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aklap
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 10972
Location: WI, USA
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 Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 12:34 pm Post subject: Mac Pro Discussion from GF Food at Target Thread |
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http://forums.glutenfree.com/topic8794.html
| Quote: |  Actually we got one on Saturday and spent the night and took the basic beginner course the next morning and got a second one. We purchased them for the boys for Christmas/graduation. They will be off to college in the fall. In the mean time Dad and Mom are playing with them. It looks like we will upgrade the office to Mac before the end of the year. (It appears we are going to take a big income tax hit and the accountant says spend money or give it to the gov. Good news for Apple and Us)   |
I'm open for adoption if you'd like to get me a Christmas present!
You might want to wait to get Office until they actually get to school - or have been accepted at college. Academic discounts for software ARE HUGE!! Call the campus bookstore and ask them what the price is for Office Mac before you buy it elsewhere.
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Al
“We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” Mother Teresa |
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Kathie
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
Posts: 1063
Location: Florida
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| Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 12:51 pm Post subject: |
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Edit: I don't think we will need office. As near as I can tell from the online videos we can convert all the word, power point and excel documents into iWork and back very easily. For now we have the programs that came with it and iWork and that's plenty to figure out.
I did find out the hard way about Quickbooks for Mac, we purchased the 09 version to try out before we converted. I was concerned about the online payroll feature and the credit card process (lack thereof). Well after installing it (and not using it yet) I discovered there is a 2010 version coming out in 5 days. (It was actually in the store at OfficeMax) It will except credit cards right in the program. So I had to return it to Intuit (which really aggravated me, that no one at the Apple store after 2 days thought to mention that a new version was coming out that solved one of my concerns. But they couldn't take it back because it was opened.  ) and ordered the new one.
About the adoption thing.........5 kids and 2 grandkids are about all I can afford at Christmas. 
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Kathie
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
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Location: Florida
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| Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 5:18 pm Post subject: |
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Al how much memory do you run. I was playing with iMac pricing and its $1000.00 more to go from 4GB to 8GB. I'm guessing unless you are doing a lot of photo/video type stuff 4 should be more than plenty? That seems so outrageous, on the macbook it was $300.00 to go from 2 GB to 4GB.
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ostrich
Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 5105
Location: Nebraska
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:51 am Post subject: |
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| Kathie wrote: | | Al how much memory do you run. I was playing with iMac pricing and its $1000.00 more to go from 4GB to 8GB. I'm guessing unless you are doing a lot of photo/video type stuff 4 should be more than plenty? That seems so outrageous, on the macbook it was $300.00 to go from 2 GB to 4GB. |
Holy cats! $1k to double your RAM?! Screw PCs and Macs: roll your own.
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Kathie
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
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Location: Florida
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:58 am Post subject: |
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| ostrich wrote: | | Kathie wrote: | | Al how much memory do you run. I was playing with iMac pricing and its $1000.00 more to go from 4GB to 8GB. I'm guessing unless you are doing a lot of photo/video type stuff 4 should be more than plenty? That seems so outrageous, on the macbook it was $300.00 to go from 2 GB to 4GB. |
Holy cats! $1k to double your RAM?! Screw PCs and Macs: roll your own. |
Yep, but it doesn't make sense to me, its only like $100.00 to double the hard drive and $150.00 to increase the processor.
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Flygal
Joined: 01 Apr 2009
Posts: 249
Location: Wisconsin
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:59 am Post subject: |
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You might want to try an external HD to store photos, etc. I got one that holds 8 GB for $89. It also backs up my hard drive every week automatically. Check OfficeMax.
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Kathie
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
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Location: Florida
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:18 am Post subject: |
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Actually the hard drive is HUGE so storing stuff is not a problem. The way it was explained to me was the Memory/Ram was your desk and the bigger the desk the more stuff you could put on top of it before it started falling off. The hard drive is the file cabinets, the more cabinets you have the more stuff you can store and videos, pictures take up more room then files. So the more memory you have the more stuff you can have running at one time without slowing the computer down.
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aklap
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
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Location: WI, USA
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:10 am Post subject: |
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| Kathie wrote: | | Al how much memory do you run. I was playing with iMac pricing and its $1000.00 more to go from 4GB to 8GB. I'm guessing unless you are doing a lot of photo/video type stuff 4 should be more than plenty? That seems so outrageous, on the macbook it was $300.00 to go from 2 GB to 4GB. |
Apple soaks you big time for RAM!! I would get the least amount of RAM thru Apple, then get it upgraded elsewhere - or do it yourself. This is what we did when we sold Macs.
I would say to start at 4gb. I'd have to look up what type of RAM this guy takes. I suspect it's PC2-5300 or 6400 - I don't know for sure. You can find this RAM for 20.00 per 1gb dimm. You'd probably have to get 2 or 4gb dimms tho.
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Al
“We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” Mother Teresa |
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aklap
Joined: 02 Oct 2004
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Location: WI, USA
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:11 am Post subject: |
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| Kathie wrote: | | Actually the hard drive is HUGE so storing stuff is not a problem. The way it was explained to me was the Memory/Ram was your desk and the bigger the desk the more stuff you could put on top of it before it started falling off. The hard drive is the file cabinets, the more cabinets you have the more stuff you can store and videos, pictures take up more room then files. So the more memory you have the more stuff you can have running at one time without slowing the computer down. |
You are correct!
I think I have 2gb in my MBP. I have an older one. Still running Tiger on it.
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Al
“We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” Mother Teresa |
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Kathie
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
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Location: Florida
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 12:13 pm Post subject: |
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| aklap wrote: | | I would say to start at 4gb. I'd have to look up what type of RAM this guy takes. I suspect it's PC2-5300 or 6400 - I don't know for sure. You can find this RAM for 20.00 per 1gb dimm. You'd probably have to get 2 or 4gb dimms tho. |
I think 4 is probably more than enough for what I do. I do remember while reading seeing some photo showing how to upgrade the Macs and it has to be even numbers 2, 4 or 8.
We were talking with one of the Apple Geniuses last weekend about how fast things were and I mentioned that back in the early 80's I remember making a banner "Happy Anniversary or Birthday" and it was about 5 pages long, just the words on a dot matrix printer. It took so long to print that I made the banner, made dinner, we ate and cleaned up and it was still printing. 
I guess its great that some thing are better/faster but I think the older I get the more I realize how much simpler life was before all the technology. I guess you have to take the good with the bad.
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ostrich
Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 5105
Location: Nebraska
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 12:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Kathie wrote: | | Actually the hard drive is HUGE so storing stuff is not a problem. The way it was explained to me was the Memory/Ram was your desk and the bigger the desk the more stuff you could put on top of it before it started falling off. |
To expand upon this....
Think of RAM like a pile of resources. Every time you run an application (web browser, games, email, etc) that application has to take a little bit from the pile to run. Some applications need more resources than others. Once it's done (once you close the program) it places its resources back on the pile. Small pile = not enough resources = slow computer.
It's too bad you're not closer, Kathie. I'd be happy to help you upgrade your machine. Al's right: Apple (and most other companies) nail you for as much money as possible because they assume you don't know how to do it yourself. You can get RAM (and other computer pieces) much cheaper individually. Once Al finds out what type of RAM you need I suggest ordering it through NewEgg. Cheapest prices anywhere, and everything I've ordered from them has shown up within 2-3 days.
My guess is you're not doing anything high-end, so 4GB should be plenty. The rub will be trying to find somebody to help you install it. It's a 5 minute process if you know what you're doing.
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Kathie
Joined: 27 Jan 2006
Posts: 1063
Location: Florida
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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| ostrich wrote: | | It's too bad you're not closer, Kathie. I'd be happy to help you upgrade your machine. |
Thanks, if it doesn't cool off down here soon, I may start melting northward and make it that far. I am so sick of 90+ days. Of course you could haul out the scoot and head down, we are praying for the weather to cool off enough this weekend (80's are predicted) to ride without getting heat stroke.
| ostrich wrote: | | My guess is you're not doing anything high-end, so 4GB should be plenty. The rub will be trying to find somebody to help you install it. It's a 5 minute process if you know what you're doing. |
I'm sure DH could do it, if we decide its necessary, he's added ram before to our PC's. He just spent the last week reformatting and rebuilding the two old office PC's when his crashed, just because he was bored and needed something to do. The iMacs (if we go that route) come standard with 4GB.
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ostrich
Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 5105
Location: Nebraska
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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The scoot's already winterized, thanks to our string of 40 degree days and rain. So I might take you up on that offer. 
OH! To expand upon Flygal's backup comment...you can build this on your own too. And you can do it for free if you have enough leftover pieces lying around. They're called home servers. MaximumPC recently published a very good article on how to do this. They include steps for building your own or buying one. Not only will it backup all your data, it'll serve it to the rest of the house. Want to access some pictures on the upstairs computer, but they're saved on the downstairs computer? No problem!
This is DH's latest project. He's currently upgrading his PC, and trying to figure out if he'll have enough components to build a home server.
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These little wonders still remain |
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