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Step 1
Decide which product line best meets your needs. Bigger spenders will want the “Mac Book Pro” product line, everyone else will want the basic “Mac Book.” Both product lines have top of the line storage and processing speed, and extra goodies that most PC laptops don't offer. But the main difference between the 2 product lines is the added features. With the “Pro” the laptop has an express card slot, whereas the plain old Mac Book requires a little help in the form of a USB adapter. You do get some better quality graphics with the Mac Book Pro, though it truly is only beneficial to gamers or designers. The difference in memory between the Mac Book and the Mac Book Pro is the memory (2GB, or 4GB and a separate memory for graphics so that it doesn’t share the system memory).
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Step 2
Consider your hard drive needs and the amount of money you are willing to spend. The extra large hard drive may not be worth the several hundred dollars, since the difference in size is only .2 GHz.
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Step 3
Purchase a warranty. Mac Books offers an extended warranty of 3 years ($600 for the Pro product line). Replacing an LCD can be in the thousand dollar range. One of the first things to go wrong with a laptop is the hardware. Some may think it is the software that crashes, but unlike a tower or desktop computer, laptops pack a lot of power in a small space, which means that parts get hot, cramped and banged around.
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Step 4
Get the notebook computer that comes with a built-in device called a “Super Drive.” The Super Drive is Apple’s disk burner. However, as an alternative you can take advantage of purchasing a memory key with 16 GB for well under $200.
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Step 5
Make sure your wireless router is 802.11n compatible, so that it works with the Wi-Fi offered with all Mac Books.
