| Computer Related > Macbook Pro buying questions | Computing Issues |
| Thread Author: movilogo | Replies: 19 |
|
New Thu 7 Apr 16 12:18
Macbook Pro buying questions - movilogo
|
|
Always been a Windows PC user but now fancy a Macbook. Main reason being the retina display - my DSLR photos look much better compared to my standard Windows laptop screen. Also the so called 10 hour battery life is an attraction. Initially thought of buying a Macbook Air but it doesn't offer retina display. Over the years most of common apps are now avilable in both Windows and Mac so that is not a big deal and I understand I can run Bootcamp Windows 7 if needed. However, my questions are: 1. SSD drive seems small capacity compared to Windows laptops. There is £200 difference between 256 GB and 512 GB SSD. Is it a good alternative to use high capacity (e.g. 128/256 GB) SDXC card as a permanent storage plugged in to the MacBook? 2. Is Libre Office good enough and compatible with Microsoft Office 2007? My Word, Excel , Power Point documents don't have fancy formatting or macros (though I have some 100+ pages Word documents with diagrams). Also, can I open Access 2000 mdb files with Libre Office? 3. Are there any aspects of Macbook ownership which frustrate you after coming from Windows background? PS: Only Apple product I have ever owned was an iPad 1 which is now paperweight (well, it still works but now stuck with iOS 4.3). As I jailbroke it, never bothered to update to iOS 5. |
|
New Thu 7 Apr 16 12:48
Macbook Pro buying questions - smokie
|
| I can't add much to anything here except the suggestion to put Libre Office on your PC and satisfy yourself that it works well enough. I reckon it would. |
|
New Thu 7 Apr 16 14:02
Macbook Pro buying questions - Falkirk Bairn
|
|
How old is your PC? Windows PCs have better screens & graphics that was the case say 5 years ago. Take a look at some new laptops and form your own opinion. Looked at Macbook but screens are too small for me Getting used to a Macbook will take time - the older you are the longer it takes! |
|
New Thu 7 Apr 16 14:24
Macbook Pro buying questions - Bromptonaut
|
|
Miss B has just bought what I think is a Macbook Pro, version with largest available SSD. She wanted something as light as possible as she's doing a Master's degree and found her Toshiba laptop too much space/weight in her backpack to/from Uni. Her boyfriend comes from a Mac family so not too surprising she's gone that way. AFAIK she's got MS Office on it - probably a student deal. She had it at home last weekend. Certainly a lovely bit of kit and feels as though it's milled from a solid Aluminium ingot. Only saw it used for Facetime which, as ever is much better than Skype, but not sure what other advantages it has and whether they justify the eye watering cost. |
|
New Thu 7 Apr 16 15:05
Macbook Pro buying questions - nice but dim
|
| Have you considered a MS Surface Pro as a alternative. Full HD screen, SSD?? |
|
New Thu 7 Apr 16 15:10
Macbook Pro buying questions - rtj70
|
|
I have a Macbook Pro 1.3" with the Retina display. The quality of images on that are absolutely great and it's really sharp. It won't by default run at the native resolution of 2560 x 1600 because the display is too small. It is easily done. Normally I run mine at 1440 x 900 with the display making GUI elements effectively bigger but the photo/video editing parts of the GUI take advantage of the higher number of pixels. My MBP has only 256GB which as a main computer would be a bit limiting I think and Apple as you know want a lot more money for the 512GB versions. You don't actually say if it's the 13 or 15 inch Macbook Pro you're looking at. As a portable device I think the 13" one is the better size. The battery life can be very good. I could use it all day without plugging it in. Now your questions: - Bootcamp - I'm sure I read somewhere they'd removed support for Windows 7 in bootcamp on OS X El Capitan. Could be wrong. I'd consider using Oracle VM or VMware Fusion. - SSD drive - you can get small/shallow SD Card adapters that take a Micro SD card. It sits flush with the side of the Macbook. Unlike Windows laptops I've used, the SD card slot on the side of a Macbook is shallow and the full size card will stick out. It doesn't have a spring loaded mechanism to insert the entire card. - Libre Office is probably good enough. You might find you can get hold of a copy of Office for the Mac very cheap through work. I got it for £9.99. I've not used Libre Office but I doubt it will handle Access 2000 MDB directly - you could open the database but any reports, queries, forms, etc. would need recreating. Then again Office 2016 (or 2011) doesn't have Access either. - Any aspects that frustrate? No. But I know my wife dislikes Apple Macs. Now the left field solution - you want a better display to edit photos.... so why not get a new monitor and connect to the current laptop? Although I have the Macbook Pro, I don't use it as my main machine as such. And when I did I plugged it into a 25" Dell 2560x1440 Ultrasharp monitor and I used a Apple keyboard and a mouse. This Dell display is excellent. My main machine for ages was an iMac. I got that in 2009 but started to find the display a little limiting. Back then it's location meant I couldn't get the bigger iMac so stuck with a 20" 1650 x 1050 display. There are some (expensive) Windows laptops with good screens as well these days. |
|
New Fri 8 Apr 16 13:46
Macbook Pro buying questions - Stuartli
|
|
>> I have a Macbook Pro 1.3" with the Retina display. The quality of images on that are absolutely great and it's really sharp. It won't by default run at the native resolution of 2560 x 1600 because the display is too small. >> Hardly surprising..:-) :-) |
|
New Thu 7 Apr 16 21:24
Macbook Pro buying questions - Zero
|
|
>> 1. SSD drive seems small capacity compared to Windows laptops. There is £200 difference between >> 256 GB and 512 GB SSD. Is it a good alternative to use high capacity >> (e.g. 128/256 GB) SDXC card as a permanent storage plugged in to the MacBook? I have a 128GB Macbook Air. I mange most of the time with that smallish disk, its a laptop after all you dont need to carry all your data around with you these days. Mac programs consume far less disk space than windows one. It mounts external disks and usb thumb drives well. >> 2. Is Libre Office good enough and compatible with Microsoft Office 2007? My Word, Excel >> , Power Point documents don't have fancy formatting or macros (though I have some 100+ >> pages Word documents with diagrams). Also, can I open Access 2000 mdb files with Libre >> Office? It will mostly work ok with office 2007 files, you will come across some minor formatting errors on docs and spreadsheets from time to time. >> 3. Are there any aspects of Macbook ownership which frustrate you after coming from Windows >> background? no - none. It takes a bit of getting used to, as its different, but I am more than happy with it and they are fantastically well made. Mind i do have an Android Phone and Tablet, A linux Laptop, the Macbook air and a Windows server! Last edited by: Zero on Thu 7 Apr 16 at 21:25
|
|
New Fri 8 Apr 16 00:12
Macbook Pro buying questions - smokie
|
| I have no data on my C drive (except the unavoidable) so Windows and (quite a lot of) programs currently come in at 47Gb. That includes swap files and hibernation files IIRC. As Zero says, the trick is to not carry all your data with you. That's what the cloud is for nowadays. |
|
New Sat 9 Apr 16 09:56
Macbook Pro buying questions - movilogo
|
|
Thanks - some good advice here. I do need to play with Libre Office for sometime. Look at my file sizes and expected growth, I think minimum disk size I need is 512 GB. I use cloud only for back up and if I buy a MacBook, I'd be using it differently from Windows laptops e.g. I'll be carrying it a lot more on road/flight and where cloud access won't be available. Regarding usability, I think that is something not I can predict unless I start using it. I have used Macbook only occasionally (e.g. friends' macs). Now I don't want to create a Mac vs Windows debate but contrary to popular believe, I didn't find Mac easier to use than Windows - just different. E.g. the close/min/max button on Mac is on left upper corner. In Windows, it is right upper corner. I find it more intuitive to click on right hand side being a right handed person holding mouse on right hand. This is one reason why I hated Ubuntu's Unity interface. But then in Ubuntu you can fix it with a different flavour like Ubuntu Mint etc. Does Mac OS similar kind of customization (as it is still Unix under the bonnet)? |
|
New Sat 9 Apr 16 11:35
Macbook Pro buying questions - zippy
|
|
>>E.g. the close/min/max button on Mac is on left upper corner. In Windows, it is right upper corner. I find it more intuitive to click on right hand side being a right handed person holding mouse on right hand. I am left handed and find the icons on the right the more obvious location. Furthermore, the Windows icons are pictographs showing the actions - e.g. the bar minimises the window, the box maximises the window and the x closes the window. If I recall correctly the Mac uses three colours which are not as intuitive. |
|
New Sat 9 Apr 16 12:12
Macbook Pro buying questions - R.P.
|
|
Between us we have four MacBooks. My original 15" MacBook is too good to junk, is now running the latest OS - it is a bit clunky and heavy these days, but runs the net well - When I fire it up I'm still amazed at the non-retina screen quality. Longest lasting computer I've ever owned in reliability and quality terms excellent sound quality as well. I treated myself to a 2011 12" Retina and that is still a 100% reliable. Not upgraded the OS as I don't want the successor to Apple's excellent iPhoto - which is an excellent cataloguing and editing tool. Sound quality not as good as the old one (truth be told). I have a MacBook air..(2014 model)....the screen failed on this last Christmas - I dropped it off at John Lewis in Birmingham on the 10th December and it was back by courier with a proper Apple fix a week later - excellent service. My wife bought a Dell Windows machine in 2013 - what a load of pooh. Crap operating system that was doing things that Windows was doing 20 years ago. Absolute rubbish - she ended up giving it away and replacing it with 2015 Pro. She's not complained about it since she had it. I am an Apple person. All these link to their respective phones seamlessly, everything is backed up to a Time Machine. None of the Macs like the BT router and need patience to connect - apparently that's a BT thing specific to the Home Hub 5. They are easy to use. I actually have Office 2008 on two of them, never had a problem. |
|
New Sat 9 Apr 16 21:40
Macbook Pro buying questions - rtj70
|
|
>> If I recall correctly the Mac uses three colours which are not as intuitive. They also changed some of the actions these perform in more recent updates of OS X. It is possible to revert. If you hover over the small coloured icons they display a little pictogram. Red being X for close. Yellow being _ for minimise. It's the green one that changed. Green now makes it full screen rather than maximising. The action for the green icon can be changed permanently or overriden by pressing the ALT key. If movilogo uses Access a lot then he's either going to use Bootcamp a lot and just run Windows or have to use VMware Fusion/Parallels/Oracle VM to run a VM of a Windows box. The Access window could appear on the desktop alongside OS X windows if you use VMware or Parallels. |
|
New Mon 11 Apr 16 10:43
Macbook Pro buying questions - R.P.
|
| Don't understand what's not intuitive about red green and amber ! :-) |
|
New Tue 12 Apr 16 08:01
Macbook Pro buying questions - Zero
|
|
>> Does Mac OS similar kind of customization (as it is still Unix under the bonnet)? No. You should get a windows tablet., you are clearly looking for reasons not to switch. |
|
New Tue 19 Apr 16 16:01
Macbook Pro buying questions - rtj70
|
|
There's a new slightly improved Macbook as of today. Lower resolution/smaller screen than the smaller Macbook Pro. All Macbook Airs now come with 8GB RAM minimum. Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 19 Apr 16 at 16:01
|
|
New Wed 20 Apr 16 11:20
Macbook Pro buying questions - movilogo
|
|
The new Macbook still comes with just one USB-C port and nothing else! So effectively iPad + keyboard. |
|
New Wed 20 Apr 16 11:31
Macbook Pro buying questions - rtj70
|
|
Not quite. Because USB-C also carries Thunderbolt and Displayport for starters. You do need an external USB-C hub to plug in other devices which then is not elegant. And you can do way more than with an iPad plus keyboard/mouse on a Mac. But I think reducing the size to such an extent to have a single USB-C port is too far. Maybe a few USB-C ports at least. I suppose when you're using the Macbook as a portable device the lack of ports is not an issue. It might be a lot smaller than the Macbook Pro 13 inch, but that comes with 3 USB3 ports, two Thunderbolt/Displayport, SD Card, HDMI and power (which uses the near mag-safe connector). |
|
New Wed 20 Apr 16 11:39
Macbook Pro buying questions - movilogo
|
|
12 inch screen is fine for me. But if I am spending ££££ for a laptop, I'd want something more. At least adding an SD card slot would have been a decent offering. Most people are upset with this fact in MacRumors forum and underwhelmed by new Macbook. 13 inch Macbook Air is a again a good offering but it doesn't come with retina screen. In the meantime I did some research with Libre Office. While it seems easy to migrate from Word, Excel, Power Point but it is a non starter for Access. So if I move to Macbook I must run Windows as well (whether using bootcamp or virtual servers that's a different question). I don't need Macbook per se, but when I look for Windows laptop prices with retina display, ultra light and long battery life, the price hovers in Macbook region - so why not a Macbook then ? |
|
New Wed 20 Apr 16 11:52
Macbook Pro buying questions - rtj70
|
|
As I said earlier in the thread, if you need Access then you need Windows. I agree about the price of a Mac and Windows laptop for similar spec is around the same. And I like Mac's so I'd go down the Mac route. If you want to run Access then I'd go down the virtual machine route. The free option is Oracle VM but VMware Fusion or Parallels let you run a Windows app on the Mac desktop (hiding Windows) so it sits alongside other apps. You can cut and paste between the virtualised Windows machine and Mac applications. If you go down the VM route you will need at least 8GB RAM because you're running Windows and OS X. Bootcamp would be a faff if you ask me. You might think running Windows via Bootcamp all the time is the way to go - so you get the Mac hardware but use it as a Windows machine. But I understand there can be issues with older versions of Windows with how the windows and icons scale on high resolution displays. And power management isn't going to be as good either. The Mac is clever in how the Retina displays are rendered. When emulating lower resolutions, icons, GUI elements, etc are rendered larger (could be four times the pixels) but anything like a video or image in apps written properly are using the full resolution. So in an image editing app, you get the benefit of high resolution for the image itself but the GUI elements are not tiny. Of course I can run the 13" screen as 2560x1600 and you'll struggle to read text! |
Forum Version 3.0 - By Khoosys
Car4play Forum
