Macbook Pro or Windows laptop?
Just about to buy one or the other as my old HP Pavillion died suddenly last week. I will be running a VCI-100 with an NI Audio 4. The difference in price will be around £300. Is the extra expense of the MBP worth it for working with Traktor?
Any thoughts appreciated as struggling to decide at the moment!
Cheers,
Scot.
I’ll probably get some flak for this, but frankly, go with the MBP just for the stability. My MacBook Pro has never had any troubles with audio, ever, apart from occasional audio skips in Ableton when I’m running too many programs at once and it can’t read the hard drive fast enough. Even then, the obvious solution is a dedicated mixing account. (I believe DJTT posted a guide about DJing on Macs not too long ago.)
Trust me, that extra £300 will be more than worth the stability and simplicity.
macbook pro FTW
Also the MacBook Pro probably looks better than whatever alternative you’re considering.
Definately moving towards the MBP…the more people i speak to the more good things i hear re latency, stability and lack of viruses. To be honest I’m just moving over to the VCI and NI audio 4 from Technics and a DJM 600 (still keeping the old set up for old times sake.)
Can you also give me a steer on hooking up the VCI-100 AND THE AUDIO 4 and the MBP/Laptop? The VCI has one usb, the audio 4 has one usb…am I going from the vci into the laptop by usb and also from the audio 4 into the laptop by usb? I tried this and was getting some serious sound popping/fuzzing etc. I havent been able to really look at it as the old laptop is dead so nothing to hook into…
Again, any thoughts appreciated and thanks for the MPB thoughts.
Scot.
I’m not too experienced with the Audio 4 and VCI but there shouldn’t be anything like that going on. Might have been your old computer. I’ve had my crappy MobilePre USB and MIDI controller plugged into my MBP 17 a couple of times with no issues.
Your probably right, Don’t think it was the usb cables as i got them here. I’ll work it out when i get my new kit. Thanks.
hey
yeah i’m not gonna go into the whole MBP vs Windows debate again there are already a good few threads on here if you do a search, but coming from an unbiased point of view the MBP is worth the extra.
For an everyday machine that you wanna do lots of things with then a PC IMO is the way to go, more choice of software, price, models, budget etc etc,
But when you just want a machine for one specific job (DJing, music recording, graphic design, video editing), and your income depends on it so you want it to be stable and just work out the box and every time after, then Apple’s very narrow choice and complete control of both the OS, the chipsets, and the marriage of the two, means that the extra money earns itself back.
k
Although ignore the lack of viruses thing, this has been a fabulous piece of marketing on Apple’s behalf. They like to insinuate that their computers are somehow magical and immune from viruses and hackers when its totally not the case.
There are JUST AS MANY flaws found these days on OSX as Windows, its just windows is very honest about publishing the details of all their patches and fixes while Apple is very obscure about them and plays them down as much as possible.
And on the virus front the only reasons there isn’t the same plethora of Trojans, viruses and worms is that up until now it simply hasn’t been worth writing one. Why spend all that time writing for a platform that had less than 5% of US and 3% of world market share, and this was mostly personal computers, when you could write one that would infect the other 97% including all of the worlds large businesses and get lots of juicy financial or other sensitive information you could make a profit on.
However now that Apple has a much bigger market share than ever before they’ll come. LOL i’d bet a month’s DJing wages easy that the first widespread Apple virus will hit next year, and because Apple users have been so smug and secure in the past and haven’t bothered to learn about anti-virus or what precautions to take, it’ll hit HARD!
k
Mbp!!!
Macbook Pro, i ended up smashing my last PC laptop up as it got so frustrating! Macbook all the way!
Honestly, I’ve used PCs my entire life. I’ve never had any big problems I didn’t cause (downloading viruses) and have seen just as many problems with my friends’ macs. The only things I can give mac is their customer service, but I bought an Asus and the three year warranty. The only issue I had was fixed right quick, all shipping paid for by them. And they don’t even make macs with the specs mine has.
And I’ve had no major issues. One minor one, and one that I can fix when I get around to it, but it’s not a Windows issue.
Oh, and I’m on Vista 64 and it’s stable as could be. shrug So yeah, it’s your 300 pounds..
I would definitely go with the MBP. I have a regular, 1 year old Macbook that has been absolutely phenomenal. I use logic, traktor, and torq on it and never have had any problems. I was one time even playing live using logic, my friend was running his bass guitar through garageband, and my other friend using frontstage, all on my MB and it ran perfectly with minimal latency. They are definitely the way to go, especially for music and media production.
As for the Audio 4, I use the simple audio 2. I run the audio 2 by usb with a high quality cord and plug my VCI-100 and trigger finger into a usb hub. I think the most important thing for sound is giving whatever audio interface you have a dedicated usb port.
Hope this helps, and honestly, get ready for parenthood because you macbook will become your baby…
I’m in the same boat as the original poster, except I just noticed a very interesting phenomenon…
A Macbook (not the pro mind you) is now priced the same as a similar spec’d Dell computer (the XPS 13). Other than the Macbook having a 2.13ghz dual core vs. the Dell’s 2.5ghz processor and a 5400 RPM drive instead of a 7200 RPM, they are almost identical. If you max out the RAM on both of them to 4 gigs, they are both exactly $1149. So the argument for me now has nothing to do with cost, making the decision even harder. It looks like the majority of people here are voting for the Macbook though.
With the price being the same, is there any other reason I’m not thinking of to go with a PC over a Mac?
the age old mac or pc issue…
i use macs at work (and love them) but have a pc laptop at home (never had an issue with it)
gotta say i much prefer the mac side of things, everything seems alot more stable and i love the operating system.
my main issue would be using vst plugins, not sure this would even be a consideration for you. i use ableton for production and i have alot of nice plugins i have bought over the years, and none of them are mac compatible. other than that id say go with mac all the way!
I had this choice to make when my previous Windoze laptop decided it didn’t fancy switching on anymore.
Although top end PC laptops cost much the same as the top end Macs (MBP), more regulalry specced hardware is much cheaper for PC. I chose to spend my money on a HP laptop (£450) instead of a similarly specced MB (£699 ish) and spent the rest on Traktor Scratch.
At the end of the day, a laptop is a means to an end - I just wanted a stable platform on which to run my DJ software and a PC provided that at a significantly lower price than a Mac, allowing me to buy some more stuff.
I’ve also had fewer stability issues with my PC laptop (other than some Vista teething problems) than many of the people I know with Macs.
ftw
Me too
I’m struggling with this decision myself right now…
The choices for me are:
15" MBP 2.8GHz model
15.6" Eurocom W860CU Cougar
(Eurcom uses the same Clevo notebook chassis that ppl like Voodoo, Sager, Alienware, etc use…)
I live in the PC world, but my girlfriend’s got a MBP, so I’m familiar with both mac & pc…
I’m leaning towards the Eurocom for a few reasons:
-The trackpad on the mac. As sleek and sexy as it may be, I find it somewhat hit and miss, unreliable
-MBP is missing eSATA and external video capability (charging me $50 for an adapter that should be standard equipment?)
-Eurocom supports 2 hard drives
-Full HD on the Eurocom
-Bulit in HDMI, DVI, eSATA on the Eurocom
And of course theres the fact that the Eurocom’s going to run circles around the MBP. 1333MHz front side bus vs 1066MHz, i7 vs Core2Duo, etc…
Price wise, they’re pretty much identical… Reliablity? This is usually more of a user issue than hardware… I’m currently running TSP on an ancient, underpowered laptop, w/ no issues after tweaking the hell out of it… But then, I’m looking at windows7 with which I’d be starting more or less from scratch again… but of course, you don’t really need to tweak macs, they just work…
sigh
Pros vs. Cons.
Coin toss time?
m.
Windows 7 out today too… Windows 7 is supposed to be alright (basically, as I understand it, and i could be wrong, they’ve copied under the hood of Mac OSX)
I’m a macboy all the way but i use it for a lot more than djing. I had a mare with my PC laptop - not recognising hardware, having to reinstall a lot of software…
That was 5 years ago to be fair.
I hate Vista myself too. Just a RAM gobbler. But Windows 7 could change things… although it could just end up being a load of old gash!
I’d say MBP but that’s personal opionion… I’m pretty over the Mac vs PC debate
