Wow. I didn't see that happening. The financier of this operation balked at the hardware specs on the MacBook. My relative decided that there wasn't enough memory or hard drive space for the price.
Looks like I'm headed back to netbook land.
langfor6 on
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
edited August 2009
you can upgrade RAM yourself
for your harddrive i think you can also upgrade it yourself if 160GB really isn't enough
this all being because buying it from apple would be too expensive
I went from a 17 inch gateway laptop with 2 hour battery life and an x800 to a white macbook. It's super light, has the 9400m and I run windows xp on it too.
Ive played tf2 on it for 4 hours and while it gets warm, it never gets hot. It'll play anything up to left4dead on good settings, I havent tried anything higher than that. It's light enough to carry in one hand, and while I almost always use it while plugged in, it'll get anywhere from 4-6 hours with fairly constant wireless use/music playing. Closer to 3-4 playing movies or games.
It's only got a 13 inch screen (1280 x 800) so that's something to keep in mind, it only bothers me when I'm doing things in photoshop. Another bad thing is they seem to upgrade these every year. Upgrading from the intel graphics to the 9400 was huge though as far as performance.
It's $999, if you're a student you can knock $50 off, and you can get a free 8gig ipod touch if you do it during the back to school deal that's going on now. If nothing else, get the ipod and sell/trade it for a video card for your desktop.
But yeah, super light, great battery life, solid gaming.
Lies. Macs can be used for gaming, but you need to make sure that it will run the games you want. While Macs have a lot of great features (weight, battery life, OS x if you like it), gaming is not their strong suit. They routinely use previous generation mobile cards. Only get a Mac for gaming if you do your research and make sure that every game you want to run, runs on a Mac. Also do not expect that it will be able to run games in the future.
Second, a new Macbook is vastly inferior in gaming performance to the slightly older Macbook Pro that Azio mentioned earlier. Not only are you switching to a platform (Macs) that dosen't support gaming as well, you are also moving to a specific laptop in that line that is the worst for gaming.
Finally, the last thing to consider is that if you want to get the most out of your games, you will probably have to install Windows in a boot camp, which will cost you ~$100.
If you want a smaller laptop that can (sorta) game. There are a lot of options, like a Dell Studio XPS 13. Its the same price, uses a better video card, and runs windows natively, and I'm sure that its not even the best option.
tl:dr Macs are vey nice machines, but the reason to get a mac is not because of gaming.
I've essentially given up on the gaming aspect of the laptop. I've been convinced by this thread that I should be focused on portability and battery life mostly. Maybe I should change the thread title.
So is this going to be your primary computer? If so, I would hesitate at the netbook. While they are GREAT secondary parts, if you don't have a desktop to hold all your media etc. you will regret the smaller harddrive.
I went from a 17 inch gateway laptop with 2 hour battery life and an x800 to a white macbook. It's super light, has the 9400m and I run windows xp on it too.
Ive played tf2 on it for 4 hours and while it gets warm, it never gets hot. It'll play anything up to left4dead on good settings, I havent tried anything higher than that. It's light enough to carry in one hand, and while I almost always use it while plugged in, it'll get anywhere from 4-6 hours with fairly constant wireless use/music playing. Closer to 3-4 playing movies or games.
It's only got a 13 inch screen (1280 x 800) so that's something to keep in mind, it only bothers me when I'm doing things in photoshop. Another bad thing is they seem to upgrade these every year. Upgrading from the intel graphics to the 9400 was huge though as far as performance.
It's $999, if you're a student you can knock $50 off, and you can get a free 8gig ipod touch if you do it during the back to school deal that's going on now. If nothing else, get the ipod and sell/trade it for a video card for your desktop.
But yeah, super light, great battery life, solid gaming.
Lies. Macs can be used for gaming, but you need to make sure that it will run the games you want. While Macs have a lot of great features (weight, battery life, OS x if you like it), gaming is not their strong suit. They routinely use previous generation mobile cards. Only get a Mac for gaming if you do your research and make sure that every game you want to run, runs on a Mac. Also do not expect that it will be able to run games in the future.
Second, a new Macbook is vastly inferior in gaming performance to the slightly older Macbook Pro that Azio mentioned earlier. Not only are you switching to a platform (Macs) that dosen't support gaming as well, you are also moving to a specific laptop in that line that is the worst for gaming.
Finally, the last thing to consider is that if you want to get the most out of your games, you will probably have to install Windows in a boot camp, which will cost you ~$100.
If you want a smaller laptop that can (sorta) game. There are a lot of options, like a Dell Studio XPS 13. Its the same price, uses a better video card, and runs windows natively, and I'm sure that its not even the best option.
tl:dr Macs are vey nice machines, but the reason to get a mac is not because of gaming.
the 9400M found in the current MacBook and MacBook Pro lines is actually pretty good. I play *some* games on my unibody 13" MBP, but it's not the reason I bought it. I would agree with the sentiment that if gaming is priority, Mac is not your first choice. Not to say that a MacBook is a bad purchase, just that it's not a one size fits all solution.
Paying the AppleTax for a laptop equipped with Geforce 9400M is kind of a downer, though. The name of the 9400M is misleading; it's actually an integrated card, not a discrete.
My primary PC is my aging desktop, however I'm not really that much into media any more. Over the years various forms of DRM combined with what in my opinion is a drop in quality of work has really made me very picky with what I spend money on.
Translation: I'm a cheap sonofabitch that thinks that modern music and movies are generally shitty and not worth my time or money. Couple that with what I find to be insulting policies by music and film companies and you have a recipe for me not buying digital media.
My desktop has a 250 GB HDD. I've had it for three years and I still have 60 GB free. The majority of the space is taken up by games.
GAMING LAPTOP ON A MAC FOR UNDER A GRAND? IMPOSSIBLE!!!
In other news - I just sold my gaming notebook (GeForce 6600, 15.4", etc) for $175. It was $2000 when it retailed back in the day. Played crap like Warcraft, Portal, Call of Duty 4... all on max settings, surprisingly.
I think $1000 is plenty for a laptop that plays games, but not a gaming laptop... if you're looking to play those newer games.
That is just not possible. CoD4 might be playable on a 6600, but not at max settings. I had a desktop 6600GT. I know what it can and can't do.
Seriously? COD4 is like World of Warcraft, in that it runs great on anything. I dunno man... it ran perfectly for me, very smooth. CoD4 (unlike CoD WaW) is apparently a very well-coded game... Computer friendly.
Seriously? COD4 is like World of Warcraft, in that it runs great on anything. I dunno man... it ran perfectly for me, very smooth. CoD4 (unlike CoD WaW) is apparently a very well-coded game... Computer friendly.
Seriously? COD4 is like World of Warcraft, in that it runs great on anything. I dunno man... it ran perfectly for me, very smooth. CoD4 (unlike CoD WaW) is apparently a very well-coded game... Computer friendly.
Yeah, but maxed out?
Yep, it was a 256mb card, which was "decent" at the time. Few years ago
I am actually close to tears with this revelation that even now, today, in the year of our Lord two thousand and nine, there exist people on the internet who think Vista makes computers slow.
e: and this coming from someone who believes the cheapest Macbook is even remotely a suitable gaming machine, good lord
I am actually close to tears with this revelation that even now, today, in the year of our Lord two thousand and nine, there exist people on the internet who think Vista makes computers slow.
e: and this coming from someone who believes the cheapest Macbook is even remotely a suitable gaming machine, good lord
well, in his defence, that computer will run better with XP on it. But it will run just fine with Vista. Vista does not scale as well to lower end hardware as 7 does. the reason why XP scales is because it was made in 2001, where the average CPU speed was still under 1GHz. Much easier to scale up than down.
Seriously? COD4 is like World of Warcraft, in that it runs great on anything. I dunno man... it ran perfectly for me, very smooth. CoD4 (unlike CoD WaW) is apparently a very well-coded game... Computer friendly.
Yeah, but maxed out?
Yep, it was a 256mb card, which was "decent" at the time. Few years ago
I doubt WoW ran at max settings. My desktop has a Core 2 Duo E8400 (3GHz), 8GB PC6400, Radeon 4870 with 1GB of memory and running at all full settings at 1440*900 gives me a typical frame rate of around 55. My laptop has a T5750 (2GHz), 4GB, Radeon 3470. While the 3470 isn't as capable as the 6600, WoW is playable at the native resolution of 1280*800, but certainly not at max settings.
CoD4 though... yeah, I'd believe that would run on full settings. Very well coded game.
Rohan on
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
To be fair, it's easy to get used to lag caused by a struggling GPU after a while. If it's not bad, you just stop noticing (and everyone else who borrows your laptop starts screaming "how do you even play like this?").
Seriously? COD4 is like World of Warcraft, in that it runs great on anything. I dunno man... it ran perfectly for me, very smooth. CoD4 (unlike CoD WaW) is apparently a very well-coded game... Computer friendly.
Yeah, but maxed out?
Yep, it was a 256mb card, which was "decent" at the time. Few years ago
I doubt WoW ran at max settings. My desktop has a Core 2 Duo E8400 (3GHz), 8GB PC6400, Radeon 4870 with 1GB of memory and running at all full settings at 1440*900 gives me a typical frame rate of around 55. My laptop has a T5750 (2GHz), 4GB, Radeon 3470. While the 3470 isn't as capable as the 6600, WoW is playable at the native resolution of 1280*800, but certainly not at max settings.
CoD4 though... yeah, I'd believe that would run on full settings. Very well coded game.
World of Warcraft performance is based on CPU, not graphics.... for the most part.
It was a 2.16GhZ laptop, and back then Max settings didn't include the tweaks that came with Lich King. So, yes, it ran World of Warcraft at max settings, in that time.
Seriously? COD4 is like World of Warcraft, in that it runs great on anything. I dunno man... it ran perfectly for me, very smooth. CoD4 (unlike CoD WaW) is apparently a very well-coded game... Computer friendly.
Yeah, but maxed out?
Yep, it was a 256mb card, which was "decent" at the time. Few years ago
I doubt WoW ran at max settings. My desktop has a Core 2 Duo E8400 (3GHz), 8GB PC6400, Radeon 4870 with 1GB of memory and running at all full settings at 1440*900 gives me a typical frame rate of around 55. My laptop has a T5750 (2GHz), 4GB, Radeon 3470. While the 3470 isn't as capable as the 6600, WoW is playable at the native resolution of 1280*800, but certainly not at max settings.
CoD4 though... yeah, I'd believe that would run on full settings. Very well coded game.
World of Warcraft performance is based on CPU, not graphics.... for the most part.
It was a 2.16GhZ laptop, and back then Max settings didn't include the tweaks that came with Lich King. So, yes, it ran World of Warcraft at max settings, in that time.
Ah, I see. Yes, that's understandable. One of my friends had the 6600 GT and it was a very capable card, we would still be using it in fact if it had been a PCI-Ex card.
Rohan on
...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
In an unforeseen twist of fate, my benefactor told me that not only would they spring for a MacBook, they insist that I upgrade to 4GB RAM and a 320 GB HDD. I'm going to the Apple Store on Tuesday or Wednesday to get one.
In an unforeseen twist of fate, my benefactor told me that not only would they spring for a MacBook, they insist that I upgrade to 4GB RAM and a 320 GB HDD. I'm going to the Apple Store on Tuesday or Wednesday to get one.
I have a friend with a MacBook pro and is big into video games.
He also owns a desktop Windows machine to ensure he can properly game. I would really reconsider a Mac if gaming is a priority.
If it's not a big priority, then I'm sure you'll be happy as a clam.
Improvolone on
Voice actor for hire. My time is free if your project is!
In an unforeseen twist of fate, my benefactor told me that not only would they spring for a MacBook, they insist that I upgrade to 4GB RAM and a 320 GB HDD. I'm going to the Apple Store on Tuesday or Wednesday to get one.
I have a friend with a MacBook pro and is big into video games.
He also owns a desktop Windows machine to ensure he can properly game. I would really reconsider a Mac if gaming is a priority.
If it's not a big priority, then I'm sure you'll be happy as a clam.
Yea, by reading the whole thread you'd see that he abandoned the gaming laptop idea in lieu of a laptop that is actually portable and has good battery life.
Posts
Looks like I'm headed back to netbook land.
for your harddrive i think you can also upgrade it yourself if 160GB really isn't enough
this all being because buying it from apple would be too expensive
Lies. Macs can be used for gaming, but you need to make sure that it will run the games you want. While Macs have a lot of great features (weight, battery life, OS x if you like it), gaming is not their strong suit. They routinely use previous generation mobile cards. Only get a Mac for gaming if you do your research and make sure that every game you want to run, runs on a Mac. Also do not expect that it will be able to run games in the future.
Second, a new Macbook is vastly inferior in gaming performance to the slightly older Macbook Pro that Azio mentioned earlier. Not only are you switching to a platform (Macs) that dosen't support gaming as well, you are also moving to a specific laptop in that line that is the worst for gaming.
Finally, the last thing to consider is that if you want to get the most out of your games, you will probably have to install Windows in a boot camp, which will cost you ~$100.
If you want a smaller laptop that can (sorta) game. There are a lot of options, like a Dell Studio XPS 13. Its the same price, uses a better video card, and runs windows natively, and I'm sure that its not even the best option.
tl:dr Macs are vey nice machines, but the reason to get a mac is not because of gaming.
the 9400M found in the current MacBook and MacBook Pro lines is actually pretty good. I play *some* games on my unibody 13" MBP, but it's not the reason I bought it. I would agree with the sentiment that if gaming is priority, Mac is not your first choice. Not to say that a MacBook is a bad purchase, just that it's not a one size fits all solution.
Translation: I'm a cheap sonofabitch that thinks that modern music and movies are generally shitty and not worth my time or money. Couple that with what I find to be insulting policies by music and film companies and you have a recipe for me not buying digital media.
My desktop has a 250 GB HDD. I've had it for three years and I still have 60 GB free. The majority of the space is taken up by games.
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-1005HA-PU1X-BK-10-1-Inch-Black-Netbook/dp/B002DYIXMI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1250873537&sr=8-1
10.5 hr battery (probably 7 real world which is still fucking awesome, hellooooo never taking a power brick with you to class) and 160GB HD.
That is just not possible. CoD4 might be playable on a 6600, but not at max settings. I had a desktop 6600GT. I know what it can and can't do.
Yeah, but maxed out?
Yep, it was a 256mb card, which was "decent" at the time. Few years ago
Also if it makes any diff you can upgrade the MacBook to 4 gigs of ram for thirty bucks. I got mine for my old MacBook from crucial.
Vista will run on that decently, it has enough ram, which is what matters most, but still toss Win7 on it as soon as you can.
And you can't put 4GB into a MacBook for that cheap anymore because even the White one uses DDR3 now.
Although I'm not sure how with no DVD drive...
installing from a USB flash drive is easy, there are instructions on it all over the internet.
e: and this coming from someone who believes the cheapest Macbook is even remotely a suitable gaming machine, good lord
well, in his defence, that computer will run better with XP on it. But it will run just fine with Vista. Vista does not scale as well to lower end hardware as 7 does. the reason why XP scales is because it was made in 2001, where the average CPU speed was still under 1GHz. Much easier to scale up than down.
I doubt WoW ran at max settings. My desktop has a Core 2 Duo E8400 (3GHz), 8GB PC6400, Radeon 4870 with 1GB of memory and running at all full settings at 1440*900 gives me a typical frame rate of around 55. My laptop has a T5750 (2GHz), 4GB, Radeon 3470. While the 3470 isn't as capable as the 6600, WoW is playable at the native resolution of 1280*800, but certainly not at max settings.
CoD4 though... yeah, I'd believe that would run on full settings. Very well coded game.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
In half? I think you are rather overestimating :P
Like wunderbar noted, DDR3 sodimms are hilariously expensive.
World of Warcraft performance is based on CPU, not graphics.... for the most part.
It was a 2.16GhZ laptop, and back then Max settings didn't include the tweaks that came with Lich King. So, yes, it ran World of Warcraft at max settings, in that time.
Ah, I see. Yes, that's understandable. One of my friends had the 6600 GT and it was a very capable card, we would still be using it in fact if it had been a PCI-Ex card.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
I have a friend with a MacBook pro and is big into video games.
He also owns a desktop Windows machine to ensure he can properly game. I would really reconsider a Mac if gaming is a priority.
If it's not a big priority, then I'm sure you'll be happy as a clam.
Yea, by reading the whole thread you'd see that he abandoned the gaming laptop idea in lieu of a laptop that is actually portable and has good battery life.