[APBeta] ... any ideas on the best way to get into a mac?

[Gary A. Ferguson]

Not sure why you want to run Mac OS, but I can tell you that running Windows
7 64-bit under bootcamp on my 13" Macbook Pro makes it just about the
perfect laptop. It is very responsive,has excellent battery life, and a
beautiful screen. I haven't tried controlling my new Celestron 11"  with AP
yet, but it worked fine with my previous mount. Yeah, $1200 was a bit pricey
as laptops go these days, but I sure like it. I consider it very much worth
the money. Intel Core 2 Duo CPU @ 2.4 ghz, 4gb main memory, 150gb Win
partition, 82gb Mac partition.

 

Gary

 

From: apbeta-bounces at lists.astroplanner.net
[mailto:apbeta-bounces at lists.astroplanner.net] On Behalf Of ron ridge
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 2:03 PM
To: apbeta at lists.astroplanner.net
Subject: [APBeta] ... any ideas on the best way to get into a mac?

 

Good afternoon all, I am a long time windows user, a linux user of about
three years and do some database administration into a windows server
environment using remote desktop.  I have both windows 7 and linux mint
debian edition machines installed.  I have never had a mac of any variety
but am considering adding a mac alongside the windows and linux machines.
Best guess is that I would want the mac to do the normal internet browsing
and email stuff as well as drive the telescope through astroplanner and I
hope that I might also be able to remote desktop into the windows server
environment.  

Would want sufficient horsepower in the mac that I would feel that the mac
performance was better than the windows performance while maybe not being
quite as responsive as the linux machines.  I haven't the slightest idea of
where to start figuring out what the range of macs might be that would not
cost too much while being sufficiently powerful and also portable enough to
carry outside to use with the telescope.  I also have no idea about which
version of the operating system I should have as a minimum.

I think that a lightweight monitor with the mac mini might work in terms of
portability and would even consider the imac as it apparently weighs
somewhere in the 20 to 25 pound range.  A laptop would be the right choice
and Apple touts their "new"  machines as being "twice as powerful" as the
predecessor machines but that means nothing to me because I have no
understanding of the predecessor machines.  And the new laptops are pretty
pricey.  There appear to be very few places to buy a new mac so there seems
not to be a very wide range of pricing available.

I know there are several, several mac users among the group and would
appreciate hearing your thoughts on how I might go about figuring this out.
There may also be some websites that would have information on the topic but
I have not found any that have been helpful to me regarding how a windows or
linux user might approach this.

Thank you very much!





   ~~~   ~~~
   Ron Ridge
   ~~~   ~~~
   Send to:  dblo7.rrr at gmail.com
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