Need a new Laptop.Should I choose a Mac?

busenbust

Marty_J

callum9999 wrote: »

Fact is, a LOT of people solely buy a Macbook because its shiny looking and has the Apple logo on the back.

Is there a reason anyone should believe this "fact", or is it one of those made-up ones?

Robgmun

Marty_J wrote: »

Some PCs are more expensive.

PC's can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be. That is the beauty of PC's, the sheer choice and options that are avaliable to you. With Apple the mac's are much more nailed down and. 2 years ago i bought a Dell XPS H2C 720 PC, it cost me £1500 :eek:

it has the following spec
Quad Core CPU Q6850 overclocked to 3.7Ghz (:eek:)
8Gb Ram
2 x WDRaptor HD at 10,000rpm in a RAID 0 Array
2 x Nidiva 8800GTX in SLI
1 x 700Gb secondary drive at 7200Rpm (storage)

But i tell you what, it's was faster than any mac you could buy at the time and still faster then most computers today. And still eats games like Cysis and Mass Effect 2 for breakfast (mac can't even play that many games). Can do any task in a flash and i never have to wait for anything, and with Windows 7 installed the software finally matches the hardware and feels like a real beast!

But you can get a great kick !!! machine for £430 as i just did for my girlfriend the other week. And it's smooth as silk

Scrilla

Robgmun wrote: »

i bought a Dell XPS H2C 720 PC, it cost me £1500

I have to ask: how did you manage to get that machine for £1500? When I saw the model, I got suspicious. I know the machine as some friends of mine where contemplating Alienware or this new overclocked monster at around mid 2007 and I recall the machine price was approx £3500. I did a google and prices range from £3000-£4500 at about December 2007.

I'm not debating performance of the machine and definitely not the gaming performance - although it is a shame it took 1.5-2 years for your software to match the power of your puchase. If I recall correctly, the best Mac Pro at the time would come in at a base price of £3000 assuming you add your own RAM and hard drive etc to lower costs (as you are also welcome to do to overcome the manufacture BTO premium of any company). And that machine would be, in raw processor performance terms, approx 8% slower than your XPS (X5365 vs overclocked QX6850). I am questioning the price at which you purchased it.

As an aside, my friends went for the Alienware due to a newer processor which could be overclocked safely upon delivery (but was of a slower base clock speed), there was less of a RAM bottleneck than the XPS (will have to google to check that as I'm not sure as to the validity of this) and it was cheaper - but not £2000 cheaper.

Robgmun

Scrilla wrote: »

I have to ask: how did you manage to get that machine for £1500? When I saw the model, I got suspicious. I know the machine as some friends of mine where contemplating Alienware or this new overclocked monster at around mid 2007 and I recall the machine price was approx £3500. I did a google and prices range from £3000-£4500 at about December 2007.

I got it from this website in Oct 2007 http://www.mcscom.co.uk/

I've used them twice, the internets best kept secret

I'm not debating performance of the machine and definitely not the gaming performance - although it is a shame it took 1.5-2 years for your software to match the power of your puchase.

I exaggerate abit, Vista 64-bit was ok, and W7 was much much better, but that was down to software and everybody had the same problems as me.

If I recall correctly, the best Mac Pro at the time would come in at a base price of £3000 assuming you add your own RAM and hard drive etc to lower costs (as you are also welcome to do to overcome the manufacture BTO premium of any company). And that machine would be, in raw processor performance terms, approx 8% slower than your XPS (X5365 vs overclocked QX6850). I am questioning the price at which you purchased it.

http://www.mcscom.co.uk/ :j

I did get luckly, and if you keep checking the website a great deal does come out now and again. Althrough there's a couple of machines that arn't too bad there right now!

I recon this is currently there best deal right now.

http://www.mcscom.co.uk/product.php?xProd=9310&xSec=37 i recon you can overclock it in the bios to over 4ghz without breaking a sweat

As an aside, my friends went for the Alienware due to a newer processor which could be overclocked safely upon delivery (but was of a slower base clock speed), there was less of a RAM bottleneck than the XPS (will have to google to check that as I'm not sure as to the validity of this) and it was cheaper - but not £2000 cheaper.

RAM bottleneck is not really a major thing. As long as there plenty of ram then the speeds don't really make a heck of a difference. Should watch out more for CPU and GFX card bottlenecks.

BillScarab

I think this statement on the website gives a clue as to how they're so cheap.

" Welcome To The MCS Technology Ltd Online Store.............All Stock Is Refurbished Unless Stated.............Prices Do Not Include VAT"

Robgmun

BillScarab wrote: »

I think this statement on the website gives a clue as to how they're so cheap.

" Welcome To The MCS Technology Ltd Online Store.............All Stock Is Refurbished Unless Stated.............Prices Do Not Include VAT"

Indeed, but you have to understand what Refurbished means to this website and to Dell machines in general. From purely from experiance, Refurbished Dells are machines that have been ordered and never despatched. or have a very minor scratch or cosmectic damage before reaching the customer. Or that the customer sent it stright back due to a faulty componant or said cosmectic damage. They then swap out the faulty componant (which is dirt easy to do on a PC)

The first computer i bought from them 5 years ago i couldn't even see the damage at first as it was a scuff under the USB flap at the front. Nothing else was wrong with it and was solid as a rock for the 3 years a had it. I then gave it to my brother as i wanted a new funky machine as a treat to myself after a heavy divorce.

The one i have at the moment was had a piano black finish and it was a small (about 2 cm long) scratch at the bottom of one side of the case. Again, nothing else wrong with it and i did a 'burn in' test and diagnosic on it for 2 days stright. It been also solid as a rock too.

Slide it under my desk and never seen the scratch since. To save myself nearly £2000 on a PC i was more than happy with the slight imperfection.

BillScarab

Oh I don't doubt that, I've bought refurb items in the past without any qualms. However you can't really compare the price of a refurb Dell with the price of a new Mac, you'd need to look at a refurb mac to be fair.

However looking at some of the laptops on their site I wouldn't touch them, a bit more than cosmetic damage.

e.g.

http://www.mcscom.co.uk/product.php?xProd=9350&xSec=94

or

http://www.mcscom.co.uk/product.php?xProd=8621&xSec=94

Robgmun

Well of course, but in all the years i have been on there website (and unlike other companies) mcscom.com have always been completely upfront with the state of there machines. As the 2 links shows, and they are by far the worst laptops on the site. There's a ton of laptops there that look brand new

Marty_J

Is it really fair to compare the cost of a [strike]reconditioned[/strike] refurbished PC with the cost of a brand new Mac?

After all, on Apple's refurb Store at the minute, there's a Mac Pro with £600 off, an iMac with £480 off, and a MacBook Pro with £260 off.

Those sort of discounts are pretty typical.