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This is the megathread for discussion relating to Mac hardware, including announcements and questions about purchasing/recommendations. If your post is unique or interesting enough to warrant its own topic or begins to derail the thread too much, by all means please feel free to make a dedicated thread in SH/SC. This megathread is generally maintained as a resource to consolidate small and frequently-asked questions. Rules:
Thread community agreements: Internet Explorer posted:
Somebody fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jan 2, 2023 |
# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 21:10 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:58 |
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Frequently Asked Questions: Where should I buy my Mac?
The age-old always asked question: Should I get a Mac now or should I wait? pokeyman posted:
Should I buy AppleCare? The consensus among most Mac goons here is most definitely yes. Especially if you have a laptop and tote it around a lot. You'll save a lot if you are eligible for educational pricing, a little less if you get it from B&H. AppleCare can be purchased and registered for your Mac for up to one year past original purchase date. After that, you can't get AppleCare coverage no matter how hard you whine. If you travel a lot, and your Mac laptop acts up for no good reason, you can be comforted by the fact that AppleCare is honored globally, so long as you can find an Apple Authorized Service Provider in the country you're in. As far as is known there are no AASPs in Antarctica. Here's a link to find one if you're traveling. Should I trust refurbished Macs direct from Apple? Many goons here in the Hardware thread have bought them and swear by them. Apple rigorously tests most refurbished Macs and 'refresh' them before they're placed back for sale; you get a cheaper machine that's already been serviced and comes with all the benefits (warranty period reset, AppleCare eligibility) of a new Mac. I want to sell my Mac laptop / desktop. What should I charge? Star Wars Sex Parrot posted:There's no rule. Check eBay. Check Craigslist. Check SA-Mart. Check how much refurbs go for. Some refreshes are more significant than others. Put some research into it if you want to get any value out of your used goods, otherwise you're gonna get fleeced. Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Nov 7, 2017 |
# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 21:10 |
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Star War Sex Parrot fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Nov 7, 2017 |
# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 21:10 |
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Yeah just PM me if you have any additions that way it's not posted multiple times on the first page. Thanks!
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# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 21:35 |
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Thanks for the PMs, folks. I'm still getting stuff organized but I'll get the additions in the OP as soon as possible. Thanks again!
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# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 22:14 |
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Binary Badger posted:Edit: I see the expired in-joke about timb's creaky Macs is intact There's still a lot of editing to be done.
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# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 22:23 |
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SourKraut posted:Regarding SSDs, I admittedly haven't done too much research in this regard when it comes to OS X, but is it possible to buy the TRIM-capable SSDs that Apple uses/provides support for in Lion, commercially? pipebomb was selling one in SA-Mart a couple weeks ago though!
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# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 22:31 |
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Jeratain posted:Is this correct, or is there something more complicated that I'm missing? Am I to assume that the installer will automatically know how to partition my drives, whether to install directly to the SSD vs. HDD, etc.?
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# ¿ Jul 20, 2011 22:46 |
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Kalix posted:I've got an ultimate 13" and I'm not sure exactly how much processor speed boost we're talking here.
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# ¿ Jul 21, 2011 01:33 |
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Kalix posted:I wonder how much I would get if i sold my Air, anyone have any ideas?
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# ¿ Jul 21, 2011 01:40 |
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Corbet posted:What's the general consensus on i5 vs. i7 in terms of performance? We'll find out more when reviews come out.
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# ¿ Jul 21, 2011 03:35 |
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For someone who gets a new Air or Mini: what's the build number of Lion? Just curious if it's the GM or already a specialized build.
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# ¿ Jul 21, 2011 17:29 |
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Rabid Snake posted:Anyone know any good external portable hard drives that can be used cross platform (PC and Mac)? I want to store Movies and the bulk of my Music on it for my Macbook Air. 500GB would be enough, portability is a must.
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# ¿ Jul 21, 2011 21:56 |
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DEUCE SLUICE posted:
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2011 02:09 |
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Rabid Snake posted:I'm driving down to get it now with an educational discount. Also yeah, you can wait 364 days to purchase it.
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2011 03:15 |
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Is it sad that I knew it was a Fujitsu from the PCBA?
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2011 03:17 |
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movax posted:This was with Safari w/ 6 tabs or so, Mail, Word and IM. I don't think that's too out-of-line for what a 11" MBA might be doing, but 2GB seems borderline. Speaking of the Air: I just noticed that it didn't get a FaceTime HD camera. I guess they can't fit it into that super thin display assembly.
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2011 04:23 |
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MrEnigma posted:Speaking of the ram, I'm running 8gb on my iMac, but in the last day or so it's been on it's swapped out like 3gbs of stuff.
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2011 04:35 |
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Now that I'm back from my 10 day vacation: someone give me a reason not to stop at an Apple Store on the way into work and buy a new 13" Air.
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2011 17:47 |
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Space Racist posted:Because you'd rather have the 11" as a secondary machine?
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2011 20:41 |
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I'm actually a bit disappointed with the Air's SSD, to be honest. It's fast, but boot time isn't as fast as the 160GB Intel X-25M G2 was in my 2010 i7 MBP. Maybe it's a Lion thing. Luckily I never restart the system so I shouldn't notice it, and the OS performance is still plenty fast.
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2011 22:43 |
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Has anyone picked up Apple's USB to Ethernet adapter with a 2011 Air? I'm seeing some reports of the adapter not working with Lion, and I'm wondering if I should pick it up. I have a feeling that the third-party ThunderBolt to Ethernet adapter will be ridiculously expensive.ndrake posted:Is anyone using this fancy hybrid HD/SSD, the seagate momentus XT? It sounds nice, but I'm not sure how much I trust it to "learn" my commonly used files. Does this work in real life? If you dual boot with windows does it just confuse the hell out of the drive? And can you (or do you need to) use the trim enabler with lion for the SSD partition? Similarly, does the phantom lion recovery partition work well with this drive (i.e. it won't accidentally partition off part of the SSD that would be used for speeding up the computer, right?). I'm going to pick up either this or the WD scorpio black to upgrade my 09 MBP.
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 02:04 |
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ndrake posted:So is the WD scorpio black the notebook drive of choice right now?
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 02:15 |
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fleshweasel posted:I think there's a Scorpio Blue 1TB that narrowly beats the blacks on transfer rates.
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 02:22 |
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Oneiros posted:On that note, what is the deal with third-party drives and unibody MBPs? I've been reading tons of horror stories about conflicts with Apple's SMS, excessive head parking, SATA I/II linkspeed negotiation problems, having to revert EFI versions, and constant beach-balling. I'm hoping that I won't encounter any of that, but anyone here want to chime in?
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 04:20 |
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Scienter posted:It's been several days since I checked and I'm at work but I believe it's a Toshiba SSD. LG display as well. To be fair I was so dazzled I forgot to check for those two things at first. Was a little disappointed given the buzz at the time (was hoping Samsung/Samsung) but it's pretty easily forgotten. Not that it really matters: the LCDs aren't all that different and the SSD performance delta won't really be apparent in real world use.
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 15:44 |
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Daric posted:I should probably wait, right?
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 16:53 |
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Scienter posted:Last Thursday it was delivered and unboxed; arrived in perfect condition. It's been good times since with zero regrets. First Mac and best first impression of any computer purchase I've ever made.
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 17:26 |
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movax posted:Do you actually get to use your MBA at work, or is it your personal machine, out of curiosity? I don't imagine I'll use it at work since it's a Windows environment, though the Air works quite well with VPN and CoRD for remote work.
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 17:55 |
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Has anyone picked up Apple's USB to Ethernet adapter with a 2011 Air? I'm seeing some reports of the adapter not working with Lion, and I'm wondering if I should pick it up. I have a feeling that the third-party ThunderBolt to Ethernet adapter will be ridiculously expensive.
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# ¿ Aug 2, 2011 20:22 |
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Mu Zeta posted:When I brought in my iMac last year it took the guy 15 minutes to clean the screen.
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# ¿ Aug 3, 2011 02:35 |
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Daric posted:Why do people claim that the MBP is not very portable? It weight 5lbs. If you can't carry an extra 5lb weight with you all day, you have an issue.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2011 18:08 |
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NoDamage posted:It depends on what you're doing. If you're just carrying it between home and work/school, it's probably not that big of a deal. But if you travel a lot, the difference is pretty massive, especially since you're not just carrying the 5 lb laptop but all sorts of other things. I'd much rather carry my new 13" Air when I go shooting instead of my old 15" MBP. My bag's already loaded down with lenses, lighting, a tripod, and other miscellaneous crap. Every pound saved is precious to me if I'm going to be wearing it all day.
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# ¿ Aug 4, 2011 18:34 |
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I had an Incase sleeve on my 13" MB a couple of years back and had no complaints. The Level8 sleeve looks nice, but I don't need the pockets on it. I might snag an Incase sleeve for my 13" Air.
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2011 03:53 |
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Apparition posted:I wasn't sure where else to ask this question and I figured this would be the best place. I suppose it's worth a shot, but you could also just snag a used phone off of SA-Mart and avoid the trouble.
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2011 21:41 |
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SmirkingJack posted:So within the next few weeks I am going to pick up a new 13" MBP. I was going to upgrade it with a 1TB 3Gb/s drive for $130, but after looking at the laptop's spec sheet on everymac.com and seeing that it supports 6Gb/s drives, I am wondering if it is really worth another $80 to get one that fast. Also what 1TB are you getting? And what 6Gb/s drive are you seeing for $80 more? Very little about this adds up.
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2011 22:29 |
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Shin-chan posted:If you had any work done inside the computer, the aluminum bezel was removed.
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2011 22:34 |
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Shin-chan posted:Well that's my bad. I can't find where he ever gave a specific model SourKraut posted:I think he's referring to a mechanical HDD for the $80 more at 6 GB/s comment. As others have mentioned, a traditional HDD can't even saturate 3 GB/s, much less 6 GB/s, so it's an unnecessary upgrade. But I'm still not sure what drives he's comparing.
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2011 22:45 |
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SourKraut posted:That's true, though the only 2.5-inch 6 GB/s HDDs I could find are enterprise-level, which from what I can tell wouldn't even likely fit in his MBP.
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# ¿ Aug 5, 2011 22:55 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:58 |
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Maddalo posted:Thanks. For $90, I'd say it's absolutely worth it.
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# ¿ Aug 6, 2011 05:07 |