OS X :: Advice On Choosing The Right Mac For University?
Apr 10, 2009
I'm hoping that I'll get into Bangor University in September in Wales and I really want to switch to Mac before going there! Anyway, I need a Mac that will be powerful enough to run multiple sessions on photoshop, a word processor and the internet obviously at the same time! So the one I'm planning to buy at the moment is the Mac Mini, and I was wondering if I would be able to run it using my Windows laptop by using the display, keyboard, speakers and touchpad on it. Does anyone know if that would be possible? Because I can't be bothered buying another keyboard and display!
For one of my classes I am required to upload files to a folder accessed via command line. The instructor assumed that everyone is on a windows machine. The run instructions to do from a campus networked machine (windows) is as follows "\citecscs120". I need to be able to do this from my laptop(OS X 10.5.6) in my dorms.
My university says the ethernet network that they supply in uni halls of accomodation does not allow wireless devices, surely they can't make it so that you cant use an airport extreme or some other device to make the wired network in to a wireless one. The connection is through a proxy and uses PEAP. They also use 802.11X authentication. How can i use my airport extreme in my room so i can use my laptop wirelessly?
I just bought a new macbook yesterday. When I tried to add the wireless internet that my school provides it won't work. It says the self assigned IP address will not connect to the internet. However, when I plug in an ethernet cord the interent works fine.
ever since updating to 10.5.7, my Mail has been acting strange. I had both a MobileMe account and my university's POP account set up to work with Mail. After updating, it only kept the Mobile Me account. I didn't really think anything of it and just added an account for the university email. It all worked fine until I restarted my computer, where it again lost all the university stuff but kept Mobile Me. I did this another few times but nothing changed. I tried searching around to see if anyone else had this problem but came up with nothing. Does anyone know a solution to this?
My university has a Wifi all other the grounds but i can only use it occasionally with my macbook for some reason. It sometimes loads things like google reader or google searches but i cant look at google images or anything. Everyone else just loads safari or the equivalent and enters an email address and they can browse. Mine does that but then stops and starts working every so often.
I am a bit stuck between getting the 13" or the 15" because I don't know whether the 15" is really worth �500 more as this will be my first Mac and I don't know too much about them..
I will be carrying it around campus a lot and using Photoshop/Illustrator a lot.
one of my main concerns is whether the screen will be big enough in the long run..
I am having a problem adding one of my university managed Gmail accounts to Mail 7.3 on my Macbook Pro. I have two that I use regularly, @oakland.edu and @albion.edu, and I was able to sync @oakland.edu with no issues. However, Mail will not recognize the @albion.edu gmail account and gives this message:
I have tried to override and trust the certificate and that didn't work. I also tried adding the incoming/outgoing IMAP servers manually and that didn't work. IMAP is enabled in the @albion.edu acount. It added to Mail on my iPhone 4S with no problems, so I don't know what else to do.
Info: MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)
I've lived in an apartment for the past year that is connected directly to our university network. I have an airport extreme router that I've tried to set up responsibly with no SSID broadcast, WPA2 with extremely difficult password, transmission power set to 25% etc. It has also been set to 'share a public IP address" and everything has so far worked smoothly.
Recently, however, all apartments in the complex received letters saying that there had been disruptions on the network and that it was most likely due to wifi routers -- which are NOT permitted. If we temporarily disregard that ban, is it possible that my router is causing any disruption? And, if so, what could I do differently to ensure that it does not?
I've tried setting it to bridge mode, but that does not work at all. We are allowed to register 10 mac addresses and I have registered all my devices, but in bridge mode none of them can connect . As I understand it, in bridge mode the university servers are distributing IP addresses to devices that are registered on the network -- is that correct? Then what could be the reason for bridge mode not working if my devices were registered properly?
My main question is whether my router could be causing problems with the above setup?
macbook came with 3 discs: apps/iLife, grey os x install, and snow leopard. I erased, etc from grey os x . Should I have used the snow leopard instead? or simply install snow leopard after the grey os x . the macbook is about one year old.
I'm wondering if there is a way to choose from different options without using the mouse in a pop-up window (not sure how they are called, but the window that pops up and asks if you want to save, cancel or don't save). You know, like with the arrows, choose what you want to do, and press enter to do that.
I work on several large software projects and need a new rig to handle some heavy compilation.
Here's my criteria for this new system: Great at compilation/debugging (heavy CPU, RAM, HDD utilization) Needs to triple-boot (Mac OSX, Windows, Ubuntu) Needs to support dual monitors Needs only moderate storage Fit a US$8000 budget
Here's the components I have selected so far in my BTO Mac Pro: 6 Core 3.33 GHz Xeon Westmere 3GB RAM (will replace with 12GB, see below) 2 TB HDD ATI Radeon 5870 Dual 27'' Cinema Displays -- TOTAL: $6100
Here's what I'll be ordering separately, in addition to the above:
SSD Boot Drive: (is this compatible with Mac Pro?) OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD3-2VTX360G 3.5" 360GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive -- $1000
12 GB RAM: (I read 3 slots is best for triple-channel) 12GB RAM OWC Memory Kit: 3 x 4.0GB PC10600 DDR3 ECC 1333MHz -- $330
I've never built nor owned a Mac Pro before so I'd really appreciate any advice or feedback you can give about my build.
I recently got enough money to by a referbished Powermac for my starting out edditing buisness. Right now we use a mac mini G4 with 512megs of ram(its bad) and a macbook ro with 2gb of ram and a 2.16GHz proccesore.(It runs really fast) Anyway i want a stationary desktop to do my edditing on and i dont want to buy a mac pro because of price and i really dont like the type of ram it uses. So here are my thoughts for an editting ccomputer and i would like your help in making my desition.(Oh and if it matters i will be edditing HD Films on it)
Power mac Dual Proccesor G5 at 2.5Ghz 2.5gb of ram 250Gb HD ATI 9650 vid card Price is about $1900
Powermac Dual core G5 2.3GHz 2Gb of Ram 250Gb HD Nvidia 6600le Price is about $2000
eather one is fine for me i just want somthing that will outperform my macbook pro and allow me to retire my mac mini. Oh and des ram really make a huge differance in final cut pro from 2gb to 4gb.
When saving an image from the web it allows me to pick which folder to save it to. Only problem is it only lets me browse to the main categories, any way to choose photos>My Trip>4th of July>Wednesday as my save destination?
I am looking into a new computer, I was full force ahead toward a mac until a friend told me a couple of concerns. He told me that he has heard about macs being kind of glitchy and somewhat touchy. Things like leaving it in the car for even short periods of time or banging it around in a laptop case will cause problems. I am not crazy rough with my computer, I mean hell, I made a Dell last me 5 years before having to get the another one, but I need something that can take the occasional mis-judgment. I also want some advice on what kind of specs I should have. I am looking at doing Grad school via distance education and need a computer that will provide the ease of doing things like a virtual class room with little to no problem and of course a good paper writing program.
I have a Kingston 1gb usb drive. I know how to use disc utility and format it by choosing the FAT option, but it never works correctly for me. I can use the drive on my Mac fine, but whenever I plug it into a PC it states that the drive needs to be reformatted. my only access to a PC is at school, and the permissions do not allow me to reformat the usb drive on those computers. I don't understand why my Mac can't just format it correctly for PC use..
I do quite a lot of graphical design, and I work in all the design suite adobe programmes. As some of you may know, Adobe will soon launch CS5.
I have been reading up on their system requirements, and for photoshop it requires a minimum of 256 mb of video RAM. Since this is the minimum, would you say it is better to go for the 512 mb instead? Or what I am saying is do I really need 512 mb of video RAM?
When I open files, usually .jpg, I sometimes double-click on it just to pop it open real quick to take a look at the larger picture. I still have Preview as my default graphic file viewer and up to 10.6, when I would do this it would just open the file. When I was done looking at it, I would quit Preview by hitting command+Q. Then a bit later if there was another file I wanted a bigger look at I'd follow the same process. I've been doing that for about 5 years.
With 10.7, following this behavior produces different results. If I open a .jpg, then close with command+Q, Lion "remembers" the last file I had open, and when I double click on a file, it opens the file that I clicked on AND any previous files that were open. This could go on and on endlessly. I tried it a few minutes ago and opened 10 files by double clicking on only one. The way that I've found to alleviate this is to first close the .jpg while in Preview, then end the program. This makes sense and everything, but if I tell Preview to close, it should assume that I'm no longer interested in the file that was previously open. I suppose all of this isn't too big a deal as it only adds one additional step to my daily behavior. But it's going to be a hard one to break after a few years of doing something else
Info:iMac (20-inch Late 2006), Mac OS X (10.7.3), Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz, 3GB
Do you know of any simple audio recording app (ie: not a monster audio suite) which takes low CPU usage, and lets you choose the internal bit depth using for audio sampling (ie: sample at PCM16, at PCM24,...) ? Â
Now, in case you need it, the long version of the question:Â
I'm digitizing my huge collection of audio tapes, with my G5 iMac (OSX 10.4). The quality of the recordings is somewhat low, so I don't need a high-end audio card, and I believe the builtin audio card of this G5 is more than adequate for this task (Burr Brown PCM3052 with support for PCM16, PCM24, and AC3 16).Â
I've done my first tests with the just-released new version of Audacity (2.0.0), which is compatible with 10.4 and higher, so I'm very happy to be able to install a brand-new application in 10.4.Â
Audacity works fine, but has a couple of issues:Â
First, you can choose the audio track bit depth, but not the internal bit depth at which you're sampling. In other words, I'd expect to use some selector to choose from PCM16 or PCM24 recording, which is what this iMac seems to support. However, I can only choose the storage bit depth, not the sampling bit depth. I suppose Audacity is recording at PCM24, but I've no way to test this.Â
Second, it takes about 40% CPU usage while recording (yes, I disabled the realtime graphics update of Audacity... if I don't disable it, usage becomes 60% or higher).Â
I tried Audio Hijack Pro (well, the last version supporting 10.4), and it won't let me choose the sampling depth either.Â
I don't really know which one to choose actually. First of all, does my iMac supports SATA III? If not, maybe i'll buy a new iMac.If it supports SATA III then i found the Corsair Force 3 480GB 2.5" SATA III SSD for a reasonable price. Do you recommend that? Does all the SSDs on the market work with mac without problem? I also want to upgrade my 4GB of 1333MHz memory to 8 or 16. There are 2 empty slots right now. Can you please make a recommendation about it too.
I've decided to jump on the apple band wagon and purchase an iMac.
I'm planning on ordering the 27-inch quad core i5 but I'm wondering whether it's worth upgrading the processor or increasing the RAM - does anyone use FCS 3 and if so, would it be better to increase the RAM to 8GB+ to run more smoothly.. or does the 4GB RAM basic run fine with FCP 7 and the like?
I have a question for anyone out there who is into customizing their desktop. This is my current desktop setup (for my second display) created with Geektool. I'm pretty happy with it but being as anal as I am I want the AM/PM lights to be lit properly.
I can create two desktop wallpapers but OSX wallpaper settings aren't detailed enough to change the image every 12 hours. The only other thing I could think of was to create a 24 hour video, 12 hours of AM followed by 12 of PM. Then use Mach Desktop to play the video.
Though this is crazy overkill and would unnecessarily use a ton of resources. Any ideas would be awesome!
I have a 2008 MacPro with dual 2.8's running the latest version of 10.5 (I have been reluctent to upgrade to 10.6). I also use Apples's magic mouse.
The only reason I still use my PC is for Quicken. I have tried trials of Mac replacements but they just didn't cut it for me and Essentials has had disappointing reviews. So I have a full copy of XP Pro, SP2 coming.
I was going to do a small partition of 20 or 30 gigs and install XP and Quicken using Boot Camp.
Any advice/comments form those with Mac/Windows experience? My Mac is hard wired to my Airport so wireless internet is not an issue and I may not even activate internet for the windows partition. No need for Mac to PC file sharing either.
Will the Blue Tooth mouse work? I have read SP3 can cause problems so stay with sp2? Might it be better to have a HD just for windows?
