Ableton Forum

Hi, I am struggling with a G4 imac and in desperate need to upgrade. Cant descide weather to go for a mac book or another imac.

I would like to know from Ableton mac users what the performance is like. Are macbooks up to the job. Also the speed of hard disk concernes me as its recomended for ableton to have a 7200 speed where as laptops are 5400.

A Macbook is a great chooice. It's only limitation is the sjared memory in the Video Card. Make sure when you get one that you get 2 INDENTICAL memory chips from the same manufacturer. That is all you need to worry about.

The HD speed is mostly a non-issue. If you are recording 8+ tracks at high resolution, you might be feeling a pinch, but playing back tracks can be remedied by loading the clips in RAM...

I have heard nothing but great things about the Macbooks.

Dont worry.
You will be so blown away by the improvment over the G4 youll.... im trying to think of somthing funny to say.
Hard drive speed aint an issue for me at least.
Anyone else had any problems? Most high resolution tracks ive recorded at the same time is 4. no probs.
Would a faster hard drive be quicker for accessing loops/bits of audio?
I dunno, but I tell thee, you gotta be using an assload of tracks and plug ins for the cpu meter to get bothered.

I love my macbook core 2 duo!

100% regret free purchase.

Get it and dont look back.

The real question is... is it worth the extra $1000+ to get the Mac Book Pro?

audio.android wrote:The real question is... is it worth the extra $1000+ to get the Mac Book Pro?

for live?......no.

audio.android wrote:The real question is... is it worth the extra $1000+ to get the Mac Book Pro?

....and is the only real difference between the Macbook Pro and standard Macbook just a video card?

Astral Fridge Magnet wrote:

audio.android wrote:The real question is... is it worth the extra $1000+ to get the Mac Book Pro?

....and is the only real difference between the Macbook Pro and standard Macbook just a video card?

Also the build quality on macbook pro is beter than the macbook.

DJ VAKIS wrote:

Astral Fridge Magnet wrote:

audio.android wrote:The real question is... is it worth the extra $1000+ to get the Mac Book Pro?

....and is the only real difference between the Macbook Pro and standard Macbook just a video card?

Also the build quality on macbook pro is beter than the macbook.

THAT'S what worries me.My powerbook looks as good as the day i got it 4 years ago.

I worry about the plastic-ness (real word??) of the macbook.They just don't feel the price.But the MBP price is steep.

I've gotta make this decision soon.So it looks like i talked myself into a MBP...

4ace wrote:

DJ VAKIS wrote:

Astral Fridge Magnet wrote: ....and is the only real difference between the Macbook Pro and standard Macbook just a video card?

Also the build quality on macbook pro is beter than the macbook.

THAT'S what worries me.My powerbook looks as good as the day i got it 4 years ago.

I worry about the plastic-ness (real word??) of the macbook.They just don't feel the price.But the MBP price is steep.

I've gotta make this decision soon.So it looks like i talked myself into a MBP...

Maybe you can find a cheap refurbished macbook pro

I think the MBP's are worth the extra money for a few reasons:

- The lighted keyboard really comes in handy on a dark stage or DJ booth.

- The aluminum chassis/case means it runs cooler.

- Express card slot, which opens up expansion options in the future.

And the Firewire 800 port...

I have a MacBook (Core2Duo) that I use for music (and pretty much everything else at home) and I had a MacBook Pro at my last job. I don't think the MBPs are necessarily any better-constructed than the MacBooks. Not in my experience, anyway; they're both solid.

As for the drive speed, you can easily swap in a 7200rpm SATA in the MacBook. Changing the harddrive in a MBP requires fairly major surgery. Though you can order a MBP with a 7200 RPM drive from Apple, of course.

I WOULD like to have the lighted keys, as Tarekith mentioned.

Other than that, I love my MacBook. I use it for playing live (live PA and DJ) running Live and AVMixerPro (for visuals) and it runs just fine.

There are plenty of pros who use MacBooks. Example: Robert Henke/Monolake uses a MacBook (a BlackBook, actually; and I think it's a CoreDuo, not a Core2Duo). That's a pretty solid endorsement right there.

I'd say save the $1000 and buy a kickass audio interface or most of a Moog Little Phatty with it.

Steven

I'm really surprised no one has mentioned the screen size - for me this was the decider

my girlfriend has one and I was close to getting one but I just found after a while trying to get any real work done became quite annoying

in the end I got a 14" HP laptop and even the 1" makes alot of difference

if you can stretch to the pro then that is the big advantage 15" instead of 13

as for the 7200RPM isue - you can got thos in laptops (in fact I'm about to list a 60GB laptop one on ebay - taken out of a PC so I dont know if it would work on mac)