are apple laptops better then pc for computer bassed music.

[iMark]

DavieCee:
I had trouble with my disk drive being too fussy for re-ripping some of my old CDs (mid 80s) so i bought an external DVD drive (Samsung?) for @ £30 which does the job fine. Plus it is quicker than the built-in one. I read somewhere that the built in ones are throttled back for processing purposes

Anyway, it is small, cheap, efficient and it can be powered off an additional USB so no plugs etc. Could be a solution to your problem maybe?

The drive still reads CDs and DVDs, It has trouble burning. We have an external DVD-burner (LaCie) which I bought about 8 years ago to used with my old iMac G3 DV+ (which of course had FireWire long before there was something like USB 2.0). So in case we need to burn something we use that. I also use the LaCie for ripping CDs so that I don't wear out the drive in my MacBook. But the suggestion of a portable external burner is always a good idea. Even if you buy a new computer you can still use the external drive.

One thing that has always puzzled me is the lack of FireWire support in Windows. On my old iMac (bought in 2000) I could do video editing and with the external drive I could burn DVDs. It was really nifty being able to control the camcorder in the first version of iMovie. Unfortunately Apple has dropped the FireWire port on the MacBook. I dread the day that my present MacBook breaks down and then having to shell out for a MacBook Pro.

 

[iMark]

Paul Hobbs:

The only significant functionality you are missing out on is hardware encoding of h.264 which gets you major battery performance increases whilst watching youtube etc. You do have hardware encoding for open cl etc, which is why all the nice shiny shiny eye candy doesn't slow your machine down

Do you use your DVD drive much whilst out and about? I only use the DVD to burn disks whilst at my desk, so I was debating using an external drive for DVD burning and replacing the internal drive with a second hard disk. A scratch disk would speed photoshop and video work up no end!

You're right about the hardware encoding. The MacBook Pro has a Radeon X1600 video card and that's not on the list of supported hardware for h.264 accelleration.

She doesn't use the drive very often for burning when we're out and about. Because the hard drive is only 120 GB she uses portable drives for video editing.

Maybe it's time to look into getting a new Mac at some point. But for most tasks the machine is still very capable, even being 5 years old.

 

[steve_1979]

professorhat:Thanks Steve - makes sense in that Windows 7 was really just a refinement of Vista in the same way XP was a refinement of 2000 following Microsoft's release pattern for OSes of major release / minor release / major release / minor release etc.

You've hit the nail on the head there. I've heard people refering to Windows 7 as "Vista Service Pack 3".

professorhat:Expect Windows 8 to be widely panned in which case!

What's the betting that Windows 8 will be buggy as hell for the first couple of years but Windows 9 runs perfectly as soon as it's released?

 

[Anonymous]

I made the move to Mac because VISTA was so bad at the time. Now i'm hooked and would never go back.

Problem for windows is that their software has work on millions of different system configurations where as MAC only has to worry about a handful. i.e their mac systems are more finely tuned.

I use windows 7 at work and i'd still say that mac's have a slight upper hand in terms of UI.

some of the people who argue macs are so much more expensive make me laugh because i'm sure some of them splash out on more expensive brand name goods when a other brands cost considerably less

 

[iMark]

Shimminator:
some of the people who argue macs are so much more expensive make me laugh because i'm sure some of them splash out on more expensive brand name goods when a other brands cost considerably less

What I also like about Macs is the fact that they actually work right out of the box and come with quite a bit of useful software installed. The iLife suite is really good.

And what's even better: they don't come with all sorts of trial software that is really difficult to get rid off. And of course they don't get any slower over time.

 

[Anonymous]

As said before, Win 7 does not slow down over time any more than any other OS.

But macs ARE expensive and at the top-end cant compete with a pc for performance.

None of this is relevant to the original post.

 

[Alec]

steve_1979:What's the betting that Windows 8 will be buggy as hell for the first couple of years but Windows 9 runs perfectly as soon as it's released?

God bless big A/V and PC companies who liek to experiment at the expense of the consumer eh?

Incidentally, folks, trial software isnt that hard to get rid of.

 

[Anonymous]

U cannot say if a mac is better than a pc, it depends on soundcard, and if u play it on a good reciver with good speakers or on little pc speakers..

 

[Anonymous]

TechMad:
As said before, Win 7 does not slow down over time any more than any other OS.

But macs ARE expensive and at the top-end cant compete with a pc for performance.

None of this is relevant to the original post.Win 7 does slow down more than any other OS. Now prove your assertion and I'll prove mine