making the move to Mac

hey lads and lassies,

So i have a bunch of banked hours at work and i'm able to purchase a mac through the company (instead of getting it paid through payroll, to save on taxes). I'm interested in buying a mac to run traktor scratch pro, timecode, A8 and a controller or two.

The specs for the one i'm looking at are as follows:

15-inch: 2.53GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB Memory
250GB hard drive

I know of problems with final scratch running on macs with intel processors, how does traktor run with them?

I'm sure that this is more than enough machine to run traktor, but are there any options/upgrades i should think about getting?

Thanks!!

I'm going to treat myself to a mac as soon as iv finished my nvq3!

So I would equaly like to see peoples views.

love TPro on my MBP (specs in sig). running on 2gb, never had any crashes or freezes in its 8 month history. so you should be fine. i have a 180gb HDD, it's pretty filled already. i'd recommend an external (if you don't already have one), or HDD upgrade if possible. can't have enough storage.

hey

thats the new 15" macbook pro? I have the 13" inch version that I bought a month or two ago, from the same range the newest updates, running with Traktor scratch pro, Audio 8 DJ and a VCI, and it runs flawlessly. I haven't needed optimization or anything, right out the box i have the latency down to 5.5ms and it never even peaks at more than 5 or 10% on the processor meter even with 4 tracks and effects going. Have also pushed the latency even smaller than that before and the sound was still great but frankly there is no need 5.5 is so small to be completely unnoticeable to me.

highly recommended :D

and yeah only possible upgrade would be more HDD space as said you can never have enough, but 250 will be more than plenty to get started and down the line if you end up with silly amount of songs you could upgrade. I have nearly 14,000 songs in min and it only sits at about 70 gigs for the music plus whatever for the system (10 or whatever would need to switch it on and check for exact amount).

k

yeah as far as latency, it's amazing how low you can go. on my firebox i could go down to 2.x with flawless audio. firebox was an amazing soundcard as well, can't give all the credit to the mac i suppose, but still :P

Went mac... Never looking back! ;)

It all seems to tie together more fluently.

I'm an old-skool turn-table-guy looking into the new stuff, and learning before I buy, but, I can speak to you about mac like this:

You'll have such a flawless experience...but you won't notice it at first. When you use a friend's PC in a few months, you'll start pulling your hair out.

Also, when you get your NEXT mac, and you transfer your entire life over in a few hours with two clicks...and then sell your first mac for 75% of what you bought it for, then, you'll be convinced.

If I were you, and if you dig 13" machines, I'd score one of these 899$ aluminum macbooks...and then get a solid-state drive. That, or, you can get the new MBP-13 with built-in-SSD and SD slot for 1500$.

This is the refurb site: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/hom...ac?mco=MTE3NjY (its the main store page, then look down at the bottom-left "Special Deals". I have had 4 refurbs now in a row, and the only difference is you don't get a cool "retail" box, you get a return-from-service-coffin box. I always get the extended warranty, then I keep my machine for year+ and sell it to upgrade and haven't gotten less than 77%.

Right now I'm on the MBP-17 that was the last of the pre-unibody and I love it. I still run XP both in bootcamp mode (direct boot) and under VMWare when needed.

Good luck!

G.

yeah

the whole PC vs Mac thing makes me laugh and sad in equal measure. As far as I am concerned, they're just tools to fulfill a need and you pick the right tool for the right job.

For a day to day family type machine, typing letters, checking emails, looking at the Net playing games, etc etc. a pc gives you most flexibility in terms of software choices prices, configurations and options, so to me that's the right tool for that job.

But if you need a more professional machine for a specific task like DJing, music production, graphic design, video editing etc etc then the Mac's more stable platform, with better hardware and software integration (shown by the latency thing as an example) and the fact that because of that its less prone to crash, then its worth that extra money and it makes it the right tool for that job.

Some people may have their own ideas about which ones fill their particular needs and fit in with their personal way of working, and they're perfectly entitled to do, but they shouldn't be trying to ram it down my throat. Shouldn't have to be such a hate filled and dividing thing, they're just tools to get a job done.

Like a car, you can pick either a van, race car or a family saloon depending on what need it is being bought to fulfill.

k

I agree with everything you said, horses for courses.

I have to tell you though, I used to manage the extended family's PC's and then moved just myself to mac. The funny thing is that I didn't have to "convince anyone" to move to the mac...3 years later, no PC's.

Now, I don't have to "manage" anything. I've answered one question this year that I can remember: "What happens when my time machine gets full?" (Nothing important)

The time machine feature alone has saved my bacon 10-times-10.

Check out the Apple Care card...one time my apple blew up, and I got it back the next day with a new (empty) hard drive. I plugged in my time machine drive, and 7 hours later...I was right back where I was, minus about 1 hour of work. Whoa.

(clarification: when you get the Apple Care Card, you can make service appts the same day while regular folk can't, and also you go to the front of the repair line, either at the store, or at the depot. Its for people that depend on their macs for business, etc.)

G.