Macbook Yea or Nay

[Pope Heironymus I]

I'm thinking of picking up a Macbook just to have a very portable, user-friendly machine. Oh, and mainly to avoid Vista. If anyone here has one, are they worth the hype?

I'd probably go with the most basic one (the $1099 machine) probably, loading MS Office 2008 on it to do stuff.

H.

[RoxofSpazhouse]

As a Mac person we are always to happy for more converts.

Honestly though, MS Office works quite well. I have worked on PC and Macs in the past. The problem of viruses are lower than PC (I will not say it is totally virus safe as once in a while will get a Mac).

The iPhoto and iTunes works well. There is also the address book that can syn with your iPod.

Setting up your mail should not be that hard. It seems setting up mail on any computer is a pain in the ass, though.

Just so you know, I really can't stand Steve Jobs.

[EdTheUniqueGeek]

I highly recommend a Macbook.
I've had mine for a little over a year now and have not had any problems. I absolutely love it.
Just a tip: Go to the refurbished section of the Apple store to shop for one. You will save money. I bought my Macbook refurbished on their site for about $600 less than retail of the top one. As I stated, even though it is refurbished, I haven't had any issues. Also, do not buy memory upgrades from Apple, if you decide to buy one (I've got 2GB of memory in mine), buy it from Macsales.com; you'll end up saving money from there also.
Now, about the MS Office 2008. You might want to do more research, but I have heard nothing but problems with it for OS 10. I'm not biased by any means as I use all different types of operating systems (Windows, Linux, OS 10) and have no favor for any. Try iWork '08 first before you buy Office 2008. You may find that you will like it and it is much cheaper. Apple has a try before you buy. I've used Pages '08 (like MS Word), in iWork '08, and I think it is a beautiful word processor. It's a huge improvement from the previous versions of Pages.

[RoxofSpazhouse]

As an art director I really do not us MS Office itis just for converting text to use in Indesign. I do know that MS Office 2008 is use before you try as well they give you 30 days. If you can find an older version of of Office for OS X then get it.

The memory issue, I too would recommend not buying through Apple it just costs more.

One more thing if you buy at a big box store, think twice about getting the extended warrenty. Apple gives you a year warranty. The Big box stores will offer two years, but in actuality you are getting one year warranty from 2 different places. You also need to remember when your warranty ends. I got screwed by one month. My CD burner stopped working and I had to find another route to get it fixed.