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 Now online (1)ijonspeches ...and 169 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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...getting (possibly) in debt to take out a loan for an Apple Powerbook G4 17" laptop? I've worked things out, and with all my other monthly outgoings, it'll come to about £172 a month. I dunno how much council tax and ren i'm gonna have to pay, but once I find out I can contemplate on getting it or not. I'd obviously be getting Reason 2.0 with it as well. Do you guys reckon I should go for it? >:) |
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no, don't go for it. |
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i dunno haven't seen you in a while :) |
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Hmmm, my general rule for getting overdrawn for "luxury" items is to save up half the money first, that way the loan/debt is smaller and subsequently the interest is less. Are you a full time student/do you live with students? If so you may not need to pay council tax. |
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no |
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borrow one from a friend for a week, just to see if you like it... |
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well, i'm employed 32 hours a week @ £3.60 an hour. i live with my mom, whos on child benefit. i know i'm gonna have to pay council tax and rent, but it should be a subsidised charge. after my existing loan, and my mobile phone bill, adding another £117 (for the Mac) onto my outgoings will be about £172 the way i see it, i'd rather get a loan, spend 3 years paying it off, and be able to get tracks done, rather than waiting 3 years or more to save up the money for myself |
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where do you work? |
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Maybe by the time you have payed for everything there's a new and better powerbook out there , thats the bitching thing about computers. But i say go for it , if your heart is set for music making then you should get it , what is money anyways? |
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3 years!?!?! ouch!! |
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This may sound crazy to you, but have you considered getting rid of your mobile phone? You'd be suprised what you'd save each year and if you've got a decent model phone you could sell that on ebay too... Perhaps take up a part time "work from home" job like putting letters together and mailing them out, they don't pay well, but you can do them while you watch tv/listen to music and after a couple of months doing 2 hours a night you should have a decent sum towards the mac. |
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£3.60 an hour will take you about 40 years just to pay off the interest |
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I would say definitely don't do it. 3 years is ages, it's like having a millstone around your neck. What if you want something else within the three years? What if you lose your job? etc etc etc Why don't you just buy a cheap pc or a pc laptop? Powerbooks are for rich people! Also, think of all the money the loan company, shop, whatever, will be raping out of you in interest. A mate of mine did the exact same thing with a laptop PC (3 years of credit) and I couldn't believe it! It seems like ages ago, and he's still less than a year into paying it off. And believe me, he regrets it......... |
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"But i say go for it , if your heart is set for music making then you should get it , what is money anyways?" Sido has a point- I can't remember who it was, but some American producer bought £10,000s worth of equipment in one fell swoop, getting himself incredibly in debt (he'd never made tracks before), he was knocking out tunes within a couple of days and was published after a few months. By throwing yourself into it wholeheartedly and forcing yourself to get good (if only at laptop DJing) in order to pay it off, may just be the ticket to success... |
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i wouldn't be up for that. debt is the worst imho. it's one thing to get a roof over your head and another thing to have a shiney toy. what do you have for making music right now? and i'm w/ manicminer ... get a dell, not a mac. not to start a war over it or get into the grit just my opinion. |
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well, the loan comes with protection, in the event of unemployment and sickness, death, etc etc etc i think i might go for it....if it's economically viable for me >Ceri CJ i'm afraid getting rid ofmy phone is out of the question - mobile telecomms is the only way i can get in touch with my girlfriend. but nice idea though |
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yes, yes yes yes yes yes-- But you might consider just getting a 15.1 inch, and a second monitor. I've had my 15 inch 550 since it was released a year and a half ago. It's so fucking tough. It's been thrown across rooms, been through 3 operating systems with only one clean wipe (when i moved up to OSX), and it still runs logic audio more effectively than my friend's 2 ghz pc. |
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172 quid a month is shitload of money!!! miss one payment and you're fuked!! seriously, i'd think about it big time, could fuck you up in the future. less is more |
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oscillik, If you ask me get an old PII 400mhz for £200 or something. You'll be able to everything you wanna do on that. Don't piss away 2k. No offence but that'd be a waste of money. |
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yeah but the 15" model has issues with running quite hot (from what i've heard) and also i'm one for all the gzmos - the 17" has backlit keyboard etc etc etc and anyways, the built-in Bluetooth and wireless lan is a bonus for me. i can totally believe what you say about it running logic better than a pc....that's the main reason i want apple over pc.....they just work! heh |
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powerbooks and expensive audio hardware are not just for the wealthy. I am incredibly broke, starving sometimes, financially rough existence, but the hardware I have is not like caviar or expensive club med vacations, and those are for rich people. An RCA to quarter inch adapter costs lest than a toast point with caviar, I'd imagine, and it's a gazillion times more useful. Hardware is an investment of non-financial properties. |
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but that system wouldn't run reason 2.5 my mates got a AMD Athlon 1.3GHz 256MB ram, and that still comes up with out of memory messages on reason 2.0! |
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another option- find a powerbook g3 PISMO, the 400 or 500, but MAKE SURE IT'S A PISMO W/ 2 FIREWIRE PORTS. Those machines are fucking awesome. Something about the hardware design makes them fast as shit for nearly any purpose. I ran cubase 5 to my hearts content with many many many plugins, and I'm sure that if I had been running under osX with logic I'd have been flying even faster. Could get one of those with maxed ram and an extra big drive for 500 bucks, no problem, i'd think |
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yeah i know, but with what i'm guesing from my calulations, i might be able to afford it...i just wont be able to buy much for 3 years....unless i get signed with my music ;) wishful thinking methinks, but at least i'll have a KICK ass computer now instead of in 3 years |
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yeah but over here in england stuff like that is either 1) hard to come across 2) if you DO come across it, it's FUCKING expensive! i'd much rather get something that's top of the line now i want a G4 coz its a 128bit CPU pissess all over PC based architecture |
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Apple has a program called "Apple Loan", which is basically Apple throwing you a line of credit through a provider. I actually used this service to purchase a G4 powerbook. The monthly payments ended out to be considerably less than what you plan on paying. I am very happy with the machine. |
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You can read about it at www.apple.com if you weren't already aware of the service. |
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In fact that Mac will cost you effectively £4k plus. Get an old PII 400mhz, it'll hone your skills much better and it'll create much better disclipline when you start making tracks. Imagination is more important than the latest piece of equipment. I think you'd be making a gross mistake. You could end up losing interest in making tracks and then what do you do? Don't just dive in. Its a fool who ploughs in to something without mapping out the various possibilities and risks, in life you have to be able to manage risk. People who are successful in life, do things with the least risk involved. This is a situation where you don't have to spend £4k at all. |
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that's exactly what i'm planning on using to get my G4! :) |
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holy shit, oscillik, i thought you were talking about apple loan, and was wondering why you were talking about so much money.... i think you can get as low as like 70 bucks a month with the option to pay lump sums whenever you want, on a fat powerbook. |
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oh, maybe you are talking about apple loan. Also- Don't buy a first string mac unless you are crazy and rich. The middle models of the 3 speed releases are usually the best, and if you can find the actual money instead of an apple loan, you can usually find em for 500 dollars less with a little searching. |
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oscillik, Trying to make money from music is a fantasy, no offence. It has to be a pleasure. Why does everyone wanna try and make money from music? Its just such a fantasy. And even those who make what little money they do, its hardly a living. Its puts so much pressure on things. If it happens it happens, but christ don't rely on it. Weird. |
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yeah but i've messed around with doing tracks on a P1 chip, 75MHz (overclocked to 100MHz), i've used many various system specifications, of both PC and Mac based systems. trust me, i wouldn't lose interest. please don't get me wrong - your idea is totally valid, and under normal circumstances, i would go with your idea. but open to me at the moment is the possibility of getting the best system available for music production. Windows is shit. It crashes too much, too many problems with incompatibilities, etc etc etc. I have not come across any Mac that has crashed on me, and since OS X is based on BSD UNIX, the likelihood of it crashing is pretty slim. i'm refusing to use a PC based system, if i'm gonna take out a loan, i'm gonna get something that's gonna last me and stuff. i seriously have a thing against Microsoft lol |
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Well if you ask me you're being stupid. You'll regret it. Trust me a PII 400mhz will be perfectly fine. You can have all the best gear in the world but without the imagination and drive it won't amount to shit. |
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seriously, you can get the same sounds and tunes out of a battered old mac than getting into debt for grands. if you've got the tunes in you, they'll come out. no matter what equipment you' using. what can't you do on an old computer that you can do on a new one?? |
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Exactamondo! |
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I have several PCs, including two P4s, and two macs in my studio and the new Powerbook is by far the best to work with out of them. Windows XP has been horrible and I rarely even bother with those machines for music editing at all since I've been using the Powerbook. I recommend the OS X system if you are going to run software like Reason and Cubase. I have been running these programs on Mac OS and Windows both for about 2 years and the Mac systems are MUCH more stable...especially the OS X which I've been running since September of this year. My Powerbook has not locked up ONCE since I bought it...whereas my P4 PCs (one is a Dell and the other is an HP) lock up and crash more than my Win 98 machine! Go for the Powerbook. |
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yeah, but if you have all the imagination in the world and no gear, it's a fucking situation and a half. I've been patiently braced against every hardware/financial bottleneck imaginable for 5 years. There are a lot of other ways to make money with audio hardware and a good computer than just composing music. I mean, if making music or working with audio hardware didn't have a massive lucrative end to it, the hardware wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. I can now sell studio time, digital audio services (audio touch up work, mastering, recording), to anyone I please, and it's because I have a miniature version of all the vital components now. I've learned that the starving musician stereotype is quite fitting, but it's a very rewarding reality most of the time. Starving for better hardware has treated me well spiritually. |
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tis a bitch to not have the gear that you need to get the sounds out of your head. but where theres a will theres a way i think. you dont know the pain its took for for me to be this far with the shite gear i've got at the moment. nightmare, but fuck it you know, i WILL get the sound i want, with or without money, you know |
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i'm required to purchase that exact computer for my major in computer animation. seems worthwhile, but if you don't have to buy it, don't. |
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They've been some great electronic musicians down the years who have down some excellent music with bugger all equipment. Granted some basic equipment with certain functionality is helpful but imagination is worth 100x more than that any day. |
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