New Mac User. Not very good and would love some help.

So I am new to mac and I'm finding I don't like it as much as my windows. I hear so many good things about mac; How it is going to be tomorrows computer! Everyone told me to get on and learn it now. So I did and I'm such a windows gal that only the bare basics I get on my machine. I'm trying to find my tech specs but I'm not having any luck. I want to see how much memory I have and my video card. If someone can please help me on this that would be great. Aswell as what would be a good video card to get with it. I want to get a new one, because I love windlight... I don't want to be held back because of my video card. Please help that would be awesome.

Click the blue apple in the upper left corner of your screen and select About This Mac from the menu. You'll get a small summary of your system. Hit the More Info button for a very detailed list of everything you ever wanted to know about your machine.

Isn't the MacPro the only one you can change the video adaptor in?

They said it would be tomorrow's computer the day before yesterday!

It has a mouse with just one button on it. That's just WRONG

Except that it doesn't.

Th mouse that shipped with mine seems to have four buttons on it. Perhaps you are thinking of older Macintoshes?

Mari

First question: What model of Mac is it? A MacBook or MacBook Pro laptop? An iMac with a flat screen built in? One of the older iMacs that had the hemispherical base? A Mac Mini? A Mac Pro Tower? There's lots of different Macs out thee, even among the brand new models currently for sale.

Going to the apple menu and getting the system information will tell you a lot.

Once we know what you have, we can help you more.

Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB

Memory: 1 GB

Size: 512 MB
Type: DDR2 SDRAM
Speed: 667 MHz

Intel GMA 950:

Chipset Model: GMA 950
Type: Display
Bus: Built-In
VRAM (Total): 64 MB of shared system memory
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)

I thought all of this info would be helpful to you guys. I know it took me awhile to post back was a little busy. Yea, I know it's not the best of a laptop but I turned all my graphics down and everything and I still run like crap. Even wrose when I have CS open.

Yeah, the MacBook (as opposed to the MacBook Pro) is a very marginal system for accessing SL, just like my old Mac Mini was. You can barely do SL on it, but you're never going to get good frame rates with the limited video card capabilities in that laptop. And the video capability of the MacBook is not upgradable, either. It's graphics card is built into the motherboard, not on a daughter card like many Windows laptops. You'll need a much better laptop, a completely new computer, to really enjoy Second Life.

Technical specs for what you have:
http://support.apple.com/specs/macbook/macbook_mid_2007.html#store

Best suggestions:

Set graphics options to the minimums. Low draw distance, and all that.

Turn off local lighting.

Don't even consider the Windlight client. It will run, but with all the graphics options at minimums, you probably won't see any benefit. You definitely won't see the pretty skies and water.

Avoid any areas with 10 or more green dots on the map. Having lots of avatars near you will lag you to death.

Avoid any areas with huge numbers of different textures, as they will take forever to load, and your texture cache won't retain large numbers of textures.

Stay in skyboxes when you can. Being up in the sky and away from lots of other avatars, prims and complex builds will help your frame rate.

With luck, you might get 3 to 9 frames per second in a not very busy area. If you try going to a busy club, you'll be down to 2 frames per second or less.

Please note that I am not saying SL will be inaccessable. I lived with an even worse system than what you have (Mac Mini with only 32 MB VRAM) for two years in SL, and managed to make many friends, establish a fantastic home, and found a solid business in SL. But you won't experience SL as well as most people with that limited hardware. A VW Bug is a great car, but not race car. The MacBook is a sweet laptop for almost any non-gaming use, but not a graphics-intensive gaming system.

Thank you very much! It really bothers me because the guy said I could take out the chip and upgrade my graphics card! anything to make a sale! Well I really appearicate all your help and suggestions! Thanks so much

Sounds like the salesman normally sells Windows laptops, as most of them are made so all you need to do is pop a small cover of the bottom of the laptop, or maybe unmount the keyboard, and you can easily replace things like the graphics daughter card, the memory, or a built in wireless card. Most Windows PC's also make it fairly easy to swap out your hard drive.

With Macs, the user base they are aimed at is less prone to hardware hacking. So Apple will usually only make a laptop's memory and wireless option easily replaced by the user. A hard disk upgrade usually entails sending the laptop back to the factory, because they position it for efficent operation, not ease of swapping. Same for video options. They tend to use integrated hardware, to give faster response times and more efficient hardware layout, rather than snap-on, user-accessible cards.

The only Mac model that is very accessible for installing better video cards, more ram, more hard disks, or other expansion cards is the Mac Pro tower. And even there, your options for supported cards are limited.

that is a lot of information on how crapy a mac can be when it comes to trying to upgrade it's hardware. I wish I would have spoke to you before I purchased this hunk of junk! That's a lie it's great with everything else but my SL! Which enrages me because right now SL is my life until school starts up again lol.

In fairness to Apple, you don't buy modest laptops for their graphics potential. The video card is not typically upgradeable in a laptop. Recent Apple laptops are no more restrictive than those of any other manufacturer. You have access to the battery and memory, and with some disassembly, the hard drive and optical drive, but you typically can't upgrade the graphics or processor in a laptop.

Where did you buy your machine? If you bought it recently from an Apple store it's worth complaining. They should know better, and might bend some return rules to make it right with you. If you bought it from Best Buy, or bought it used, you're probably out of luck.

First, the MacBook is not by any means a hunk of junk. It's a fine computer, burt not for SL. And on the Second life website, under the system requirements, it says very clearly that MacBooks are not compatible with SL because of the built-in graphics card. You should have checked first.

My MacBook Pro is a great computer for SL, but it's also a powerful computer for other processor-intensive applications (I work often in graphics, and video, at which my mac excels).

If you've purchased it recently and was sold on the basis of you being able to change the graphics card, you need to take it back immediately and purchase something else. Since it doesn't sound like you're enjoying the Mac experience much and you probably aren't able to step up to a MacBook Pro, I'd recommend going back to a PC for you.

The MacBook is a great computer, but it's not good for graphics and that one above with the 950 graphics is the older model and is even worse than the current models for them. The graphics thing isn't a Mac thing at all. I know there have been a very very few specialty laptops meant for gaming that you can upgrade the video on, but these are extremely rare. Usually the only things you can upgrade are the memory and hard drive. You can order many laptops with an upgraded video "card" but you can't upgrade it once it's put together.

If you want a cheap laptop for SL, Dell's online small business section (and only the small business part) has some amazing deals on a low end Vostro 1500 that you can order with an an nvidia 8600gt for around $800. Sorry it's not a Mac, it's just a really good price.