably wouldn't be able to afford to buy them all again for the Mac version.
 
It wouldn't be very complicated, it'd just be a hassle rebooting to switch between programs. You could use a virtualization solution like Parallels to run Windows on top of OS X, but that would cost money and deliver non-native speed. It'd be close in terms of speed though, provided you have at least 2 GiB RAM in the system.
 
It's all built in to OS X under a utility called "Boot Camp"

Start the wizard, it partitions your disk (although you can set the size) and then you slide in the Windows Install disc.. it compiles the drivers you need and installs them along with the OS.

Once you reboot you can hold down a key and choose to boot in to Windows or OS X. It's so easy you'd laugh.

If you want more info, email me (in trust)
 
How much other Windows-only software do you need to use beyond Photoshop? If the number is small, it might make sense to buy the Mac versions with HE discount. I know I can get a copy of Photoshop CS3 for around $30 with a student license.
 
Right, so basically I could just do everything I do on my PC now on a Mac in Windows?

That sounds cool, gonna have a look at specific Macs over the next few days. Maybe go into the shop and have a play :)

Thanks again for the help.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
How much other Windows-only software do you need to use beyond Photoshop? If the number is small, it might make sense to buy the Mac versions with HE discount. I know I can get a copy of Photoshop CS3 for around $30 with a student license.
Click to expand...
Nothing really. Office would be nice but I know you can get a Mac version of that too :)
 
You could also look at getting a second hand Mac Pro, the 2.66 is within budget and if you didn't need a new monitor that'd do what you wanted.
 
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