Looking at possibly getting a macbook. I have read a lot recently about the macbook and macbook pro, I know the pro has an aluminium unibody case and the standard white macbook is white plastic. But what are the other differences, they are both unibody cases from what I can see and both now have LED backlit screens.

Although the battery is builtin on the current models, how easy is it to upgrade both the ram and HDD. I can get a either a base level macbook pro with 2GB and small HDD or for slightly less get a 2GB Macbook with 250GB HDD.

Help, all things mac are alien to me.

I've a macbook and imac and love them both to bits. They are very easy (but costly) to upgrade yourself, they all come with full instructions on how to change either and doing so doesn't invalidate the warranty.

In all honesty If you can get a macbook pro cheaper than a macbook I would go with the pro, you don't actually need to have that much ram to run a mac, unless you will be using it for more professional purposes or intend to run lots of resource intensive windows programs through boot camp

I am now the owner of a shiney macbook pro, got the one that comes with 4GB ram and 250GB hdd. First thing I did was replace the 250GB HDD wth a 500GB one, then reinstall OSX and the applications DVD.

Now working out what to do next, already have it on the wireless network. Trying to install google earth now.

Do I need any AV software with OSX Snow Leopard?

I have now installed a legit copy of Vista Ultimate 64 bit using bootcamp, but have no sound so need to sort that out.

If your going to use Vista on the net them yes,otherwise no need.

Did you install the drivers from the OSX disc after you installed Vista?

You need to install the drivers for Vista off this disc.

Why Vista?

Why Vista?

I have a spare license thats fully legit, I use Windows 7 on all my other pc's but dont have a spare license.

I did install the drivers from the OSX disk, and everything works, display, lan, wireless etc. just no audio.

I have installed AV into windows vista, but will not bother with OSX after reading the interweb.

I am now importing 000's of correctly tagged mp3's into itunes (130GB's worth).

Will be interested to hear how you get on with OSX..

Have you got previous mac experience?

No previous mac experience at all,

In the 36 hours I have used it, I have managed to work out how it all works and customise it all to my preferences. It really is easy to use, and getting Vista onto it was also a breeze as OSX guides you through it all.

All my music has been imported into ITunes without a hitch from the main windows server at home, pictures etc. all copied over, and loads of software now installed. Software installation is a breeze, open the dmg file and run the install. or as is the case with google earth just drag and drop into the applications folder.

I do have one major issue though, and it seems half the world and his dog have the same issue. Constant wireless dropouts whilst in OSX, you are still connected to your wireless with max signal but it hangs and the only way to get it going again is disable wireless and enable it again. Once fixed it will go for about 1/2hr before getting stuck again. Its not the wireless adapter in the mac, or the router as the thing stays connected permanently when using Vista so its a driver issue in OSX 10.6. Reading the various forums its been an issue since the release of Snow Leopard and as yet no fix is coming.

Snow Leopard is unix based, so if you so desire you can drop to a unix shell and run all your favorite commands, ie. df -k, who -b, finger and so on.

I've not had the wireless issue on my MacBook Pro (early 2009), but my boss has it on his Macbook (early 2008). If I ever get the 2007 Macbook Pro model back (loaned it to my ex... Long story) I'll upgrade it to Snow Leopard and check

I've also discovered that some of the unix commands don't work quite the same as I'm used to in Solaris, HP-UX and Linux... Oh well, c'est la vie

Edited 16 May, 201016 yr by Raglits

No previous mac experience at all,

In the 36 hours I have used it, I have managed to work out how it all works and customise it all to my preferences. It really is easy to use, and getting Vista onto it was also a breeze as OSX guides you through it all.

All my music has been imported into ITunes without a hitch from the main windows server at home, pictures etc. all copied over, and loads of software now installed. Software installation is a breeze, open the dmg file and run the install. or as is the case with google earth just drag and drop into the applications folder.

I do have one major issue though, and it seems half the world and his dog have the same issue. Constant wireless dropouts whilst in OSX, you are still connected to your wireless with max signal but it hangs and the only way to get it going again is disable wireless and enable it again. Once fixed it will go for about 1/2hr before getting stuck again. Its not the wireless adapter in the mac, or the router as the thing stays connected permanently when using Vista so its a driver issue in OSX 10.6. Reading the various forums its been an issue since the release of Snow Leopard and as yet no fix is coming.

Snow Leopard is unix based, so if you so desire you can drop to a unix shell and run all your favorite commands, ie. df -k, who -b, finger and so on.

I had the same problem when i first got my Macbook.

I did managed to fix the problem after installing the latest router firmware and changing the router channel and haven't had any problems since.(This was running Leopard at the time)

Not had any problems since upgrading to SL.

OS-X is based on BSD

OS-X is based on BSD

BSD is a Unix variant and Mac OS 10.6 is certified by the Unix foundation

Erm not quite (I'm a *nix engineer)....... it was a comment about your line;

"I've also discovered that some of the unix commands don't work quite the same as I'm used to in Solaris, HP-UX and Linux... Oh well, c'est la vie "

BSD went down a seperate although quite parallel path to System-V based varients of "Unix" (such as solaris etc). And Linux isn't unix. It's posix complient but by no ways a "version" of unix.

Erm not quite (I'm a *nix engineer)....... it was a comment about your line;

"I've also discovered that some of the unix commands don't work quite the same as I'm used to in Solaris, HP-UX and Linux... Oh well, c'est la vie "

BSD went down a seperate although quite parallel path to System-V based varients of "Unix" (such as solaris etc). And Linux isn't unix. It's posix complient but by no ways a "version" of unix.

I am aware of that, but Linux is Unix-like enough for a lot of people to class it as such, even if this is incorrect. HP-UX didn't become System V based until 10.0 (System III before then), SunOS 4.x was BSD based but SunOS 5.x (what most people know as Solaris) is System V based

My comment was more meant as some of the flags are missing or different in some of the MacOS versions of the commands. I've got a FreeBSD vm somewhere so need to check and see if it's that same on there. It's been a while since I did Unix support...

This chart may help, or confuse.

I have a Macbook Pro with snow leopard and windows Xp installed...

My macbooks going really well. I ditched the bootcamped vista and now run the following in VMWare Fusion.

Windows Server 2008 R2 STD x64

Windows 7 Pro x64

Windows Vista Ultimate x64

Ubuntu 10.04

and oddly so I can learn a little about it, ESXi Server which seems odd as I am running a vmware host os in a VM.

My primary OS is now OSX and I only boot into the others when experimenting with vmware or playing games in vista. 3D games all play perfectly in Vista even in a VM.

I also have steam installed and downloaded the mac version of portal which was a free download for a few days.