Getting a new computer is such an exciting event for almost anyone.  But with so many choices and options it can become overwhelming very quickly.  

One of the most frequently asked questions from my clients, especially this time of year (around the holidays) is “how do I choose my new MacBook?”  Here is a quick and easy guide to help make your decisions a bit easier and to ensure that you are getting the computer that will serve you the longest.

Screen Size:

If you plan on never taking your MacBook outside of the office, then the decision is easier.  Screen size affects two important, yet diametrically opposed factors in selecting a laptop; Screen viewing size and portability.  So the question is, if portability is important to you, when you are outside of your office, what is the smallest screen size that you can live with?  If you are watching and/or showing movies, showing or creating video or Photoshop images … then a 13″ MacBook or MacBook Air probably would not be a good choice.  You should consider a 15″ or 17″ MacBook Pro.  However, if you prefer portability, weight and size over having a large screen while you are on the road, then a 13″ MacBook with perhaps a cinema display at your desk so that you have a nice and large screen while you are at your home or office.  Apple’s new 24″ LED Cinema Display does an absolutely incredible job of this and also provides power to keep your MacBook charged while it is plugged into the screen.  The same can be said if your main objective while traveling with your laptop is to send and receive email, surf the web and keep your twitter or facebook peeps up to speed on your comings and goings … then the MacBook is ideal.  I’ve been using a MacBook for the last couple of years as my main computer and love it.

Hard Drive:

In this case … the bigger the better.  Hey look, I know what you are saying; “but I only have a small amount of data … I don’t need much space, right?”  Wrong!  Email and attachments can very quickly start amounting to the tens and hundreds of gigabytes.  Yes … you read that correctly.  Photos, music and movies can easily top 100 gigabytes.  And let’s not forget, the operating system likes to have a minimum of 15% of free hard drive space in order for it to operate freely.  Any less than that and things begin to slow down and freeze.  So, hard drives are cheap … buy the largest they have at the time and be done with it.  

Memory (RAM):

Many people confuse Memory and Hard Drive.  Memory (RAM) or Random Access Memory is the temporary storage area that your computer uses to send information back and forth between things like your hard drive, the processors etc.  Think of RAM like a freeway.  The more RAM you have, the more lanes you have open on the freeway, the more traffic can flow and at higher speeds.  In fact, MAC OS X, when it loads up, is entirely in RAM.  So it doesn’t take a genius (pardon the pun) to figure out that the more RAM you have, the faster your computer will operate.  So my advice, as in hard drives is to order the maximum.  Your Mac requires 512 MB just to turn on.  The minimum you need to run most normal applications is 1 GB.  If you have more than one application running at the same time … your computer will slow down.  RAM is cheap and it will do more to speed up your computer than almost anything else.

Graphics Card:

Unless you create or edit movies and photos or are a heavy gamer … this section does not apply to you.  In the MacBook, you do not have a choice of graphics cards.  It is an all-purpose graphics card that balances graphics capability and speed with battery life.  And for most of us, it does an incredible job.

For all of the rest, the better the graphics card, the higher the processor, the more on-board RAM it has, the better the performance especially where rendering times are concerned.  The MacBook Pro’s come with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M processor and a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT high performance with either 256 MB or 512 MB on-board RAM.  Using the 9400M (M stands for mobile) processor provides good quality video with a smaller amount of energy which improves battery life.  When you need more power, you can use the 9600M GT.  Again … the more RAM you get, the better the performance you will experience.

Accessory ports:

The major change with the new MacBooks is the elimination of the FireWire port which has caused quite a controversy.  Even though the specifications between FireWire and USB 2.0 are similar, there is a noticeable speed difference between the two with USB 2.0 being the slower of the two.  If you are using your laptop to capture audio or video to and from an external device such as a portable hard drive then you need FireWire which is only available now on the MacBook Pro 15″ or 17″.  You should also choose a MacBook Pro if your video camera or other devices only support FireWire.  However, if you are only using your external ports for connecting to printers, external keyboard/mouse or for your backup drives then the MacBook will work fine.  I have chosen to try to live without FireWire and so far it has not been too bad.

To Air or not to Air:

One of the coolest computers on the market is the MacBook Air.  So thin and light it can easily get lost in the mass of paperwork on your desk.  The purpose of the Air is to fulfill the small but growing sector of laptops known as “Netbooks” or “Sub-compacts”.  As such, they have smaller hard drives, less RAM and fewer external ports.  As a portable computer it is extremely cool.  However as your only computer, you will run out of hard space FAST and not having all of the external ports can become very frustrating.  However, for a road warrior computer, where you have a desktop computer with all of your music, movies and manuscripts … the smaller 120 GB standard hard drive or 128 GB Solid State Drive, will not be as much of an issue.  The Solid State Drive is the same thing as a thumb drive in that there are no moving parts.  And theoretically use less power (longer battery life) and are less susceptible to failure.  For $500 price premium, I’m not sure that it is worth it especially if you have a backup system.

Backup:

Speaking of backup systems … the answer is OF COURSE you need one.  It’s not a matter of if a hard drive will fail … but when!  With hard drives so cheap and with Apple’s TimeMachine, there is really no reason not to have a backup of your data.  Here are a few points:

Your backup drives should be at least twice as large as the drive you are backing up.  This gives you plenty of room for multiple versions of the same file.

You should have at least two separate backup drives and keep one of them off site (at some other physical address).  Get in the habit of rotating your backup drives every week.  Take one of them to another location such as from the office to your home or vice versa.  That way if there is ever a fire, earthquake or other such disaster at one location, your data is safe at the other.