Buying A Mac - Is less more?
Well I finally did it. I bought my next Mac. I’ve owned 2 in my 15+ years as a graphic designer, and this will be my 3rd. You may be wondering how I could survive as a graphic artist for so long on just 2 macs. For one thing, many of the jobs I’ve had in the past came with their own Macs. Also I’m no stranger to working on a PC. You see, I’m not one of those, “Macintosh are the only computers for creative professionals”, type of people. Whether it’s a Mac or PC, they’re all computers and computers are nothing more than tools, not gods that command our allegiance. I believe in using what ever tools I have to get the job done. That’s what having the “Can do spirit” is all about. So yeah, I have a PC, and have been using it in tandem with my Mac for some time now.
Back In The Day
My first Mac was a Power Mac 7100AV. At the time, the 7100 was a high end machine with more than enough power to run Photoshop, Quark Express, and Illustrator as long as my files weren’t too big. Honestly it was quite a bit more than I could afford but I felt I needed it to do serious design work. Back then I bought into the belief that many graphic artists shared, that being that you had to have the biggest and best Macs on the market if you were serious about your craft. That may have been true back during the Power Mac years but times and technologies have changed. If you’ve got the money and refuse to compromise on anything less than the best that’s fine. As for the rest of us who are on various budget restrictions, I’m here to share my shopping experiences in hopes that it will help you with your next purchase. I’ve come to realize that a lot of the time we develop a false idea of what we need based on desire rather than necessity. I came to this conclusion accidentally during the purchase of a hard drive. I placed an order for a external hard drive to extend the life of my 7100 and my supplier couldn’t fill it, nor could he find a decent alternative. So in a effort to keep from giving me a refund (which he would have with no problems), he asked if I’d be interested in anything else. I meditated on it for a bit and thought, for a few dollars more I can get one of those new iMacs. I reasoned that it would be like getting the external hard drive I needed with a mac wrapped around it. I really wasn’t looking to get much use out of the iMac other than maybe using it for book keeping, and you could play DVDs on it which was cool. I needed a new computer but I figured I’d need more power and expandability than this little “Toy Mac” had to offer. I had never really looked at the specs on it other than to see that it did have a nice 13GB hard drive. I was presently surprised when I started playing with my new iMac Graphite DV. Long story short, that little computer totally replaced my 7100. People where shocked when they learned that I was putting out the kind of work I was from the computer that looked like a glorified hairdryer. Needless to say, that was a while back and I’ve since had to make some modifications and upgrades so it would run OS X and stay productive. But it still runs and has a few good years left in it.
My Latest Purchase
As I was shopping for my third Macintosh I knew I wanted something portable because both my clients and my son keep me on the go. I didn’t however want the 17″ Macbook PRO because of the heft of the machine. Plus, I questioned if I could justify spending $2,400 (as of this writing) on a laptop. So I quickly focused my attentions on the 15″ MBP. Some question if a 15″ monitor is adequate for serious Photoshop work. The quick and easy answer is, no it’s not. No laptop display is. But ask yourself how accurate your image quality needs to be for a basic quick and dirty flyer or multimedia presentation? If your audience are designers and photographers there may be cause for concern. But the general public is not going to know whether you’re working on a 22″ or 13″ monitor as long as you take the necessary precautions and view your finished work from different monitors and or proofs. As I said before, I worked on my iMac for years with no problems I could blame on the size or quality of the 15″ display.
Back to the hunt. I did my homework and found that any computer running a Intel Core 2 Duo processor could handle my workload, which consists mainly of print design work with some web mixed in. I first thought about what I did on a daily basis, and what I wanted to do from time to time but couldn’t because of the limitations of my present systems.
So the 15″ MBP had everything I needed and some things I wanted, but the price tag was more than I wanted to spend. They average around $1700 (as of this writing) depending on where you’re looking. OK so what were my options? I could get a student friend to buy it for me. I could get a pre-owned mac from the Online Apple Store. I could buy a used one off Craig’s List. Or I could look at the 13″ Macbooks. After considering each option carefully I decided to go pre-owned from the Apple store. The machines are double and triple checked by Apple which means if Murphy’s law does decide to hit you, that buggy unit with your name on it will have already been purchased by someone else, returned and fixed before you get it. You also get the same warranties and guaranties as a person buying new but at a discounted price. There is one little problem I should mention, Apple refurbished, pre-owned Macs aren’t that easy to come by. It’s not like they have a factory where they’re cranking those bad boys out. You have to wait for the person who bought the one with the configuration you want, to return theirs. When I checked the Apple store’s refurbished section they didn’t have that great of a selection to choose from. So with the other options being too risky for one reason or another I decided to look at the 13″ Macbooks. Was this going to be enough computer for me? It has the same Intel Core 2 Duo processor, all be it at 2GHz instead of 2.6GHz. The hard drive was 160GB as opposed to the MBP’s 250GB hard drive not to mention half the ram. My 4 year old PC has a 160GB hard drive that I’ve only just recently put a dent in. And that’s mostly from graphics intensive gaming. Even though pride told me I needed a MBP, as I compared the specs, the Macbook looked like it would work. If it wasn’t for that little 13″ LCD. Then it hit me, I could buy a new MB and a nice 22″ LCD for around the same price of a refurbished 15″ MBP!
Surprising Revelation
So of course then I had to research LCDs and learned far more than most people need to know about monitors. But in the process of doing my research I came across a crucial bit of information. What I found out confirmed my decision to go small with the 13″ Macbook. I’m sure that you are itching to know what I found during my monitor research. I want to share what I’ve learned with you so you can make a informed decision about your next Macintosh purchase, but because of the subject’s complexity and because I simply don’t know all the facts, I’d rather not spread the wrong information or post a link to something negative here within a article that’s kind of off topic. I’d rather you go and check out the source and come to your own conclusions the way I did. That being said, if you’d like for me to send you a email with the link to this Information, just click here and shoot me a email and I’ll get it to you. If you own a Mac or are thinking of buying one you’ll want to study this info for yourself.
Final Results
So I settled on the Dell 2209WA 22″ e-ips LCD monitor for $266 direct from Dell, and the 13″ Macbook for $1259 from a store on the east coast to avoid the sales tax. For $1525 I have a Mac I can run around the house or around town with. And a monitor I can hook it or my PC up to when I need to do some down and dirty gaming, I mean design work. 
Wouldn’t you know that just a few days later they came out with the new 13” Macbook PROs. Yes it would have been nice to have one of those but I’ll do just fine without it. Now if you’re a gadget addict and have to have the latest and greatest, then nothing I’ve written is going to change your mind. But then again, with the economy being what it is, those who “just had to have it”, have probably got some sense beat into them by now. In some cases less is actually more.
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