My next laptop

When I was browsing the web the other day on my MacBook using Google Chrome, I’ve got a small pop-up saying that Google Chrome is basically dropping support on OS X Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion and I thought to myself, I need a new laptop.

The Mac Pro is my main machine now, and its running OS X El Capitan flawlessly, but my laptop isn’t capable of running El Capitan, not even with some modification like with the Mac Pro. There will be a time that almost every developer drops support for those operating system just like what happened to OS X 10.5 Leopard. Don’t get me wrong MacBook from early 2008 isn’t getting to slow for my needs, the lack of support is what worries me, and that is the biggest reason why I am going to save up some money for a new MacBook.

I’m thinking about saving up for a MacBook Air 13 inch, the MacBook Pro is just to expensive for me, and I don’t want to pay for power that I don’t need. The only thing I’m doing when I’m away from my desk is some light photo editing, browsing the web and responding to e-mail. The 11 inch MacBook Air is cheaper, and would be more affordable for me but the screen size is just to small for me, because I like to have multiple applications open side by side, and even on a 13 inch screen it can be irritating some times.

If I’m going to buy the MacBook Air brand new from Apple’s website I’m going for the base line model with the RAM upgraded from 4 gigabytes to 8 gigabytes because thats just more future proof. However buying a used 2014 MacBook Air is way cheaper and I don’t have a big budget because I’m still going to school so I can’t work full time.

If you have any suggestions for me, let me know in the comments. If I saved up the money, should I go for a brand new MacBook Air, or a used 2014 MacBook Air?

Buying a pre-build pc or building your own?

Computers became a huge deal in our society and there are still loads of people who are just buying a pre-build pc. In todays post I will discuss if its better to build your own pc or to head out to the store and buy a pre-build system.

Building your own pc gives loads of satisfaction, you can be proud on what you’ve build. Its really nice to be able to change everything about the computer. You can choose the components yourself, and if the budget is high enough you can build it however you like. Most gamers build their pc themselves or they hire someone to do it for them

and the reason they are doing this is because they can choose whatever you like. Sure there are some gaming brands out there like Razer and Alienware, but those are pre-build which means that the choice you have to choose the components is very limited. If your building your own pc however you can make it as crazy as you want it to be. If you want to use four graphics card, and a crazy eight core processor its possible but there are some downsides to it.

Depending on your budget, a prebuild pc isn’t as powerful as a own build pc, but there are some things which make it much more reliable for some of the computers users out there. A prebuild pc always comes with some sort of warranty, so if something breaks you can take it to the store, and the manifacturer will repare it for you. Also getting a copy of Windows is quite expensive, and if you don’t know how to torrent and activate an installation of Windows succesfully this could be a huge disadventage of building your own pc. It is possible to upgrade a pre-build pc, but it is a bit difficult some times. If you need some special hardware chances are it isn’t supported on a pre-build system, but if you build your own you can make it supported by buying the right motherboard, processor etc. And thats what I like about building your own computer. You can build it to your needs, and with pre-build pc’s this isn’t the case sometimes.

So if you need a new computer should you just buy one or build it yourself? It depends, are you a poweruser, and do you like to play games or are you editing on a professional level? Then I would buy a pc because chances are if you do those things you will know a bit about computers and you can make a very powerful computer for a better price. If your the type of person who just needs his computer for the basic task, or if you just don’t know anything about computers pre-build is the best option for you.

OS X El Capitan on Mac Pro 1.1

After owning a Mac Pro for one month I thought it was time to upgrade, and so I did. Choosing a graphics card was not so hard, I wanted a budget graphics card with the capability of playing some light games so I went with a Radeon R5 230. The graphics card works perfect but I lost the boot screen because it isn't flashed. My Mac Pro doesn't recognise the card as an R5 230 but as an ATI Radeon 6000 series which isn't a big deal to me.

Installing OS X El Capitan was very easy and it took me literally 5 minutes. I have just one complaint, and those are the random crashes and just the stability overall. The machine goes into sleep randomly and just doesn't wake up but when I hit the power button it turns off instantly and in a normal situation you have to press the power button for 10 seconds until it shuts down. What irritates me the most is that some applications just quit by them selves. This mostly happens just before it goes into sleep. But apart from that El Capitan works really smooth and I enjoy working on it. If I have to do some really important work I'll switch to my Lion installation which is on my second hard drive until I've solved this issue. 

I'm going to post a tutorial about how to put El Capitan on a Mac Pro 1.1, so if your curious about how I did this make sure to check in next week!

Are the 2006-2009 MacBooks still useable?

Apple has brought out a lot of MacBooks over the past years, and one of the most iconic MacBooks are the original one's from 2006 until 2010. Today, I am going to tell you why these laptops are one of my favourite laptops ever made.

The build quality of these laptops is absolutly amazing. Sure it gets scratched up over the years, and the plastic is going to break at some places, but thats to be expected. I've used my 2008 MacBook for over 2 years as a desktop replacement so it was running a lot and it has never crashed. The screen could have been better, because the colors are starting to give a yellow tint after a few years, and the keys are getting a bit mushy to but its still useable.

OS X Snow Leopard is one of the best operating systems out there, because its very stable and it has never crashed on me. When I was running Lion on my MacBook the fans would go crazy at idle and when I reinstalled Snow Leopard it all acted normal again. And Snow Leopard has still support, and a lot of developers are still making apps for it, so its still useable. You can still use it for day to day tasks like Skype, e-mailing and watching video's but if your doing a lot of processor or graphicscard intensive stuff I wouldn't recommend this computer because the hardware is old. But for normal tasks these laptops are really great, and mine has served me well over the years.