Buyers Guide - Helping Your Mac Purchase

Use this Mac buyers guide when you read review after review thinking about what Mac you are going to buy. Still you feel a bit overwhelmed about all information you have and now you are more confused than ever.

The goal of this Mac buyers guide is to help you find the perfect Mac for your use, you will find information about the products and what to really expect when buying. This guide will not be a 100 - page long guide with all technical specifications you can dig up. It will contain information about what I think is important for the regular user. You may not agree with me, and you are welcome to come with comments or suggestions if you would like that.

On a budget

Yes it is true, Macs are generally a bit more expensive compared to the regular PC counterpart. Why is it alright to pay premium for a Mac? In my opinion the Mac is all about the software. When you buy the Mac you get high quality software that will make you get productive in no time. Also Mac OS X comes in just one version. There is no OS X home edition, business edition, ultimate edition, home pro edition and so on... It is only one version for users. Mac OS X, thats it. Well, to be honest there is another version of Mac OS X and that is Mac OS X Dedicated Server, but that is something you probably wont be using.

Take my spouse as an example, she still use her MacBook Core Duo 1.83GHz. She has had it for over four years now and it still works fine for her use. (Photos, Internet, Surf the Web, e-mail, music).

If you have little money to spend but still want to have a Mac you may want to look for used Macs although it might be difficult for you to know what to look after. One option would be to buy refurbished computers directly from Apple themselves. This way you can get your Mac cheaper and buy them from Apple with 1 year warranty and the latest OS X operating system. I have written more about it at the page: Refurbished MacBook

Buyers Guide: Desktop Computers

Apple provides desktop computers for you that don't need the mobility of a laptop. We have the Mac mini, the iMac, and the Mac Pro.

Mac Buyers Guide: Mac Mini

Mac mini is the cheapest computer Apple offers, it will work great with regular office use like writing documents, reading and sending e-mail, surfing the web, listening to music and watching movies. The mini recently got some upgrades on the graphics department too, this means that some casual gaming is possible. You also need to add your own display, keyboard and mouse. If you don't have this already it might be a better to look at the iMac instead.

Mac Buyers Guide: iMac

With the iMac you get a complete computer ready to go. It has a built in display, you get a keyboard and a mouse in the package. The iMac also have several models for you to choose from, this way you can select the one model that fits your budget. The computing horsepower is also higher and this means you can do more productive work in a fast environment, even with the cheapest model. With the iMac you also get better graphics card and thus the gaming performance is higher. Even though you may not have any interest in games it is a good way to measure a computers performance. Because it test the performance of the CPU and the Graphics card at the same time. iMac is good for you that do not have to move your computer around. With its aluminum enclosure it looks pretty good. This is a wife-friendly computer ... ;)

Mac Buyers Guide: Mac Pro

This is the fastest and most powerful Mac ever made. I can talk about all the technical aspects if you want but you can get that information elsewhere, right? Suffice to say this machine can power every application you throw at it with ease. Logic Pro, Maya, Final Cut Pro? No problem. And if you would like to upgrade your computer the Mac Pro can easily be upgraded in many ways, hard drive, memory, graphics card, even CPU, it can also be configured in many ways too when you are buying it. With the Mac Pro you get the keyboard and the Magic Mouse. You will have to add the display yourself. The price also tells you that this is no ordinary computer of course ...

I am not sure about gaming though, although the Mac come with a powerful graphics card there are more powerful cards out there, and if you buy this computer you are probably aiming for the best of the best. The only negative I have to say about this machine is the lack of more high performing graphics card available. Don't get me wrong though! the card supplied with the Mac IS really powerful and will run the newest games just fine, but you can get better cards in the PC / Windows world.

Mac Buyers Guide: Apple Laptops

The laptops Apple make are really popular, they come in different sizes, shapes and price ranges. The laptops are the following: MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

White MacBook (Discontinued)

The white MacBook was the cheapest laptop Apple offered, it came with the 13-inch widescreen LED display and one color, white. This laptop was popular around students because of its price, and size. Despite of the cheaper price the power in this little laptop is respectable, you can do a lot of things like the usual. Read e-mails, surf the web, write text, watch movies in HD, edit pictures to name a few. While the graphics card is not the best out there it can still play some games. Now the MacBook Air have replaced the White MacBook!

MacBook Pro

If you are a bit into gaming, video editing or image work this might be a better choice for you. You also have the possibility to select a bit faster processor if you need more speed.

Aluminum MacBook Review (A bit outdated now). I personally use the 15" MacBook Pro because it suits all my needs.

Mac Buyers Guide: MacBook Air

The MacBook Air is one of the worlds thinnest laptops. To get to this Apple had to make some compromises regarding the speed, lacking some ports, cd-rom, hard drive size and so on. This is the computer for you that feel size is the most important, because this laptop is thin! If you need a small laptop and do not care so much about the performance this might be the best choice for you. It is also now available as an 11.6-Inch model.

A new thing with the MacBook Air is that it only ships with a solid state drive (SSD). Meaning disk access will be a lot faster and the computer will feel fast even though the CPU may lack in speed. When buying this one I recommend to max out the ram. It is soldered to the mainboard and it is not upgradeable later on without swapping the entire logic board. And thats expensive.