Gaming on a Mac

57210788

57210788

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O.K I know this is probably a dumb question but I have never had anything at all to do with a Mac in my entire life. I can get a slightly used Mac from work for a fairly decent price and am needing to upgrade my lap top so I'm thinking of doing it. Here are the only specs I know about it.
MacBook 13 inch 2.4GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 667DDR2 4GB RAM, 250 GB Serial ATADrive. If I knew more I'd list it but that is all the sheet says.

I guess I have some questions.
1)Will a Mac be a hard thing to "learn?" Is the setup similar to what I'm used to? I have tried Linux in the past and been so freaking confused I could barely shut the stupid thing down.

2)How is gaming on this unit? Could I play all the Half-lifes, Starcraft 2 (when it's out)
etc. or are these things not set up for gaming.

3)Compatibility with Windows. If I download pictures from my camera on my windows computer can I tranfer them to the Mac with ease or do the two not exchange info easily?
 
1) the set up is plug in and hit the start button
2) it's a mac, there is no Half0life on Macs ..with that intel chip you could install windows xp and play some of those games. ..hl2 on a macbook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGGtrkZ6088

3) unless your camera saves files in a propietary format no you shouldnt have any problems, just save files as jpg or better yet; as a TIFF
 
]O.K I know this is probably a dumb question but I have never had anything at all to do with a Mac in my entire life. I can get a slightly used Mac from work for a fairly decent price and am needing to upgrade my lap top so I'm thinking of doing it. Here are the only specs I know about it.
MacBook 13 inch 2.4GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo, 667DDR2 4GB RAM, 250 GB Serial ATADrive. If I knew more I'd list it but that is all the sheet says.
Click to expand...




1)Will a Mac be a hard thing to "learn?" Is the setup similar to what I'm used to? I have tried Linux in the past and been so freaking confused I could barely shut the stupid thing down.
Click to expand...

I recently switched over from a pc to Leopard OSX 10.0.5. It does take some getting used to. But it is not like to will be dumbfounded the first time to use it. The one thing you're going to have to get used to is which programs are used for mac. For example, what is the Word counterpart to OSX etc etc.

I think you will really like iLife. If it doesn't come preloaded you should definitely buy it. It has alot of good programs like iWeb, iMovie, iPhoto and other stuff.

You also dont really have a "start" menu, everything is located in little icons at the bottom of your screen which you can set to what you want it to be.

Everything is pretty straightforward, Macintosh Hard Drive is essentially My Computer, and you have the same folders as XP (My documents, program files=applications. etc)

2)How is gaming on this unit? Could I play all the Half-lifes, Starcraft 2 (when it's out)
etc. or are these things not set up for gaming.
Click to expand...

Gaming would be good. However, if you really want the best out of your games, you really need to use Boot Camp. Boot Camp basically creates a partition and loads full windows onto it. There are other like VMWare Fusion that run a virtual machine and are good for everyday stuff but can play zero games.

If you do use Boot Camp you need, well, should have a full copy of XP or Vista, and get an external hard drive to back up your stuff just in case something goes wrong.

3)Compatibility with Windows. If I download pictures from my camera on my windows computer can I tranfer them to the Mac with ease or do the two not exchange info easily?
Click to expand...

They exchange just fine. OSX uses the same file formats as every other OS. However, i am not 100% by, say, using a USB cable they will transfer. I have never tried that so i dont know. But if you put them on a CD or flash drive they transfer with no problem.

Hopefully this answers some of your questions. If you want to know anything else, just ask me.

My Mac

iMac 24"
Intel C2D @ 2.4 Ghz
2 GB DDR2 667
ATI 2600 PRO
320 GB Hard Drive

Have yet to test it on HL2/COD4/Orange box games.
 
57210788 said:
2)How is gaming on this unit? Could I play all the Half-lifes, Starcraft 2 (when it's out)
etc. or are these things not set up for gaming.
Click to expand...
Most games require Windows. Half-Life 1 and 2 (and episodes) all require windows. However with boot camp you can set up Mac and Windows on your macbook.

However all Blizzard games (Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft) work on both Mac and Windows.
 
A regular Macbook won't do gaming very well, or at all, seeing as it has an integrated graphics chip. The video Stern posted was on a Macbook Pro.
 
Now that they have Intel chips and can run XP there's not much difference.
 
Looks good to me.

So is the Macbok on the You-tube vid using this bootcamp/windows setup?

Can bookcamp do the partition for me or do I need additional software like a Mac version of Partition magic?
 
My friend has a macbook pro. It runs Half-Life 2 fine. Episode Two is slightly more difficult, but even that's playable.

If you like macs, get a mac... but there are many problems with dual-booting a PC operating system. One such is harddrive space.
 
57210788 said:
Looks good to me.

So is the Macbok on the You-tube vid using this bootcamp/windows setup?

Can bookcamp do the partition for me or do I need additional software like a Mac version of Partition magic?
Click to expand...

Boot Camp is already pre-loaded. All you need is:

A) An external hard drive to back up your stuff IN CASE something goes wrong. Only if you want one though.

B) A copy of Windows XP or Vista.

Watch these two videos. They explain everything you need to know.

PART ONE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94LllwDntpA

PART TWO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSiqpdp_1AA&feature=related
 
57210788 said:
Yeah I'll definately be gaming on it. If I wanted a lap top that I couldn't game on I'd keep the old one.
Click to expand...

You need to find out what GPU you're running. If you run one of those Integrated Graphics setups then you really can't expect to play anything beyond probably HL2 (mainly because of how well HL2 is optimized). Even then, you'll likely have trouble running it on anything higher than low / medium likely.

There's a slight chance of you being able to run StarCraft 2 because of how low Blizzard sets their minimum spec's, but I'd be guessing you'll have to run it at bare minimum settings just to hit playable FPS.
 
<Games>
<Mac>
Two words that should not be used in the same sentence
 
Well, assuming it has an ATI 2600XT, it's gonna run pretty meh. Add more meh as a result of bootcamp, and you end up with... meh.
 
Did anyone look at the first post?

He has a 13" MacBook, which means it has integrated graphics. As said earlier, he won't be doing much gaming past HL2/FEAR on windows.
 
ricera10 said:
Did anyone look at the first post?

He has a 13" MacBook, which means it has integrated graphics. As said earlier, he won't be doing much gaming past HL2/FEAR on windows.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it is not the "because it is a mac" factor that won't really let you play games, it is the fact that the integrated graphics will kill you.

If you really DONT need a laptop, i suggest saving up for a 24" iMac. It is what i have and dear god i love it.

If you DO need a laptop, save up for something that has a 8K series card, the 8800M is it? Yeah i know those aren't the greatest gfx cards, but it does better than integrated.
 
Anything is better than an integrated... that's like having no GPU at all.
 
Nemesis6 said:
Well, assuming it has an ATI 2600XT, it's gonna run pretty meh. Add more meh as a result of bootcamp, and you end up with... meh.
Click to expand...

I thought i would throw this in that Windows runs natively when you install it on Bootcamp. It is not like a virtual machine where it goes through other stuff.

At the very start of Bootcamp you partition your Mac hard drive you about any size you want. This creates a separate partition that is used to put Windows directly on to it.
 
What's the point in buying a mac then? Wouldn't it just be better to buy a PC and install OSX Leopard? I mean since Macs are so expensive, it would pay off quite well to just get the OS instead.
 
Nemesis6 said:
What's the point in buying a mac then? Wouldn't it just be better to buy a PC and install OSX Leopard? I mean since Macs are so expensive, it would pay off quite well to just get the OS instead.
Click to expand...

It's personal choice. Yeah you could go with what you said and buy a pc then put osx on it. Personally, that is what i would do but i had really no choice in buying this as it was a christmas gift. I would rather have gotten a pc also.

I like the simplicity of a mac.

What i tried to get across in my previous post is that boot camp does not affect windows performance.
 
Geogaddi said:
A PC won't run OSX without extensive hackery.
Click to expand...

I have no use for OSX. Anything I want done on a Mac I can do on a PC. It might not be easier, but it'd certainly be a hell of a lot cheaper.
 
Nemesis6 said:
What's the point in buying a mac then? Wouldn't it just be better to buy a PC and install OSX Leopard? I mean since Macs are so expensive, it would pay off quite well to just get the OS instead.
Click to expand...

Unlike Windows XP or Vista, OSX is written exclusively to run on Mac based architecture/hardware, and all of the drivers are integrated into the OS directly rather than through third party driver installations (such as graphics drivers etc etc). Apple only produce a limited range of hardware configurations, so they know exactly what your mac is capable of and they can streamline the OS handling accordingly. Albeit it's possible to get OSX running on non mac hardware, there seems little point tbh, given you are likely to run into driver conflicts you will be unable to resolve.

Apple are a box seller in exactly the same way that Dell are, the only difference being that Apple have their own OS as well.
 
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