Which Mac(book) to buy

[maciel117]

With Christmas around the corner I wanted to potentially invest on a apple Laptop for my home recordings. So far I was looking at the less expensive Macbook White but I don't know if I should dish out some more cash and get the newer generation macbook 13''. To give you a better idea of what I want to record... I play guitar, sing and play some other percusive and wind instruments and I wanted to record mostly multi track recordings, one or two instruments at a time. My goal is to be able to have decent solo recordings I can potentially use for commercial use. Considering that I don't own any recording equipment (decent mics, preamps, interface, monitors, etc.) I don't want to spend the extra money for a newer shinier Macbook unless I need it. Portability is a big issue too because I need to be able to set up in different rooms of my house and potentially record while on the road. Please help!

 

[fuzzrhythm]

The white MacBook is more than adequate. Plus it has a Firewire port which you may want when choosing a recording interface. The only thing the newer MB potentially gives you (besides cosmetics) is a better graphics chipset.

 

[antichef]

I think fuzzrhythm's right to point out the firewire issue -- the new macbooks don't have a firewire port, and that would really limit the interfaces you could use. I just got a macbook pro because of that (and the fact that they didn't have any white macbooks in the store and I had to have one *right away*)

I used a white macbook for the last almost-two years and was perfectly happy with it until the main board went bad and they wanted $980 to fix it. I had upgraded it to 2 gigs of memory, and put a bigger hard drive (250 gig) in it. If you put a new hard drive in yourself, make sure to get a 5400 RPM and not a faster one -- I tried a 7200 and it made no difference in performance, but was a lot noiser and hotter, and actually burned up and bricked.

So anyway, get the extended warranty

 

[dgatwood]

Agreed on all points. I would not touch the new MacBooks for audio. USB audio just isn't reliable enough. Either get the white MacBook or spring for the new MacBook Pro. If you get the white one, spend the extra money you would have spent to buy AppleCare. It is always a good idea to have an extended warranty on laptops....

 

[blazingstrings]

Unless your willing to shell out $1999 for the 15" pro which has FW800. I bought one of the last of the 13" black macbooks. which has a FW400 port.

 

[dgatwood]

Unless your willing to shell out $1999 for the 15" pro which has FW800. I bought one of the last of the 13" black macbooks. which has a FW400 port.

Just to clarify, by MacBook, I was not referring to the MacBook Pro, just the MacBook. It would have been a lot less confusing if they had called the base model something like the "MacBook Mini" instead of just "MacBook"....