[fccabs]

I need to replace my Sony Viao and i'm wondering about switching to a mac or the laptop equivalent. I've never used a mac but i've heard great things about them. I would use it mainly for internet, video editing, streaming video, photos, burning dvd s etc. So my question is: is it really worth the learning curve for changing from PC to mac. I'm not exactly computer literate so will i find a mac much harder??? Also I have external hard drives that have all my music, photos etc that have been formatted using the Viao so will they work a mac?? The website says they should in theory but has anyone here actually done it?? ANy advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

P.S I also video conference with my parents who use a PC. Will i still be able to do this???

[bearone2]

i know a few people who use both or mac exclusively and the only issue is learning the mac ins/outs like you're familiar with ms.

theory and real world are parallel lines

[MSM Hobbes]

fccbs - greatings and welcome. I've been a Mac proponent for years, and just acquired a 24" iMac and a MacBook laptop. Both are the first Apple products that either my woman or critters have ever touched - and they are loving every minute of them. They have used Wintels for years. Matter of fact while driving from MO to IN yesterday, the wife mentioned that she was surprised how easy it was to 'switch'. I did have her and the older child [13 yo boy] read a stack of "how-to's" and "welcomes" before I let them touch the machines. Basically so they would at least have the terms and ways somewhat familiar in their minds. There are a few differences, of course - and at times I will admit some slight frustration in trying to hunt exactly what I want to do to get to where I want to be, but,,, w/ everything there is a learning curve. The Apple OS is just beautiful, is quite stable, and the machines are robust. For your use, I'd recommend a BTO MacBook [C2D chip, 2-3 MB RAM, larger HD] - unless you are very seriously going to require high end 3-D graphics and the such. For about 50-60% of the cost, you get 90% of the power/capability of the MacBookPro. There are some other differences - dedicated video card, speaker size/placement, screen size, appearance/material of the case, etc.

Check these out:
http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_Beginner%27s_Guide
http://guides.macrumors.com/MacBook
http://guides.macrumors.com/MacBook_Pro
http://guides.macrumors.com/Buying_a...us_MacBook_Pro

Can save some $$$ by going educational or refurbished route on either version too. Highly recommend the refurbs. Keep in mind that these get a 100% going over, have same protection plan, and saves $$$.

Using the external HD - that will depend on how you formatted it.

[fccabs]

Thanks for the advice.

I currently use a program called DVD profiler to catalogue my dvd collection (approx 600 odd titles). According to their website there isn't a mac version of the program but it will run on a mac running virtual PC. I've had a quick search through the forums here and seen that in order to run windows xp programs on older macs you need to buy a copy of XP to install. Does anyone know if this is the same for a Pro book or does the computer come with this ability already installed????

[VegasACF]

Of course you have to have a copy of the OS to run software that is specific to an OS. Intel-based Macs offer the added capability of booting natively into Win XP, but you still have to have XP (and BootCamp) installed.

[MSM Hobbes]

A version similar to DVD Profiler for Mac could be:
http://www.collectorz.com/movie/dvd_profiler.php
http://www.humantrained.com/ or http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11896

or,,, if brave/capable, "create" your own version via:
http://automator.us/index.html or http://developer.apple.com/macosx/automator.html

[fccabs]

Originally Posted by VegasACF

Of course you have to have a copy of the OS to run software that is specific to an OS. Intel-based Macs offer the added capability of booting natively into Win XP, but you still have to have XP (and BootCamp) installed.

yeah i thought it was too good to be true. Doh!!!

[fccabs]

I've had one of my external hard drives checked and its formatted as NTFS. Will a mac read this or will i need to reformat???

Also one of the thing I use my PC a lot for is to video conference with my parents (im currently working abroad so its the only contact we have). I've been using Skype on the PC which according to the lastest MAC format magazine will work with a mac but i was wondering if I would be able to use the built in Webcam in a Macbook (pro) for a mac to PC conversation (My parents are on a pc) or if id have to get an external webcam. Does anyone know???

[VegasACF]

Skype's web page seems to think the iSight is a good choice, and says that one can "[m]ake video calls to anyone on Skype, no matter what kind of computer they are using."

I'd probably take their word for it.

[William5700]

I've had one of my external hard drives checked and its formatted as NTFS. Will a mac read this or will i need to reformat???

yes mac will read NTFS file systems as far as i know its read only

[fccabs]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I've more or less decided i will go for the 17" macbook pro but i have one more query re the rpm of the hard drive. The standard set up appears to be a 5400rpm 120gb hard drive with the option to expand to a 5400 rpm 160gb or reduce to 7200 rpm 100gb drives. I read on the apple website that the 7200 rpm is better so i was going to go for that as i don't need the extra space as i have my external hard drives. My question is, is there a noticeable difference in performance between the 7200 rpm and 5400 rpm hard drives ?? If I go for the 7200rpm i will have to buy direct from apple but if i stick with standard 5400 rpm then i can but from other suppliers which will be easier for me. Does anyone know which is best???

[VegasACF]

For audio and video, yes, a faster drive is better. Higher RPM means faster seek time, means fewer potential hiccups in the media.

That said:

If you're going to be using the internal drive for storage of files you're going to be working on then go with the 7200 RPM drive. If you're going to use your external drives for storage of files you're going to be working on, then I wouldn't worry about it.

I've got a couple of 10,000 RPM drives that I use for my audio work. They are screaming fast, and have never given me any issues whatsoever. But the drive that is inside the computer is just a standard 5400, I think.

[fccabs]

Thanks vegasACF

I will probably use the computers hard drive when editing video etc but once finished will probably store the finished video on one of the external drives. I currently have all my music files stored on an external drive thats only 5400 rpm. Will i get any benefit from the hard drive on the mac being 7200 rpm if i leave the files on the external 5400 rpm hard drive but play them through itunes on the computer???

[VegasACF]

Originally Posted by fccabs

Thanks vegasACF

No problem. Always happy to help.

Originally Posted by fccabs

I will probably use the computers hard drive when editing video etc but once finished will probably store the finished video on one of the external drives

If your external drives are faster and offer enough space to allow you room to work I would strongly suggest using them for your storage both during editing and for playback. I have the benefit of using (an admittedly older) Pro Tools TDM system that does not use CPU processing power or file-based editing (for real-time effects such as reverb, compression, etc.), but uses processors on PCI cards for the necessary calculations. The benefit of this arrangement is that the CPU does little more than keeping the system and the host application running, while every other calculation is handled by processors on the PCI cards. The same funcionality is offered by extremely high-end video editing systems offered by Avid. I'm guessing, from your description, that this is not what you are using.

The upside of this is that CPUs are now fast enough to be able to do both (within limits). Video requires much more bandwidth than audio, so, while the CPU can do a great job of handling a fair amount of processing power for audio, you're going to reach the limits of the CPU with video much more quickly.

In what I imagine your situation is, the CPU is going to be handling all the processing. Any amount of processing you can take off your CPU in doing this will be greatly appreciated by your CPU (this goes for any platform, not just the Mac side of things). As such, if you are intent on using the internal drive for housing your files while working on them, a faster drive will leave you, and your computer, much better satisfied.

Another question is going to be the throughput of whatever bus to which you have the drives attached. You could have a drive that spins at the speed of light (apologies to Einstein--I'm being hypothetical here), but if you're using a bus that crawls along at the pace of a mule pulling a plow you're going to have problems with throughput, regardless of your CPU speed or added processing power offered by PCI cards and the like. FireWire is incredibly fast, and is well-suited to these tasks. USB 2 offer nearly the same results. In my set-up, I use an admittedly antiquated, but still more than sufficient, Ultrawide SCSI bus for my high-speed drives. Its throughput is great, the drives are insanely fast, the off-CPU processors can handle pretty much anything I through at them... But I'm doing audio. Video increases bandwidth use by about 1000%.

The end question you must answer is this: Am I going to have a bottleneck, and if so, where am I going to be most happy with that bottleneck occurring? If you've got a 7200 rpm drive and are using FireWire and your CPU is up to the tasks you give it (this is always a key concern, regardless of your system), you're going to be fine. I may be going far beyond what you're going to require, in this response, and, if so, I apologize, but you may want to make note of it for the future. You may be doing completely file-based editing, and when that is the case you'll find the CPU is your biggest bottleneck. You'll have to wait for the CPU to process the effects you're wanting, regardless of the throughput of your drive bus. If you're trying to use real-time effects processing, you could find a bottleneck at any point in the chain, even with the latest, greatest gear.

Whatever your end decision, it is likely you'll eventually run into its limitations. And you, like I, and everyone else that works in these intermingled fields, will find work-arounds. Again, my world is (largely) concerned with audio, not video. And so I have to draw my analogies therefrom. While I did much work for broadcast and cable TV networks, my work was in the audio portion of those media. But it is worth keeping in mind that for much of the Beatles' recording lifetime George Martin had what is the equivalent of today's four-track recorder (though the difference in fidelity between the wide tapes he used and cassettes that are used today in those machines is astronomical) to work with. He invented ways of making this work for his (and their) purposes. The details of this will not serve you any real purpose, so I'll forgo an explanation. But the message is important: Know the limitations of the equipment you're using, know (or create) work-arounds to make what you have do the job.

I could go on for hours about this, but I fear I'll lose your attention, so I'll stop... For now...

Originally Posted by fccabs

Will i get any benefit from the hard drive on the mac being 7200 rpm if i leave the files on the external 5400 rpm hard drive but play them through itunes on the computer???

What is the purpose of these audio files? Is it solely for listening pleasure? Or will these files be used in your video editing pursuits? If the former, you'll not see enough benefit to warrant the added expense. If the latter, you should strongly consider the faster drive.

I hope this helps. I hope this doesn't muddy the waters for you. But understand that there is no single answer to your situation. Were I you, and this were how I intended to make my living, I would invest (even to the point of taking loans, if need be) in the best I could possibly afford and hope to pay off through the fruits of my labors. If it means you have to wait an extra week, month, year to get what you're wanting, so be it. Rome was not built in a day. And you'll be far better served by getting as much as you possibly can now than by ruing having not done so when you could have.