re: MacBook buying advice?

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Dear Buzap,

I have to confess that I took the plunge a few months ago and bought the 
MacBook Pro
and I've been seriously dissilusioned by the purchase since I got it.

The reason I chose it over the MacBook was that it had the better 
graphics card on it
and I wanted to do live video (and Max/MSP/Jitter manipulation of said 
video).

Unfortunately,   Apple just holds you up for $800 of ransome for the 
video card
(which you can buy an equivalent for $200 on any PC).

Additionally,  less than six months after the purchase,   the OS X side 
of my machine
has completely crashed so that I can't boot into it and I"m having 
bizarre problems on the WIN XP
side of the machine as well............it periodically shows a blue 
screen of death in the middle of
streaming video that goes away if you push the space bar (something I"ve 
never seen before).

After getting the beast for $3,200 I'm now told by all my knowledgeable 
MacBook Pro owning friends
that I'd be a fool not to buy the additional $400 of extended warranty 
for the computer.
That brings the purchase price up to $3600.

Thinking back on it,  I could have bought two Macbooks (one for video 
and one for audio) and had enough money
left over to buy a video projector,   or I could have bought 2 decent 
WIN XP laptops (with nice video cards),
a nice video projector and had $600 bucks left in my pocket.

For me,  the Macbook Pro was a ripoff and I'd highly encourage you to 
buy the Macbook instead.

The old ones have firewire but the new ones, inexplicably,  don't 
support it (another Apple ruse to get you to
buy the inflated MacBook Pro.

Personally,  I've heard and seem to be finding that the USB 2.0 and the 
FIREWIRE are equally fast (though I have not
tried the FIREWIRE 800 protocal so I can't say for sure).

If you want firewire, get the old Macbook  in the white or black (more 
money for a black case................fie on Apple)
If not, I think the new Macbooks that are aluminum have a faster 
processor (though you should double check).

I know my opinions are not popular with the Mac owning members of this 
list but I've tried both and I'm wishing
I'd never bought my Macbook Pro.   It's vastly overpriced imho.    I 
also don't use Mac music software so that biases
me a bunch.   Logic users would probably heavily disagree.    But VST 
production, including freeware and shareware
is still running about 20-1 (WIN vs. OSX).   So much of the cool new 
things being created are in that world, imnsho.

Rick Walker