Need a new Laptop.Should I choose a Mac?

Millionaire

Personally, I think the new Macbooks are overpriced and not as good as the model they replaced, which is the one I have.

Apple have been incrementally bumping the price up of their Macbook range over the last year or so. The base model used to be £699 then got bumped to £719 (which is the price I got mine for) then £749, then £799 and now £816.

Yet they removed the IR for the remote, the remote and also the firewire port from the package.

Marty_J

They did add an LED backlit display and a 7 hour battery.

poppy10_2

Marty_J wrote: »

Comparable PCs usually cost the same or more than a Mac.

:rotfl: .

Marty_J

poppy10 wrote: »

:rotfl: .

You might not find the idea so amusing if you actually looked.

A 13-inch Dell XPS with an LED display is £839. The MacBook starts at £819.

A Dell Adamo Desire is £1,649. A MacBook Air is £1,378.

A 24-inch Dell XPS One is £1,279. A 21-inch iMac is £1,225, and a 27-inch model is £1,378.

Apple just don't have a range of cheap computers like most other manufacturers do.

busenbust

HP Envy is yet another example - far far inferior IMO (and I am both a Windows and Snow Leopard user

busenbust wrote: »

HP Envy (not literally;)
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/hp-envy-15-notebook-15-09-2009/

poppy10_2

Marty_J wrote: »

You might not find the idea so amusing if you actually looked.

A 13-inch Dell XPS with an LED display is £839. The MacBook starts at £819.

Being disingenuous yet again, Marty.

The Dell Studio XPS comes with double the RAM (4GB vs 2GB), a faster and larger hard drive (320GB at 7200rpm versus 250GB at a snail's pace 5400rpm), and a much better graphics card (512MB Geforce 210 as opposed to the ancient 256MB Geforce 9400). And it's cheaper, not more expensive.

Marty_J

poppy10 wrote: »

Being disingenuous yet again, Marty.

The Dell Studio XPS comes with double the RAM (4GB vs 2GB), a faster and larger hard drive (320GB at 7200rpm versus 250GB at a snail's pace 5400rpm), and a much better graphics card (512MB Geforce 210 as opposed to the ancient 256MB Geforce 9400). And it's cheaper, not more expensive.

I don't see how £839 is cheaper than £819, but OK.

It doesn't have a 512MB Geforce 210 though, it has an "Integrated nVidia® GeForce 9400M" (which the MacBook also has). It also comes with 2 GB of RAM, but I'll give you the hard drive.

The MacBook has a faster processor, its RAM isn't crippled by an 800 MHz frontside bus, it has longer battery life, Bluetooth, a glass multi-touch trackpad, and it also comes with iLife and a full version of Mac OS X.

It's a better computer than the Dell, for less money.

poppy10_2

You must be looking at the wrong model, or lying again.

Here's the one I'm seeing on the Dell site:

Dell Studio XPS 13

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 2.13GHz (1066MHz frontside bus)
Memory: 4GB DDR3 RAM (2x2GB)
Hard Drive: 320GB 7200rpm (optionally: 500GB 5400rpm drive for no extra cost)
Graphics: 512MB Geforce 210M (800/1500MHz core/memory speed)
Battery: 56 watt hours
Wifi n networking, bluetooth, gigabit ethernet etc
Cost: £799

Apple Macbook

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P7550 2.26GHz (1066MHz frontside bus)
Memory: 2GB DDR3 RAM
Hard Drive: 250GB 5400rpm
Graphics: 256MB Geforce 9400M (450/1100MHz core/memory speed)
Battery: 60 watt hours
Wifi n networking, bluetooth, gigabit ethernet etc
Cost: £816

As you can see the macbook has a very slightly faster processor (2.13 vs 2.26MHz - hard to notice without benchmarking) - your beloved frontside bus is the same. It also has an extra 4WHr on the battery. Other than that the macbook gets spanked by the XPS in a huge way:

• Half the RAM (and maximum capacity of just 4GB in comparison to XPS's 8GB).
• Half the hard drive capacity, at creakingly slow 5400rpm
• Much slower graphics card, with half the RAM and much slower speed
• IMHO crappy looks in comparison to the sleek luxury Studio XPS, but that's a completely subjective issue

Yet it is more expensive, for no apparent reason, other than the fact that mactards are consistently willing to pay more money for an inferior product.

If you were to upgrade the macbook to try to get close to the XPS - you would need to pay £81 for the upgrade to 4GB RAM, another £123 for the hard drive upgrade to the 500GB 5400rpm provided free on the XPS - (there is no 7200rpm option for the macbook), taking the price well over £1,000. Then add another £21 for a DisplayPort to DVI dongle (that probably cost about 50p to make) if you want to be able to connect it to most external monitors, and another £21 for a DisplayPort to VGA dongle if you want to be able to use it with a projector. And yet this is despite still having much slower graphics (no upgrade available from Apple)

wh1sky_2

Do not buy mac. This price is just apple as symbol. You can get more than better laptop for less money.

Only if you are really a fan of apple get it. They are really quality and have a great user interface but they are overpriced

[Deleted User]

Comparing FSB speeds literally bears no relevance to real world usage unless you're planning to overclock the CPU in which case the greater the better. The difference in performance that 1066Mhz would deliver over 800Mhz is negligible to say the least, it just serves the 'bigger is better' mentality of thinking which is entirely inaccurate.