Hi

My 8y old white plastic Macbook is about to be retired
Apart from the predictable aggro using this website its still pretty serviceable for what I do
So when its given to the kids I will be replacing it with another Macbook type thing

Since I bought it things seem to have moved on and now none of them seem to come with DVD/optical drives but I can have an external one for 65 quid.
Is this essential or should I skip it?

More to the point is all the Mac software now a download from itunes/Apple store or something similar? Even a big install like Office? I dont plan on installing any of the old software on DVD from this machine on the new one

Speaking of Office I got a work related Microsoft deal for this laptop which is no longer current for the Office suite at a tenner, the going rate now is £100 which Id rather not spend if avoidable. Me and the kids use the Google stuff but the GF cant get her (pretty) head round this and “needs” Powerpoint for work stuff.
We’ve never looked at the Apple software but its prob safe to assume Keynote is easy to use but is it easily transferrable to a machine at work using Windows?

Thanks – I appreciate these may be pretty basic questions but its been ages since I last looked at computer stuff

Get a £20 Samsung external dvd thing if you think you’ll need one.

I’m not a huge user of Office type apps at home so for the odd letter, spreadsheet to work out the household finances the free open source stuff works perfectly fine and i’ve had no problems with compatibility with MS Office either way.

I can’t see that an optical drive is essential – depends on what you use your current optical drive for. Any software you purchase these days will be available either via the App Store or via a download from the Internet if you’re buying direct.

I’m in exactly the same position as you – my old white Macbook, though fully functional is due to be downgraded and passed down to the kids, so ‘m after a new Macbook Pro. I’m just going for the basic model with the larger screen. Perfectly adequate for the sort of use it will see under my ownership.

Keynote won’t run on a windows machine. The Samsung DVD is a good machine or search eBay for a cheap external blu-ray drive.

Keynote will read and export in PowerPoint format

PowerPoint won’t export into keynote or read it.

Thats the drive sorted then – I wont bother initially

Keynote only needs to run on the new machine
My concern is using the documents it generates at my GF’s work

Surely thats not a problem?

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZ8ek-6ccc[/video]

No you can’t run Keynote on a windows machine, but you can run presentations created on a Mac on Keynote in Powerpoint on a PC so is seamless from that point of view.

I find Keynote easier to use than Powerpoint, but it still has defaults which make presentations look cheap (not as many as PPT, though). You can export presentations to PPT, PDF, video, HTML, jpeg/png/tiff so you’re pretty much covered. I usually do my lectures in Keynote then export to PDF for PCs connected to projects.

My version of Keynote will export as PowerPoint compatible format. BUT some fonts are not recognised by PowerPoint and it then throws it’s toys out of the pram and destroys your presentation to almost unusable.

Boy1 found this out for his GCSE Art presentation, but luckily did have time to fix it.

I’ve got a mac with parallels and windows 8.1, I pay £7.99 a month for Office and it gives em all the office suite of products for 5 users, so I have Office on my mac, office on the virtual machine, one on my daughters laptop and one on the iPad, as well as 1tb of storage on one drive.

I barely touch the VM now, everything on the mac side of it.

Or, before hand I used open office which is free, really easy to use and is a virtual copy of office. The only time it won’t convert anything to office is really heavy spreadsheets with loads of formulae embedded.

As suggested, I bought a £20 Samsung DVD player from Argos and works a treat.

We have an iMac and MacBook Air and run Office 365 on them, also on the kids Windows laptop for school stuff (something that in hindsight I wished we hadn’t bothered with). Never had an issue.

You don’t need an disc drive all your software will be downloaded mostly as apps, you can get free office apps but Microsoft Office for Mac wasn’t too expensive and may be worth getting to resolve any compatibility issues.
If you wait a month or so you could have a new MacBook, in principle lower down the range than a Pro but it’s got loads of new tech which may appeal, Google Apple Event 2015.

Either way I would just order the basic machine without any extras they can all be added later more cost effectively.

Keynote is also now available cross-platform via icloud.com – it has a presentation mode so theoretically you wouldn’t even have to export to a .ppt. No idea how good it is, but that is a possible workaround.

If you wait a month or so you could have a new MacBook, in principle lower down the range than a Pro but it’s got loads of new tech which may appeal,

I would say the new Macbook is more a super duper Air than an alternative to a Pro. The Pros have more for the money.

Either way I would just order the basic machine without any extras they can all be added later more cost effectively.

Are you sure? I thought some items (e.g. SSD storage) couldn’t be upgraded later.

Typing this on an iMac I bought about a year ago and I’ve only just remembered it doesn’t have a DVD drive. Buy one if you ever find you need it.

Try using PowerPoint Online through OneDrive, just sign up for some free space at OneDrive.com then create a powerpoint. The browser based version isn’t bad, I would only buy if you need features not in the browser.

Office for Mac has a beta version out, so in about 3 months there will be a new version, it’s worth hanging on if you can to get the new, the current 2011 version is pretty dated. If you buy a subscription at £60/year you’ll get the update free.

Thanks for the info so far

Just as Id decided not to bother with Office the monthly rental with a TB of offline goodness has caught my attention as Im currently thinking some off site backup may be wise with 500GB of photos and video

Is there an easy way to match a new Mac with the MS 1TB of storage?
Ive been looking at Timemachine but this laptop is ancient and its not immediately obvious

I guess I could just drag and drop my whole library from time to time, but there must be a more elegant solution

Cheers