PC vs Macbook, which one to get?

shawn kemmel, post: 36450, member: 4559 wrote: i have a quad core HP laptop which is amazing for daily use but for some reason it is very glitchy with my serato software. Is it just like that cause its a hp laptop with a AMD processor?

Thats the real problem reading on the Serato DJ forum only a few have been lucky using AMD with Serato.

The thing with Mac is all their line of computers (year models) are basicly the same only real differance being ram and cpu so in most cases when a software/hardware manufactur test their product on one of them and it works it will work on all of the mac models. With windows it becomes more a gamble. even if the specs for two windows laptops are identical there is no guarenty they are the same.

This is a discussion that has no ending really. In the early computer days the same argument flew in connection with computer graphic work. Apple was king when it came to desktop publishing for the longest time. Then, PC platforms caught up and started to outperform the Macs and eventually DTP developers started releasing new versions on PC before Mac, ouch.

We saw the same thing in recording studios. If you didn’t have a ProTools HD system running on a PowerMac (or whatever fancy name they gave them) you couldn’t be taken seriously.

And now the DJ booth. I am a big PC guy, I actually make part of my living working on/with PC’s. I have never wanted a Mac of any kind. Still, for DJ-ing purpose, I now have one.

Reasons:

• The (audio) driver argument. Yes, you can get PCs to do what you need them to do, but the way Apple implemented its audio drivers trumps it. Making an aggregate audio device (i.e. several sound cards working as one) is easier but especially more stable than the ASIO route.
• The build quality. The aluminum casing is indeed sturdy. The magnetic power connector that prevents you from ever breaking off the power connecter on your laptop is a lot smarter than any connector sticking out of a laptop. I have had more than one laptop break the internal connector, rendering the laptop virtually useless (that connector is often soldered to the motherboard and can’t be replaced). Not that bad at home, but for life on the road …
• The lighted keyboard. Working in darkish DJ booths that is an advantage for me.
• Dual harddisk capability standard. There is a standard bracket for MacBooks (not cheap, but hey, it’s Apple) that lets you take the optical drive out and put a hard disk in its place. So having a setup with very fast SSD for system and a regular harddisk for crazy amounts of music is very simple. Most laptops don’t offer that functionality (technically possible but just not designed that way).

There are drawback too. Parts are crazy, price-wise. Only 2 USB ports. Filesystems that aren’t exactly interchangeable. A nice Thunderbird port on newer MacBooks with nothing to hook up to it. Harder (though not impossible) to tweak and fine-tune.

I use my MacBook solely for my music (ProTools) and DJ (Traktor 2.6) work. It only gets connected to internet to download music (and I often just do that on my PC then transfer it via USB stick, external HD or network) and to run updates of the software. There are no games, no productivity programs (like Word and stuff) on it. If I am not doing audio/dj stuff, it sits in its flightcase waiting for the next gig.

For everything else I still prefer my trusted PC with all its (hardware) flexibility, expandability and such.

So, if you can afford one, MacBooks are a great piece of equipment. If you want to stay with windows (oh my god, who wants windows 8 on a DJ machine … arghhhhh), go for Intel CPUs (processors). They tend to be slightly more stable and are most definitely faster when it comes to media work (audio and video).

Whatever choice you make though, do NOT use your DJ machine (Mac, Windows, whatever) for anything else but DJ-ing. If you have to (because you can’t afford a second PC or laptop for all the other stuff you want to do), make it dual boot. That way you can start the machine in either DJ mode or “regular” work mode and if something goes wrong while in regular mode, your DJ mode is still intact. Nothing worse than visiting the wrong website on saturday afternoon and getting infected by some nice malware while you need to use your machine that night for a gig.

Greetinx,
C.

I am going to close this then 😉 I think both sides have said all there is to say.