MacBook vs MacBook Pro

[BobShawadiwadi]

We program good in Macbook Pro language.

Us software engineer do very quick. You pay many little dollar.

Call today, much pleases.

[OrangeHopper]

No, I'm a Mac man and have been since 1990. The Mac got even better when they went to OS X because, having Unix under the hood, I could do nearly all my operating system independent programming for the same box as my office related tasks.

Word and Excel may be desperately in need for a face lift - Ami Pro was much better than Word - but they work straight out of the tin and the upgrade costs have not been horrendous compared to others (Quark for example).

If Apple produce a spreadsheet I might be tempted to switch but for now I will stick with the real thing and not the pretenders.

[cojak]

What?????

I thought you were a Linux man!!

[OrangeHopper]

Sorry I can't be of any help on this one Cojak.

I've always used Microsoft Office and have found the upgrade costs acceptable.

[darmstadt]

I'd only go for the 2gb, but am still looking at a Lenovo (X model) as well.

Oh the choice to make...

The Lenovo T61P should be announced soon which will be dual core and 64 bit and Linux capable.

[ratewhore]

Currently a 15" Macbook Pro on the apple refurbished store reduced from £1699 to £999.

2.16GHz Intel Processor
1GB RAM
100GB HDD
airport wifi, bluetooth, blah, blah

Bargain...

[Back In Business]

Parallels - allows concurrent running with various versions of Windows or Linux. 2 GB RAM recommended for the Parallels option, apparently.

Slightly OT: has anyone used Parallels Workstation on Windows? How does it compare to VMWare? Is it anywhere near as good as it is on Mac?

[cojak]

I'd only go for the 2gb, but am still looking at a Lenovo (X model) as well.

Oh the choice to make...

[Sysman]

(also I've heard that Openoffice 2 is not compatible with Macbook Pros, not sure if this is true).

I don't thik that's true at all. If anything, MS Office is the one which hasn't got an Intel binary yet, so needs to run under the Rosetta PPC emulation.

OO does need X11 installing, but there is also a Mac look and feel version of OO called NeoOffice. Definitely memory hungry and a bit sluggish in comparison, but better font handling.

Go for plenty of RAM, whichever model you get. If you need Windows as well, have a look at:

Boot Camp - allows dual booting with XP SP2

or
Parallels - allows concurrent running with various versions of Windows or Linux. 2 GB RAM recommended for the Parallels option, apparently.

[Cowboy Bob]

Yeah, I've got a MacBook not a MacBook Pro. The main difference is that the graphics card in the regular is not as good as in the pro. To be honest, it would only really make a difference if you were either into video editing or if you were addicted to World Of Warcraft. For general programming the regular MacBook has a Core 2 Duo and I've got 2Gb RAM in mine and it's speedy enough for anything I need to do with it.

As for OO, I must confess that I just went out and bought MS Office. You'd probably want http://www.neooffice.org anyway, unless you want to run the regular one inside X11.

[interested]

Go to www.apple.com/uk/thestore - then click on Macbook or Macbook Pro and then there's a 'compare specs' button, then 'complete specs'.

As far as I can see the differences are:

Macbook only goes up to a 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo with a 2MB L2 cache vs 2.33GHz with 4MB L2 cache

Macbook has a max of 2GB RAM vs 3GB for MBP

MB graphics card definitely is worse than MBP - this looks like the main difference between the two.

Other than that there isn't much difference - illuminated keyboard on the MBP

[cojak]

I've been looking at the 2 but think that the 15" Macbook Pro is physically a bit big (also I've heard that Openoffice 2 is not compatible with Macbook Pros, not sure if this is true).

The ordinary (smaller) Macbooks look ok but I suspect I'll be losing something if I go for them.

I've tried to google comparisons but they come out as "vs PC"'s.

Can you gents (Orange Hopper, Cowboy Bob, Monkey etc) please advise?

TIA.