Here are the things that I need a MBP to do for me...

I just canceled my Dell. I am a fickle, fickle guy.

So, please try to help me out here. I truly am interested in getting an MBP and all that accompanies it, I just want some more information for which it is difficult to Google.

Hardware:

1. The DVI out can be converted to an HDMI out with the right item, right?
2. Does the MBP have an ExpressCard slot or something that can handle a card that provides eSata ports? Would they even wok under OSX?

Software:

1. MSN. This is not my choice, but all of my friends, peers, etc. use it. Is there a reliable MSN client under OSX? Is my best bet virtualizing it under Parallels/Fusion or under BootCamp?
2. I need a word processor with the ability to write mathematical equations in-line, as Word 2007 can do. Until Office 08 arrives, do I have any options besides running the former under Vista using the various methods mentioned?
3. Assuming I do use Parallels/Fusion, are there any issues in having them boot a partition containing Vista Business 64 that was created by BootCamp? What I mean is, can I use virtualization and BootCamp with the same install of Vista?
4. I have a Creative Zen Vision: M. I'm assuming iTunes won't play nice. Aside from upgrading to an iPod down the road, what are good options to sync music until then?

Misc:

I want to wait for Leopard, which should be released soon enough that it is reasonable for me to delay my purchase. If I can get a Leopard "coupon" or equivalent deal, how would installing Leopard over Tiger affect my system? How much of a mess would there be?

That's all I have for now, I'm sure I'll have more questions later.

P.S. Being in Canada means I need to haggle like a begger to get retailers/Apple to sell me an MBP with proper price conversion. T'is suckage 4 sho'.

 

I'm not too sure about the hardware questions as I'm not a MacBook Pro user, so I'll let other members answer those.

Software:

1) Yes, there are several good IM clients for OS X. The most widely used being Adium, which supports multiple IM accounts (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk accounts and many more).

2) You could try NeoOffice (the Mac equivalent of OpenOffice). Not sure if it does what you need though.

3) Yes, you can install Windows using Boot Camp and use the same partition for Parallels/VMware Fusion.

4) There are a few other recommended media players for OS X...I don't have any recommendations though .

Miscellaneous:

1) You can choose to install Leopard over Tiger, so all your applications and files from Tiger remain intact. In your case, you will want to choose that.

Yes, Canadian prices are still higher than American despite the dollar's parity. If you can, I suggest you go to USA to get your Mac. However, watch for duties.

 

My mother is taking a trip to Los Angeles in a week, but they have 8% sales tax. That adds $160USD to the price, and if she is to pay duties (14% if we include Ontario PST, do we?) while crossing the border, we've saved $40. Gah.

And I understand that one can install Leopard over Tiger and retain applications, files, etc. I merely wanted to be reassured that I wouldn't have issues with the new OS being less stable as if I were upgrading from XP to Vista directly. ¬.¬

And I realize I have some unique needs, though I hope they can be addressed. Thanks for your help so far.

 

Well, if your mother can manage to get to Oregon (no sales tax there)...

Of course as Leopard hasn't been released yet, I can't speak for sure, but I don't think there's going to be any issues with Tiger - Upgrade to - Leopard.

And no problem with the questions. I enjoy helping out .

 

There's a free program called "xnjb" that lets Mac OS X sync with the Creative mp3 players. I have no idea how good it is. If you also run Windows on the MBP, then you could always sync from Windows instead.

 

Vista can access files on the OSX partition?

 

Not natively. You will have to get a program that allows Windows to read/write HSF+

 

Hardware:

1) MBPs come with a DVI to VGA. NOT HDMI converter. Thanks for the correction.
2) MBPs have an expresscard slot.

Software:

1) Ichat is nice. I prefer Adium. Trust me when I say that Ichat is 10x better than MSN or Trillion; Adium is even better than that.

2) NeoOffice is a free OSx port for OpenOffice. It works well and is free. What more can you ask for?

3) This actually may be a problem. I have XP on my bootcamp partition, and when I try and load it in parallels it won't let me log into windows because my "hardware has changed too much since last boot". I need to reregister it says.

If you REALLY don't want to spend money for Leopard, wait. But if you want your MBP now, there's a good chance that you'll at least get a decent discount, if not Leopard for free. If you have an Apple store by you, you could probably save yourself some hassle and bring it into a genius and ask them to install it for you. Just tell them something along the lines of "I'm a brand new switcher and I don't want to mess anything up... etc etc."

You would have to get a third party program to access HFS+ from vista. Macdrive is what i have.

 

Really? I know they come with DVI to VGA but i don't think HDMI is there...

 

No, Windows cannot read or write to HFS+ (OS X's format) drives. To do that, you will need an application called MacDrive. It costs $50, so yeah, its kinda expensive. You can try it out though.

Just for interest, Mac OS X can read NTFS drives. So in OS X you can see the Windows partition. However, you can't add new files into the Windows partition or edit any file. To do that, get MacFUSE (which is free).

 

My fault, whatever converter came with it is sitting in a box on a shelf as I never use it. I assumed that it would be HDMI.

 

Thanks for all the responses so far, they've been very helpful.

One thing that still hasn't been answered for me though, is that, while I am sure the recommended Office softwares are fine in their own way, the ability to type equations in-line is crucial to me. For example, in Word 07, if I typed (x)/(y), it is converted to look like x over y and is treated as text, not pictures. This feature will likely be in Word 08, but I need something to fill the gap until then. I could probably deal without it for a short while, but this is important to me.

Once again, I'd love to use iChat, if only the demographic where I lived used AIM/iChat. They don't.

Finally, where would be the best place to haggle? At the Apple Store (doubt it...), over the phone, or at a retail location like Futureshop/Best Buy? This would be over the annoying currency conversion rate issue as well as attempting to get a discount for Leopard.

 

Once again, I don't know...I'm not a deep user of word processing, just basic essay writing, so I don't know about that.

Yeah, iChat's main problem is its limitation to .Mac, AIM and Jabber.

And as for the best place to haggle, I'd say try the Mac resellers. Not the big ones like Future Shop, but if you can get some Mac-centric resellers, such as small shops dedicated to selling Apple products and Mac software. They, in my opinion, would be the most likely to lower the prices a bit.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of making a third FAT32 partition for files you want to share between the two OSes (such as music files)... you can do that, can't you? I believe you can read and write to FAT32 natively from both OSes. The only thing is it lacks some of the more sophisticated file ownership/permissions features of the other filesystems... but for a bunch of music files, I don't think most people would care much.
EDIT: I forgot to add, I use a FAT32 drive right now to share my music files between Windows (NTFS) and Linux.

 

Can you be a little more explanatory on how you are doing this? I just opened up Word 07 and typed "(x)/(y)" and hit return and nothing happened. What exactly are you doing?
Most people use Word just to type docs and not do math equations so that's not an easy answer for most of us.

 

Ok, I guess I'll give you my two canadian cents.

Yep, and I've done it before. I have a bell express vu HD box that has DVI and my TV only has HDMI...so I have a DVI-HDMI cable and I tried plugging in the DVI to my mbp and the HDMI to my tv and everything looks fantastic.

Yes, but I'm not sure if it can provide eSata ports and if it would work under OS X.

MSN is available for Mac but it's kinda buggy...Adium (free download) works WAY better than MSN, in fact I like it more than even windows messenger on the PC.

The only time I needed to virtualize it under parallels was when I needed the handwriting feature - it's very easy to set up though. Basically you can have an MSN icon in your dock and when you click it, it automatically launches windows in the background but all you see is MSN (Called coherence mode - works nicely!)

Real math equations are written using LaTeX

I stopped using office...I now use iWork (making me pretty much a Mac convert...). But iWork doesn't handle equations I don't think. But I stopped using word because sometimes it's just sooo slowww even on my mbp. I can't wait for 08 to come out...but by then I won't care anyways because I have iWork (which, the new version, plays super nicely w/ office!).

Word on Mac has the exact same equation editor as Windows does, but it's kinda frustrating sometimes because it's a bit slower. But the equation editor is the exact same on mac as it is on PC. Even nicer though is the utility on OS X called "grapher" that for some reason graphs any function! (no clue why this is there...) but it's handy sometimes!

No idea...sorry.

I only have iPods...so I'm not really sure. Sorry

Supposedly the ugprade process is very seamless (as it has been for past ugprades).

The easiest way is to do an "upgrade" which preserves everything and just upgrades the OS. THen there is the "fresher" way of doing it as you would call it - called the "archive and install" - which archives all your folders in a separate folder I believe (not 100% sure on this). Or you can do a wipe and install if you want...but the upgrade will be smooth.

I'm also sure Apple will give y ou an upgrade coupon...but at this point I'd just wait for a purchase. Leopard is like a month away.

Hope I was helpful!

 

Press "alt"+"=", beforehand, you'll go into equation mode.

 

A new question. Can I use buy an OEM version of Vista and use that license?

 

Swarmer gave me the heads up on the XNJB program on another thread (thanks Swarmer), and it works with the Zen (Vision:M) okay, not fantastically though.

It only works on the right USB and has glitches every now and again, but nothing major, when it freezes you just have to shut it down and reconnect. It's probably putting me off buying a new iPod for the moment, since I have a perfectly working Zen (though I'm sort of annoyed that Creative has given up trying to compete with iPod Classic since I would have considered an update).

And yes, with the Vista thing, as long as it's Ultimate or Business you can use it.

 

LaTeX. I'm a student at Carnegie Mellon and my math courses are really pushing us to learn how to use it.

 

Okay, so I shouldn't worry about needing to buy a "retail" version? I thought the Business/Ultimate requirement was only for virtualization. I'm still a bit confused.

I'll buy LaTex when my courses dictate its need. Otherwise, I need something simple and effective. I don't need to buy PhotoShop to crop pictures. =p

 

LaTeX is free btw

 

Bump. Still wondering if I can buy an OEM copy of Vista 64...

 

AFAIK According to the EULA, no.
Technically it should work though.

As for the other features, the previous posters have pointed to most tools.
Adium for msn (and AOL mssenger) is really good. I mean REALLY good.
LaTex is worth learning, available for different systems and free.

DVI and HDMI are the same signal. For a proper dual link DVI like on the MBP you only need a cable with HDMI on one end and DVI on the other. No conversion takes place.
HDMI is really just DVI + sound

The MBP has an Expresscard/34 slot, and there is a esata adaptor available for that.

As for the bootcamp stuff, I got this MBP thing 6 months ago, and loathe starting up my windows machine. I got this for music recording/production and just felt crashes and issues fade away. Even if there are problems I can usually sort them out fast.

The Creative player, I don't know. My wife has an older zen micro and just hooks it up to either or winxp machine or her linux box, can't imagine it being a big problem on the mac. Even low latency audio interfaces "just work".
There I go.... ranting again

 

But have you used an OEM license with yours?

Aer there drivers for eSata cards? Or does OSX handle them natively?

I'd prefer to sync music instead of dragging/dropping it, but I guess it OSX recognizes my Zen that way, it'll work at least.