Buy a mac now or later?

[rocknroll86]

I just bought pro tools mp 9 +mobilepre and am anxious to get rolling should i buy now during macbooks clearance sale or should i wait for apples new stock.
Was considering the 13" macbook pro with i7, possibly a 15" with some better specs. Will these laptops have the power to handle the job or what should i do just want to build a basic studio without paying more than what these computers are worth, was also considering building a pc with purchased windows 7 but am worried about coding/legit issues?
Thanks.

[rocknroll86]

ill answer my own question now that ive done the research and can prob help someone else, the best option is buying an Imac currently the cheapest compatible macbook pros are the 15" which need modifying to 7200rpm at that price even season clearance sale 100$ off or not, youre talking over 2gs.
The standard imac comes equiped with more usbs and 7200rpm the 4gb ram is more than enough, and costs like 800$ less.
Happy recording here i come!

[PD-John]

The iMac will give you quite a bit more performance and power for the price compared to the MacBook Pro, where you pay for portability (lots of P words in that sentence..!) If you don't need portability, definitely go with the iMac - they're great computers. However I do most of my stuff on a 13" 2011 MBP (i7) because I move around a bit, and it's always performed very well. Completely depends on your needs.

With the hard drives, it may be a better option to buy an external 7200rpm drive for recording instead of upgrading the one that comes in the Mac. If I read your post correctly you intend to upgrade the system drive, which you ideally shouldn't be recording to.

[rocknroll86]

Well now my current intension are to record directly into the imac just for some current projects, I havnt done much research on external drives how much am i looking at for lets say a terabyte external drive, and can i use a basic usb 2 for direct recording to external?

I noticed the firewire stuff and external are the same price as the computers im looking to invest in.

[albee1952]

Macs don't support recording to USB drives. They all have a firewire port so a good firewire drive will be needed(OWC are a good choice), OR you can swap the optical drive for a second internal drive if you're game(youtube.com has videos showing how). There are also some thunderbolt drives on the market and that should also work fine. I highly recommend an i7 quad core, no matter which iMac or MBP you are considering. The horsepower is excellent(and you can't have too much power)

[PD-John]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Macs don't support recording to USB drives. They all have a firewire port so a good firewire drive will be needed(OWC are a good choice), OR you can swap the optical drive for a second internal drive if you're game(youtube.com has videos showing how).

Really? I've been recording to an external USB 2.0 7200rpm Seagate drive for over a year now and it's been fine. This is mainly because an MBP only has one FW port and I use this for my interface... so to avoid daisy-chaining I use a USB drive.