MK5 Golf GTI
General => Random Chat => Topic started by: garrardrj on August 26, 2015, 10:22:06 am
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Well i am certain that i shall be doing this . But when going from one computer to a new one it has been so much hassle and time consuming in the past that it is putting me off . I want the Retina screen , the quality , the lack of malicious virus etc and the futureproofness of a Mac . I also understand that Macs don't slow down like Windows based machines do . Also when using Itunes on my windows 7 it is really slow and takes ages even to just open the programme . I click the icon and it sometimes takes nearly a minute for the itunes screen to open !
Will Itunes work better on a Mac ?
Will Apple (in store) transfer all my stuff onto the Mac .... Like email contacts (Windows live mail) Itunes music photos etc
I have worked out about the word documents , excel documents on my ipad is there anything about a Mac that i wouldn't be able to do that i do on the Windows machine?
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The only things I have come across that I can't do on a Mac is the likes of VCDS, ETKA and Elsawin. However I use parallels and run a virtual machine so that I can still use them on my MacBook Pro.
iTunes will work better on a Mac as that's what it was initially designed to run on.
Apple won't transfer your stuff in store you will have to do that yourself. If you store stuff in the likes of Gmail then you can setup that to pull your contacts into the Mac. Not sure on Windows Live Mail as never used it.
It took me about an hour or so to get to grips with the way OS X works (I switched to Apple in 2007) and about a week to be fully happy with it.
If you're ever stuck when you go into the settings and can't find something. Type the Windows name for it in the search box and it will highlight the correct portion for you.
Best bet is to book yourself a Genius Bar appointment when you go in to buy one. Make yourself a list of questions and then go through with the sales/genius rep.
I didn't do that when I bought mine. But luckily the guy I got was very enthusiastic and spent 2.5 hrs with me. He even tried to get me to buy a cheaper MacBook Pro as said I didn't need all the oomph I was after. But he understood why I wanted to have the extra for future proofing. I'm on my 3rd MBP now and I always get the non retina so that I can upgrade the Ram and HDD. So mine is a 2.5ghz Core i5 with 16gb of Ram and a double SSD Array totalling 752gb (512 Samsung 840 Evo main SSD and a OCZ Vertex 3 240gb Data storage SSD for photos)
I don't have any issues with it even running El Capitan in beta form (I have a developer account). I get the odd beach ball (Apple version of Windows egg timer) but that's due to the beta. They only last a second or so. But otherwise it flies.
The one thing I love is that there aren't constant updates and patches to do on it.
I upgraded my Virtual Machine to Windows 10 the day it went public and within 2 days it had 12 different updates and patches to do!
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Well i am certain that i shall be doing this . But when going from one computer to a new one it has been so much hassle and time consuming in the past that it is putting me off . I want the Retina screen , the quality , the lack of malicious virus etc and the futureproofness of a Mac . I also understand that Macs don't slow down like Windows based machines do . Also when using Itunes on my windows 7 it is really slow and takes ages even to just open the programme . I click the icon and it sometimes takes nearly a minute for the itunes screen to open !
Will Itunes work better on a Mac ?
Will Apple (in store) transfer all my stuff onto the Mac .... Like email contacts (Windows live mail) Itunes music photos etc
I have worked out about the word documents , excel documents on my ipad is there anything about a Mac that i wouldn't be able to do that i do on the Windows machine?
I moved over to Mac about 3 yrs ago and it was a painless experience and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to you. I've since only ever used my old windows laptop for VCDS and just recently, downloading station logos for my MK7 Gti (which won't work on the Mac :fighting:) other than that; the switch has been a dream.
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Once you go Mac, you dont go back
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Ok thanks chaps ....
If i get a good spec Retina Mac Pro from a couple of years ago , it would save alot of cash , but what issues could i encounter ? Paying near on £2000 for a laptop frightens me ! What would be the benefit of buying new apart from the warranty ?
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£2k??? Really?
Unless you're going to do some seriously intensive processing, such as rendering video - go light on the options. A Mac uses its RAM etc in a different and much more efficient way, so a seemingly lower quality machine can easily outperform its Windows based equivalent.
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1200-1600 depending on which size MacBook Pro you want.
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I get corporate discount, so I paid sub £1k for my 13" Retina. Even so, I can't imagine what £2k gets or who 'really' needs it.
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Thats interesting .... So cheaper than i had expected ..... How come quite alot of Secondhand ones are near to £1000 ? Is it because they retain their value so well ? There is one locally to me a late 2012 and wants £999 .... SSD seems to be the expensive thing nowadays , is is worth the extra ? I am not going to be doing anything taxing or complicated on it . To some degree its mainly for storing and viewing photos , music , the odd document spreadsheet etc and storing all my older stuff. The reason i am now looking for a new laptop is that i am running out of space on my Hard drive and want to future proof the capacity . I may store stuff separately on wifi linked storage system , so perhaps don't need such a high HD , but 1tb seems to be a minimum imho . My 320gb hd is nearly full .
Also as we only view photos on a computer nowadays i am thinking larger screen than smaller.... At least the 15" or 17" ? This adds to the cost quite alot ...I did one of those price up your laptop on Apple and it was coming out near to £2k but then i generally opt for the highest quality or size . I think i may spend some time in the Apple store .... Going to Edinburgh today , hence up at this hour !
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All the MacBook pros come with SSD anyway
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My late 2011 17" MBP (last one they made) has been upgrade over the years and now has 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSD. Boot time is literally a couple of seconds and it absolutely flies!
After 4 years it's going strong and still holds 5+ hours of battery charge.
With that said I am thinking about upgrading soon.
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People take the p*** with used, buy new for the little difference it makes.
You don't need a big SSD, just be intelligent with your storage. Shove stuff in the cloud and back it up with a HD.
The current 15" with 256/16gb for £1599 is more than enough for you and you'll see a good 5 years out of that. Most big companies get corporate discount, ask a mate/relative to check and buy for you?
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People take the p*** with used, buy new for the little difference it makes.
You don't need a big SSD, just be intelligent with your storage. Shove stuff in the cloud and back it up with a HD.
The current 15" with 256/16gb for £1599 is more than enough for you and you'll see a good 5 years out of that. Most big companies get corporate discount, ask a mate/relative to check and buy for you?
MBPs tend to hold their value as they are well built and a quality product. While you may not need lots of storage others, like myself do.
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Sorry, that was more aimed at the OP's needs.
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Sorry, that was more aimed at the OP's needs.
No worries Tony :smiley:
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So who does apple give Corporate discount to and how much is it ? I am sure i can find someone to get it for me :happy2:
Visited several shops over the long weekend so got a feel for the machines themselves , i really like the Macbook air but it is quite flimsy and i have never taken a laptop out of the house , so hardly worth it ! Visited Apple themselves , Currys , Dixons Travel at the airport and a couple of other stores .... All quite similar prices .
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Well I work for a big bank, prior to that BT. Anyone in education, working for the public sector or a largish company will most likely have a link in.
I got 10% off I seem to remember.
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Just bought a MBP so subscribed for a bit of bed time reading lol
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Not sure if anyone has mentioned the pcworld 10% cashback?
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I got 10% MOD discount :)
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Not sure if anyone has mentioned the pcworld 10% cashback?
Having discussed prices at the weekend they will all price match each other ..... Dixons Travel was the same as PC world and Currys (they are all the same company aren't they?) Apple would do the same ..... I could set up a business and claim the VAT back on the purchase ? Bit too much hassle !
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Know any students? 15% off all macs with 75% off the apple warrantee aswell as a free set of beats by dre head phone. Pretty decent discount IMO. I just got 400 quid of a basic spec mac air. Thought id just let you know.
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Know any students? 15% off all macs with 75% off the apple warrantee aswell as a free set of beats by dre head phone. Pretty decent discount IMO. I just got 400 quid of a basic spec mac air. Thought id just let you know.
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£400 off ?
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Yea total discounts was around 400 with the after care and that.
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If you aren't worried about retina then get the 13" non retina MBP like I mentioned earlier.
Swap the RAM for 16gb (circa £70-80)
Swap the HDD for a 512gb Samsung Evo SSD (circa £150)
Voila. You have a MBP that will outperform most Windows based laptops and will last ages.
I have a mid 2012 13" MBP and it's still going strong.
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I am after the Retina display as we only look at photos on a computer now . I am also concerned about not having enough space on the machine to hold my photos , music etc . One of the reasons my present laptop needs to be replaced is that the Hard Drive is nearly full . I could quite easily upgrade to a 1tb hard drive and carry on using the windows computer but it has slowed down and is quite adequate for my usage but i WANT Apple ...I have iphone6 and Ipad air :evilgrin:
So there is a Macbook pro near me ...See link http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Retina-MacBook-Pro-13-Inch-128-GB-SSD-8-GB-Ram-2-6GHz-Intel-Core-i5-/221864989104?hash=item33a82f11b0
I have offered £650 , she wants £700 ..... Your opinions welcomed .... I will be able to go and look at it and try before i buy so to speak. The SSD is small at 128gb and that is a concern , i quite like the idea of a cloud type storage system and have considered upgrading my cloud drive , Apple Time Capsule and aftermarket network linked storage .... Your views on this ? I actually want to keep my music and photos on the machine aswell as the storage device , just belt and braces really .
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Just to throw a spanner in the works. I was close to buying a Mac around 2 years ago, I ended up with a Dell XPS. Aluminium body, Gorilla Glass screen, very Mac feel to it, got it from the Dell outlet for less than £600! They also do a High Res screen version but that wasn't out when I bought mine.
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If you aren't worried about retina then get the 13" non retina MBP like I mentioned earlier.
Swap the RAM for 16gb (circa £70-80)
Swap the HDD for a 512gb Samsung Evo SSD (circa £150)
Voila. You have a MBP that will outperform most Windows based laptops and will last ages.
I have a mid 2012 13" MBP and it's still going strong.
Ideally I wanted to spec a retina to the best possible, within reason. With my discount an i7 (think it was a 3.2) 16gb memory 512SSD, retina was £2000.
I have bought the 13" non-retina and bought 16GB crucial Ram (£75 and probably sell the brand new apple memory for £35), Samsung 500Gb SSD (£125) and a tray to replace the DVD writer drive at a later date to install a 2nd, 1TB SSD. So far it has cost me £1175 with the ability to expand to 1.5TB storage. I couldnt justify 900 quid for the display, as much as I'd have liked it.
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Id replace the dvd drive with a normal HD mike. 2TB drive, cheap as chips. So SSD for OS and programs, and HDD for mass storage
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Buy new they are built to last i have a 2009 27inch imac 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 old now but still nippy (16gb ram 500gb ssd)
I also bought a 2011 MBP 15.4 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 this was a total waste of money (€ 2,609.95) its the kids laptop now.
For home use i would go for a low spec imac plugged directly into a nas drive to handle all the storage.
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Just sold my 2011 MBP 17" with 16GB ram and 500GB SSD for a 2015 MBP 15.4" as i reallllllly love the retina screen. The faster processor certainly makes a difference :)
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I use both Windows and OS X so I can speak from experience.
With regards to the Mac, I'm still running a 2011 Macbook Pro alongside a 2015 Macbook Pro. I would recommend them, but if all you want to do is view photos, you could use an iPad and link that to your iCloud account which I'm assuming is accessible from your Windows machine (so you can upload photos).
>>> Also when using Itunes on my windows 7 it is really slow and takes ages even to just open the programme .
Hmm, could it be indexing your media files on the first launch (following an iTunes upgrade)? If it never manages to finish the indexing (if you close iTunes), I'm guessing it will retry everytime you try to launch it...
>>> I have worked out about the word documents , excel documents on my ipad is there anything about a Mac that i wouldn't be able to do that i do on the Windows machine?
MS Office is available for the Mac. What other applications do you use on your Windows machine?
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I am having second thoughts , but don't worry that's normal for me for any purchase over £1 !
I have decided (sort of!) that i quite like the new Macbook too ..... I do not use the present windows machine for anything more than basic word/excel documents , saving information in pdf form like workshop manuals etc . I view photos , watch videos , surf the internet , itunes , other basic stuff . I do not edit video or photos that often and hardly more than cutting the length down of a video or eliminating some red eye or some issue with colour . So i don't really need a MB Pro at all , i like Apple and that's what i am havin g next for 100% certain . A 13"Macbook Air with a fairly big SSD/hd with Retina screen is my ideal item ... Hopefully one will appear soon or the Macbook may be the one (Today !) :signLOL:
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>>> Also when using Itunes on my windows 7 it is really slow and takes ages even to just open the programme .
Hmm, could it be indexing your media files on the first launch (following an iTunes upgrade)? If it never manages to finish the indexing (if you close iTunes), I'm guessing it will retry everytime you try to launch it...
So keeping itunes open for an hour or two would resolve the speed ?
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I just installed windows 10 on my MBP its a lot quicker than the other versions i have tried.
Maybe a windows 10 install along with a SSD would speed itunes up?
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So keeping itunes open for an hour or two would resolve the speed ?
Worth a try...
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So keeping itunes open for an hour or two would resolve the speed ?
Worth a try...
I did leave it running for about 3 hours ..... Today it opens about 2/3 times quicker and doing stuff on it is quicker :happy2:
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So keeping itunes open for an hour or two would resolve the speed ?
Worth a try...
I did leave it running for about 3 hours ..... Today it opens about 2/3 times quicker and doing stuff on it is quicker :happy2:
That's good.
It's a similar story with PCs running slowly. Normally it's a virus scan running on startup that are scheduled to run every x days. If it doesn't complete (well, you turn your machine off because it's too slow to use and isn't responding!) it'll try again the next time you boot. I see it a lot...you just have to let the scan complete or switch to manual scanning...but that's off topic.
Glad it's made a difference. Let me know if you have any other issues - happy to help as I've dealt with computer issues (hardware and software) for years!
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If i wanted to upgrade the hard drive from say 128gb ssd to 512gb ssd it seems to increase the price of the machine quite dramatically , is there a cheaper way to do it and can it be done by myself ? The 13" MB Pro goes up £400 from 128 to 512 thatsd adding 40% to the cost of it ! What would i be looking at cost wise ?
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I have replaced HD on the 2011 version of the MBP and its easy. Nore sure what its like on the new ones, but cant see it being rocket science. Much cheaper to to the upgrade yourself than pay apples premium. Just keep the old drive incase of warrenty
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You can upgrade the ram also just a pity that they install 2x4gb meaning these are useless and you have to buy 2 x 8gb. Rather than installing 1x8gb leaving you room to upgrade.
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Retina MBP 256gb 13" ordered - John Lewis 2 yr guarantee/ warranty swayed the deal. So while that is coming i am looking for a way to back up the data etc. They suggested upgrading my icloud to 1tb at £7 a month . What about other options ? My windows laptop crashed and had to get it repaired just to recover the data. What about my own cloud ? The Timecapsule seems abit expensive , what about just a portable drive ? Any advice appreciated :happy2:
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Unless you particularly want cloud storage get a 2TB portable USB3 HDD and then use time machine to back up your system.
The reason i say 2TB as you can partition the drive. 1TB for backups (or whatever size you see fit bearing in mind the size of the drive in the MBP) and the remainder to use as a normal external.
That's what i do but i do have iCloud storage but i use that as another backup for photos and iOS backups.
This is the drive i use (i have 3 of them to be precise)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Passport-Ultra-Portable-Drive-Backup/dp/B00CSH1B4M/ref=sr_1_4?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1444861191&sr=1-4&keywords=WD+My+Passport+Ultra+2TB+USB+3.0+Portable+Drive
Do not be suckered into anyone telling you that you have to buy a Mac version. You don't all you need to do is format the drive in Disk Utility (in the utilities folder inside the Applications folder on your MBP) into OS X Extended Journaled (format that Mac uses) and it will work perfectly. I bought that drive in Dec 13 and it's worked perfectly since and i backup at least once every 3 days.
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You can upgrade the ram also just a pity that they install 2x4gb meaning these are useless and you have to buy 2 x 8gb. Rather than installing 1x8gb leaving you room to upgrade.
With the new retina's you can only update at the time of ordering at the moment. That's the reason why i went with the non-retina and upgraded the RAM to 16gb and have 2 x SSD's totalling 752gb in mine.
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Unless you particularly want cloud storage get a 2TB portable USB3 HDD and then use time machine to back up your system.
The reason i say 2TB as you can partition the drive. 1TB for backups (or whatever size you see fit bearing in mind the size of the drive in the MBP) and the remainder to use as a normal external.
That's what i do but i do have iCloud storage but i use that as another backup for photos and iOS backups.
This is the drive i use (i have 3 of them to be precise)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Passport-Ultra-Portable-Drive-Backup/dp/B00CSH1B4M/ref=sr_1_4?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1444861191&sr=1-4&keywords=WD+My+Passport+Ultra+2TB+USB+3.0+Portable+Drive
Do not be suckered into anyone telling you that you have to buy a Mac version. You don't all you need to do is format the drive in Disk Utility (in the utilities folder inside the Applications folder on your MBP) into OS X Extended Journaled (format that Mac uses) and it will work perfectly. I bought that drive in Dec 13 and it's worked perfectly since and i backup at least once every 3 days.
Thanks - just bought one :smiley:
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http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/2-tb-wd-passport-ultra-premium-portable-hard-drive-black-59-99-amazon-2302467?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10172015&utm_campaign=Daily%2BHot
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http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/2-tb-wd-passport-ultra-premium-portable-hard-drive-black-59-99-amazon-2302467?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10172015&utm_campaign=Daily%2BHot
Bugger ..... Quicker next time :wink:
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http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/just-99-99-sandisk-480gb-ultra-ii-sata-6gb-s-2-5-solid-state-drive-dabs-2304781?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10212015&utm_campaign=Daily%2BHot