upgrading to macbook pro

[gharbud]

hi all ,i currenty use a sony viao laptop to dj with, and have been thinking for a while about upgrading to a macbook, i have a few questions and would like some opinons, with my viao i have 4 usb ports one for soundcard, one for external drive and one for wireless mouse, i have looked at macbooks and they only seem to come with two???, i know it says they have a firewire ports, can i run my soundcard or external drive off these??

Also my viao has 3gb ram, some of the macbooks ive been looking at only have 2gb would this be sufficent to run vdj7 as it says on its website a minimum of 2gb on a mac, so why is the minimum different on windows??, i am only looking at second hand macs at the moment,

What are the advantages of macbooks over other laptops

thanks graham

[yourdj]

I run Serato on Macbook 2.5 ghz, 2 gig ram and it has never once failed (3 years). You can upgrade to 4 gig for about £30.
Just a matter of sticking in the extra two. VDJ should be less cpu than Itch?

Main advantage IMO is you can shut the lid and reopen it again and start djing in a matter of seconds, so great if you need to move rooms etc.

It is also very stable and you can run windows as well as mac on them so have the best of both worlds.

re the Usb port can you not use a dongle thing and split it?

[gharbud]

thanks fro the reply, as for the splitting of usb prots i forgot to mention that, is it safe to split them? is their performance issues wen splitting them??

[gharbud]

oh and can you do the ram upgrade yourself? and another question i forgot, ive heard some people have had issues with external drives not being recgognised with mac systems is this true?

[DJ James Lake]

I have the 17" macbook pro, it has 3 usb ports and I have an express card giving an extra 2 ports, so 5 in total.

If you are using a USB hub make sure its a powered one and you will be fine.

I tend to connect crucial devices that need to be fast like controllers and soundcards direct into the mac, hard drives run through a usb hub and I run between 5 and 6 drives depending on whether I am running a video setup or normal audio.

[yourdj]

oh and can you do the ram upgrade yourself? and another question i forgot, ive heard some people have had issues with external drives not being recgognised with mac systems is this true?

You just put it in the back. I think you might be being a bit paranoid.
A large majority of pro DJ's use macs. i was surprised walking around BPM - 90% of stalls had them.

why not borrow one from somewhere and test it. I do not think you will have any problems.

[rossken]

I use a 15 inch Macbook Pro, and it has two USBs and one firewire. I run my external HDD through the firewire and have a USB hub for my soundcard and DMC2 controller. USB Hub in one USB and mouse receiver in the other. No problems so far.

[yourdj]

Hi Ross, just twigged that's you

[rossken]

Hi Ross, just twigged that's you

Did you not realise?

When you were on the phone today I thought I recognised your voice from somewhere, like actually knew it - Later I realised it was because of your Youtube videos!

Probably shouldn't go too off topic.... Sorry!

[sleah]

Main advantage IMO is you can shut the lid and reopen it again and start djing in a matter of seconds, so great if you need to move rooms etc.

I'm afraid that's a complete red-herring. It's entirely down to configuration! It just so happens power saving when you shut your lid is switched off.
It is a simple setting in Windows (dunno bout Mac) to stop anything happeneing when you shut the lid. I always set laptops like that, my PCDJ laptop continues playing happily along with it's lid shut


It actually sounds more like a downgrade to the Mac! You're loosing features (such as the extra USB ports) and already adding memory before you've bought the thing

Are you SURE you need to change???

There are no advantages or disadvantages to either, it's down to personal preference - once both are set up correctly.

If you're current system is working perfectly well, and you are ONLY changing because someone told you Macs are better, with no real justification in your situation, then it would be a foolish waste of money. As indeed it would be if it were visa-versa
Unless of course you just fancy something new and shiny