MacBook Buying Advice (1 Viewer)

Ever since buying my iMac last year, a little voice has been nagging in the back of my mind wanting me to change my windows laptop to a MacBook. This has gotten stronger now that I'm on the road more and will continue to be for the next year.

I've been looking at the new Macbooks trying to figure out what the best option would be. My main problem is that I've got a Sony DV camcorder which needs firewire to transfer the video. I also like my current laptop's portable size at 12"

I'm not a gamer so would be using the laptop for office stuff (Mac Office 2008), some photo work (Aperture and Photoshop) and some video work (nothing too intense, just basic holiday footage editing).

I was looking at the new MBP which is the only new machine with firewire, but they really are too expsensive for me, and I'm not sure about the portablility of a 15" screen for daily travel.

Which leaves me with the "old style" white MacBook.

The price of the white MacBook is attractive, even if I max the hard drive. The Apple Ram is expensive, but I'm assuming I can upgrade the RAM using third party Ram eg Crucial which is much cheaper (£42 for 4Gb vs £147 at Apple, or £24 vs £42 for 2Gb). I don't really fancy upgrading the hard drive myself, at least not on a brand new machine.

It ticks all the boxes (size and firewire), but are the Intel graphics up to the job of handling basic video editing and Aperture work?

The equivalent MacBook Pro with 2.4 chip (vs 2.1 chip in the MB) is nearly twice the price at £1369, although interestingly the price of Apple Ram for the MBP is very similar to Crucial's pricing.

I just have this niggle that if I buy the white MacBook, I'm buying "old" or "out of date" technology.

The old MacBooks are fine for mere basic video editing, but I wouldn't try running Aperture on one. It drags.

You're buying less speed, a little less video quality. It still
runs the same system as the new Macbook. Buying ram from Apple is self abuse IMO.
Out Of Date? No

I am a MBP user, but have lots of co-workers who under my
advice bought their first Macbook because it was less expensive
than the MBP.

All of them are very happy. Not sure how well it handles video
editing, but as suggested above, I would think basic editing is fine
as long as you bump up the ram a bit since most graphic software
will eat resources.

Thanks for the advice. I do like Aperture, but could handle iPhoto until I get back to the desktop. Is it the Ram or the graphics that's the limiting factor with Aperture on a MacBook?