How to Buy a Mac

bfbf- Sean's iBook = 2003-2006
- At Mac World in January, 2006, Apple Computer annouced the switch to Intel chips.

- PowerPC chips were topped at a Speed where it was no longer able to handle computing tasks.

- How to Purchase Your Next Mac - What do you want to do with your computer?

- If you just want to check email, browse the internet, and watch a occasional DVD, the Mac Mini would be a good choose.
- The Mac Mini is just the computer, you'll need to provide your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

- Intel's Core Solo is a single-core CPU, while the Core Duo is a dual-core CPU.

- See episode 25 for a dual-core demo.

- Intergrated graphics are built right onto the motherboard, and are less capable than a discrete graphics component.

- For the intermediate level and wants decent performance, the iMac is the answer.

- Equal to a Windows Media Center PC.

- Front Row software .

- The iMac comes in 17-inch / 1.83GHz and 20-inch / 2GHz models, as well as custom-configured variations.

- Looking for a portable Mac solution, choose the MacBookPro or the MacBook

- MacBook comes in both black and white.

- For the Black MacBook you pay a premium.

- Black MacBook also includes an extra 20GB of hard drive space.

- $150 is a small price to pay to make your Mac look more like a garden variety Windows machine.

- The MacBook and the MacBookPro both use the Intel Core Duo processor chips.

- The reason the MacBookPro is more expensive is the discrete graphics component and the larger screen.

- This pays off for professional applications where fast graphics are key, but basic tasks are just as fast on the regular MacBook.

- To Run Windows XP on your Intel Mac, you can install the BootCamp application.

- OnMac.Net shows another way to run Windows on Mac, but it's more involved setup than BootCamp.

- There's a program called Parallels, which runs Windows inside a window, while still in MacOS.

- Rosetta is the program Intel Macs use to translate the code designed to run on older G4 and G5 processors.

- Adobe Photoshop uses Rosetta at the present time.

- See Lab Rats at MacWorld 2006 in episodes 11.1 and 11.2.

- Synthetic benchmarks test CPU performance using a method most real users will never approximate.

- Majority of the applications run 2x faster than the PowerPC macs. There are a few that actully run 5x faster.

- HandBrake:
- multi-threaded DVD convertor / ripper.
- 5x faster than on the PowerPC processor.