This weekend I ventured down to Waterford to visit some friends, I was accompanied by my Macbook. Chris has being contemplating splashing out on either a Macbook or Macbook Pro as a direct replacement for his laptop. One of his colleagues in work uses a Macbook Pro and he has fallen for its charms. My Macbook is the one with the lowest spec of the range and he had concerns as to whether it is powerful enough to use for development purposes, i.e for Photoshop and all that lark.
Mac enthusiasts harp on about the ease at which you can convert a Windows user to Mac by simply allowing them to explore a Mac’s features. If you give a toy to a kid and take it away they will probably end up in tears. Chris didn’t cry but he looked disturbed when Damien wanted to play with the Mac. Then Linda wanted to play with the Mac and Damien went into a huff. Larry got in on the action as well. He installed Vista on his Compaq on the same weekend as I visited; lets just say it didn’t go well. They were enthralled with the Mac. They each want one. It’s easy to fall in love with OS X. Damien has become so infatuated with the Macbook that it is on his hit list of purchases. He is trying to decide between it and a Dell lappy running Ubuntu. Get the Mac! We can be macBuddies. 
The good news for Chris’s issues with the Macbook’s spec is the recent development which sees Apple doubling the RAM on the least powerful Macbook. It now stands at 1GB. That’s more than enough for processor intensive applications such as Photoshop/Flash etc…
I’m going to upgrade the 512mb’s of RAM on my Macbook in the not to distant future. I have zero tolerance for egg timers or spinning rainbow circle things (I’m not sure what the egg timer is called on the Mac). Some boards.ie Mac users have recommended Crucial as a supplier of Mac hardware. It’s easy to know why based on these prices. Less than $90 for 2GB’s of RAM. I can’t believe it!
May 28th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Ya I did this on my iMac last week - it came with 512mb (2×256) so I stuck in 1gb of Crucial which was like 70euro from Komplett, or 200+ from Apple, and now I have 1.25gb and its flying… could only barely run Photoshop prior to that.
May 28th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Excellent stuff James, thanks for the tip. I didn’t realise Komplett are a reseller of the memory used in iMacs. Was it difficult to add the memory?
May 28th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
First I went to Apple Store and noted the type of memory that I needed, then I found it on Komplett (Crucial brand). It was easy to install - at the bottom of the iMac there is a little grill, and you unscrew the middle part with a small philips head - the hardest part was finding a screwdriver to fit. There are two slots for memory, and it is made to be easy to change since Apple’s intention is to allow you to upgrade, and as far as I know it does not void your warranty.
May 28th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
My iMac has a 1GB of RAM supplied but my Macbook only has 512MB so I’ll upgrade that guy.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:00 am
I bought some RAM from Crucial before and got it the next day. Just remember to order from the .co.uk website
May 29th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Good man. Didn’t know they had a .co.uk
May 29th, 2007 at 9:37 am
actually I seem to have lied.
http://www.crucial.com/uk/ - thats what I actually meant
June 6th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Tell your crazy, crazy Dell wanting friend that Ubuntu runs on a MacBook.
June 6th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Hi Paul, I told him all about the wonders of Boot Camp and Parallels. I would hope it’s just a cost thing which is the only stumbling block. And even at that the extra €250 difference or whatever is money well spent.
June 6th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
My Mac arrived today so I’m sure to be converted over the next few days or so!
Ubuntu is great but I wouldnt buy a Dell with it pre-installed.
June 29th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Cormac,
I did a very bad thing! I installed Vista on my iMac (I got in contact with Microsoft Ireland about the copy they promised in Croke Park, and it eventually arrived this morning)…
I really wanted to dislike Vista, having used Mac OSX for 18 months now, but it isn’t as bad as I thought, at least on first glance. I’ll have to use both OSes side by side for a while before making a final pronouncement!
Francis