Ableton Forum

I'm looking to get a new Mac Pro. Is there a big difference between the 2.13 GHz and the 2.33? When looking at the Mac site, it appears that the 7200 rpm hard drive is only available for the 17-inch 2.33 GHz.... Is this true? One of the guys at ableton support recommended a 7200 rpm hard drive if possible and told me to stay with Mac rather than go PC. I've been using a Powerbook for a couple years and have had tons of problems running Live on it, it's never been able to handle CPU usage. What direction should I go?

Might want to wait a month. Rumors are that there are new models with updated hardware coming in May.

and whatever you do don't pay a premium for that speed upgrade. It won't be worth it, and of COURSE you can have a faster disk with the 2.13. Have you tried specifying a system in the apple web-shop yet?

There will be a significant change in your CPU issues if you go with either speed of macbook pro, as long as your up to LIVE 6 (not 5), the multi core processor support really is amazing. 5 runs better and faster too, but i'd be really interested two know what the new macpro quad duals can do with 6...

tempus3r wrote:Might want to wait a month. Rumors are that there are new models with updated hardware coming in May.

I'm with tempus3r: you should wait. Apple does some yearly announcements, and we're due for one in May.

a 7200/8mb cache drive is going to be a bit better....but it's not worth paying a GOB of cash extra for, and to state what has already been written......you can get the other drive, if you order it

Remember this though.........laptop(almost always)=extra hard drive.....usually by way of fw. So, the key seems to me to be to have the external hard drive have all the "heavy hitting" stuff (samples, bfd packs, etc) and to have the basic stuff on the original hd.....which means make sure THAT drive has the highest rpm/cache size. Also, unless I'm mistaken, you need to have "empty" space in order for those seek times to be optimum......which is next to impossible with a lappy.......

Can someone confirm/deny who is lappy expert?

I would wait, but the wait might not be that long. Apple may make some kind of announcement about the release of Final Cut Pro 6 (and maybe Final Cut Extreme) at NAB on April 16th. As FCP 6 is supposedly reliant on the new core animation features in Leopard and possible updates to Quicktime and Open GL I am guessing (hoping) that the whole FCP, Leopard, new system announcements might all come together.
It might not happen in April though (I recently did a Apple certified course in FCP and was told that a beta of FCP 6 was still not available), but it will happen in the next few months...... maybe.

If you're going for an Apple laptop, definitely get the one with FireWire 800, and get AppleCare.

Cool, thank you all for your help. The Apple web shop was only giving the faster disk as an upgrade for the 2.33, that's why I asked. I know it seemed ridiculous. I heard about the quad dual Macs, it'll be stupid what Live can do on those. I know the price on those will be even steeper, that's why I thought of just going with the one that's available now. I am up to Live 6 now, if I had a new machine I'd blow your minds. I've never tried using my external firewire, I will try that.

Thanks again for all of your posts, much appreciated.......

Since you're thinking of external HDs, here's what I've found after using them a few years now, for video capture and editing [part of my job as multimedia developer for a university]:

We like Other World Computing's Newertech drives, 8MB buffer, 7200rpm, FireWire 800/400 & USB 2, all on the same drive. I've got sizes ranging from 80GB to 250GB. They now have drives with larger buffers and, of course, larger HDs.

We don't like LaCie as much. So far, the Newertechs have been great for years, but we lost 2 LaCie drives in the same time period. Since they are all portable, one of us might have just banged the LaCie too hard or dropped it, of course, so this isn't a perfectly fair comparison.

FireWire on a Mac is rock-solid stable.

The FireWire port on the MBP could be more snug -- it's easy to accidentally yank the FW cable out. I hope I remember to tape it in place if I gig with the laptop someday.

I haven't yet tried setting up my MacBook Pro to use a FW drive as a scratch disk for audio apps yet. Sounds like something I should look into soon, because I'm filling up my HD fast.