I Finally Switched

Hi All,

I have spent a lot of time listening to my music collection through my wife's Macbook (as opposed to by Dell PC) and I far prefer the sound with the MacBook. My Dell works correctly, but is aging, and My wife's office was supposed to be furnishing her with a new Macbook Pro, but that looks like it is still a good bit in the future. There was a good deal last night at the Apple refurbished store, so I took the plunge and bought my own.

What I bought was a 2.16 processor 1 Gb RAM, 160 GB Hard drive Black Macbook for $999. (I hate the white ones.) I already found a great deal on ram, so I am upgrading that myself to 4 Gb. I also bought a Mini Toslink to Toslink cable to connect to my KECES DA-131 DAC.

This brings up a couple of questions. I'll still need to use Windows XP for a couple of applications, one for work (logging into the office software from home) and also for streaming movies from Netflix. I was going to get Parallels, but then I remembered that Bootcamp comes included with Leopard (my wife has Tiger.) If I boot into XP (once everything is set up) will the optical audio output work? I would hate to have to switch back and forth between optical and USB depending on if I am listening to music or watching a movie. I want to use the optical connection to take advantage of higher resolution music files as the KECES will decode up to 24/192, but if I have to throw my Trends in the mix for USB/SPDIF conversion, that knocks me down to 24/48.

Also, is it worth the money to buy Parallels, or will Bootcamp work just fine? I figure I'll have enough memory to go the virtual machine route if it is that much better.

This computer will be used for more than just music and movies. It will be used for word processing (reviews) and I will need some sort of financial program (the reviews on Quicken for Mac are bad) I have been using Microsoft Money 2005 and it works fine.

Any advice or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nels

Hi Nels - The optical output should work just fine with OS X and Windows. Mine works.

If you're going to watch Netflix on the Windows side I strongly recommend using Boot Camp. I have Parallels and it works great for many things, but you may be frustrated with the app for movies.