What kind of Mac is best?? Help!

[galaxy]

I am new on this board. Sorry if I posted this in the wrong spot. I own the mbox 2 mini. My current PC computer was not compatible with protocols le. I’m going to buy a Mac soon. I’m not so savvy with computer talk. I want to buy a Mac book.
1. What Mac book should I get?
2. What specs can I show the sales person to double make sure protools will run?
3. What are the system requirements, what should the Mac definitely have? (Memory, ram, etc)
I know that these are general questions, but I really need to know soon. Also are there any upgrades that would make protools le run better on the Mac? I don’t need a 17 inch screen. I am a PC guy, I know nothing about Mac.

All the new Macs have snow leopard, I hear that is not compatible, I heard it works for some people who know how to tweak stuff (not me).
5. Should I get an older Mac with leopard? Or get a new Mac and buy leopard to install on it?
I need a sure safe solution. Is the 15 inch $1600 Mac a good choice?
Thanks -Ken

[se.audio]

If you really want a macbook, you'll have to go with the pro version (macbook pro) coz protools will very fast run out of steam with a regular macbook. I'd say buy one of the new ones, try to install protools 8.0.1 on it, and if it doesn't work, by the time you figured it out, digi will have released a compatible version. Get as much RAM as you can for it (the new ones take 8GB) but don't buy it straight away with your computer coz apple will charge you way too much for it.
Also get n external hard drive...

[jonslaten]

I had questions like you do now and was told to buy a Mac. Without knowing anything about Macs ( I came from PC's) I bought a Macbook Pro in 2008. It came with 2 gigs of Ram, but luckily for me at that time the 09's were being released that day and so they added 2 more gigs of ram for me and I paid $2,100 for a 2.4 Ghz with 4 gigs of ram. The processor is an Intel dual core. I also was unaware of having to use an external hard drive with Protools. So I would just use the Macs hard drive to record to for about a year and never had issues and never knew otherwise. Anyway I ended up buying a 1 TB Lacie 7200 Rpm external hard drive with firewire 800 and recorded my material into that. So that being said; if you can get your hands on a used 08 that comes with a firewire 800 port use that. I never have issues and everything runs smoothly for me. I don't know anything about the new Macbook Pros. So I can't help there. I use Protools 8 and have Leopard and won't upgrade to Snow Leopard until Digidesign gives us the go ahead. Hope I helped somehow.

[jonslaten]

On a side note . . . I have used the Mbox2 mini with my Mac. Works fine. I upgraded to the Mbox 2. Works great too. I'm a hobbyist musician.

[galaxy]

Originally Posted by elmostephane

If you really want a macbook, you'll have to go with the pro version (macbook pro) coz protools will very fast run out of steam with a regular macbook. I'd say buy one of the new ones, try to install protools 8.0.1 on it, and if it doesn't work, by the time you figured it out, digi will have released a compatible version. Get as much RAM as you can for it (the new ones take 8GB) but don't buy it straight away with your computer coz apple will charge you way too much for it.
Also get n external hard drive...

I have version 8.0. So you’re saying that digidesign will let me download 8.2 for free, and it will be compatible with snow leopard?
Can I run protools off an external hard drive or is the purpose of an external just to save files on?
Because I’m on a tight budget will this Mac book pro work?
-13-inch: 2.53GHz
-Intel Core 2 Duo
-4GB Memory
-250GB hard drive1
-SD card slot
-Built-in 7-hour battery2
-NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
-$1,499.00

[galaxy]

Originally Posted by jonslaten

I had questions like you do now and was told to buy a Mac. Without knowing anything about Macs ( I came from PC's) I bought a Macbook Pro in 2008. It came with 2 gigs of Ram, but luckily for me at that time the 09's were being released that day and so they added 2 more gigs of ram for me and I paid $2,100 for a 2.4 Ghz with 4 gigs of ram. The processor is an Intel dual core. I also was unaware of having to use an external hard drive with Protools. So I would just use the Macs hard drive to record to for about a year and never had issues and never knew otherwise. Anyway I ended up buying a 1 TB Lacie 7200 Rpm external hard drive with firewire 800 and recorded my material into that. So that being said; if you can get your hands on a used 08 that comes with a firewire 800 port use that. I never have issues and everything runs smoothly for me. I don't know anything about the new Macbook Pros. So I can't help there. I use Protools 8 and have Leopard and won't upgrade to Snow Leopard until Digidesign gives us the go ahead. Hope I helped somehow.

A friend of mine has a leopard disc. Can I install that on a new Mac book pro? Will pro tools work without question if I do that?

[jonslaten]

Ken, so you want to buy a new Macbook Pro that comes with snow leopard, then uninstall it and install Leopard? And you are going to do that with a friends already registered disk? I don't believe you can do that, unless there's someone out there with more common sense to tell me otherwise. But if you're not in a huge hurry, I'd wait till protools 8 gets approved to work with snow leopard. Otherwise, buy a used Macbook pro with Leopard, and install PT8. You'll have NO issues then. As far as you're question about the external HD. You can wait and buy it later when you have the funds. PT will run fine without it. I did it for almost a year. The external HD is used to save and write your songs to. Pro tools runs off of your computer's HD, not the external one. Let me know if you have any other questions. I'll do my best to answer them.

jon