Why a macbook is a good investment.

Cycrow

My pc from around 2002-2003 could easily do videos in HD and i was playing games on it at 1920x1200

knightstyle

Well this is done using my 5 year old Macbook, bought the basic 13 inch, refurbished and no VAT as it was through work. It is still going strong, battery health 72% and still lasts over 3 hours. Had a problem earlier this year, think it was malwear, took it to a dealer and they fixed it same day, no charge.
That is why my next computer will be a Mac.

GwylimT

My current computer is a mac that I bought in 2005, I have changed a few things such as increased RAM and the hard drive, the only thing I really had to do was get a new screen as I knocked it off a table and there was some damage so the picture was disrupted, this was after the warranty had ran out but apple collected it from my house, replaced the screen and charged me £40. The only future thing I can think is battery, its at about 80% at the minute and it is used heavily as I use it for work.

securityguy

Wickwar wrote: »

Had my Macbook pro since mid 2009 works fine with very heavy use put in new battery (£46) & new tracker pad (£26) Ram & Hard drive was easy to upgrade myself no need to pay a fortune to apple.But I know after Osx Mavericks I'll be stuck as Apple wont support my model any more.

I can't see why you shouldn't be OK at least one release beyond 10.9 (Mavericks). 10.9 apparently supports anything that will run 10.8 (Mountain Lion), so it will definitely run that. More specifically:

For those who are looking more at hardware, this includes computers like the mid-2007 iMac or later, the 13” MacBook Pro mid-2009 or later, the 15/17” MacBook Pros mid-2007 or later, the MacBook Air 2008 or later, the early 2009 Mac Mini or later, the 2008 Mac Pro or later, and the early 2009 Xserve. The operating system’s requirements also call for 64-bit Intel-based Macs with at least OS X 10.6.7 Snow Leopard or higher with at least 8GB of free HDD space for installation.: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/06/list-of-mac-computers-that-will-support-os-x-10-9-mavericks/

But the 2009 Macbook Pro has got a modern, 64-bit clean processor and a straightforward graphics architecture. It'll definitely run 10.9, and I can't see any reason it's likely not to be supported in the release after that.

The main machine that got killed earlier than expected is the 2007-ish Mac Minis (the early Core 2 Duo ones) with the GMA950 graphics. They don't go past 10.7, for reasons I half followed (I've got a couple of them, so was a bit peeved) to do with availability of a 64-bit driver for the GMA950. Apple dropped --- for reasonably defensible reasons --- the 32-bit kext support in 10.8, so without a 64-bit graphics drivers that was the end of the line after only five years. Not good, and certainly not his Steveness's finest moment.

But otherwise, Apple are supporting 10.9 on other 2007 hardware (I've got an iMac of that vintage) so I don't see why software support on a mainstream product like a 2009 Pro shouldn't go out to 2015 or so. That I can run Mavericks, with full support, on what will be by then a nearly seven year old machine, so I can expect full software updates through for approaching ten, strikes me as OK.

knightstyle

Why is it so important to be able to run the latest versions?
My mum is still using her Emac, at least 10 years old has never upgraded anything and it does just fine for what it was bought for, emailing, word processing, storing and printing pics etc. From memory it is on 9.2 slow but reliable old Mac. Bit like her!!!

andrewjf

knightstyle wrote: »

Why is it so important to be able to run the latest versions?
My mum is still using her Emac, at least 10 years old has never upgraded anything and it does just fine for what it was bought for, emailing, word processing, storing and printing pics etc. From memory it is on 9.2 slow but reliable old Mac. Bit like her!!!

That's fine, but as development moves on, then older versions become unsupported. So you won't get security fixes, bug fixes or other general improvements.
On the plus side, that will probably be a valuable antique in a few years

yeslek

notanewuser wrote: »

:huh:

I upgraded the RAM and HDD on my MBP myself too - and I'm a girl!

In what way is it "behind"??

Agree with your point re viruses. Just because there are very few now doesn't mean there will not be more in future.

same (on the upgrading meself and being female) - though I'm just about due to upgrade the ram...stil, my MBP is nearly 6 years old and only needed to replace the battery so far...the HDD/RAM were upgraded by choice and worked out about £100 for double the ram and a 1TB internal HDD that I expect to last another 5 years, if not almost 6 like the prior hardware did.
I did manage to break the screen but that was 100% my fault, but even so, the free advise/aftercare from apple make the premium price tag partially worth it - I wasnt sure how to diagnose the screen issue, so took it to my local apple store and they said it would need replacing (granted they wanted to charge £360 to do it for me yet I did it for the price of a new LED Samsung screen cost of £130). The advice was 100% free, and they even helped when I fudged up the booting software by means of a bad line of code in terminal (again my fault and probably something as simple as a typo), but I didnt need to pay someone for help.

I dont expect to even consider a new computer purchase until this one is at least 10 years old.

Plus, I've yet to try it myself (its next on my list after upgrading ram), but apparently Windows runs better on a Mac :rotfl:

Either way, I'd highly recommend the cheapest/smallest macbook for general use, over any Windows machine, and those who want to use it for Media ie video/photoshop/music making/editing/production etc, shouldnt even contemplate using Windows only machines (I was converted to Mac for my Music Production/some basica video/dvd creations at Uni....works a dream over the higher spec Windows beasts the Uni had)


lastly, the anti-virus thing - even if Mac's virus' are almost unheard of, its stupid for anyone going on the internet to NOT have some form of protection (I have anti-virus software on mine just to be sure, though its yet to come up with an issue)

zagubov

andrewjf wrote: »

That's fine, but as development moves on, then older versions become unsupported. So you won't get security fixes, bug fixes or other general improvements.
On the plus side, that will probably be a valuable antique in a few years

The improvements are often imaginary or fake. Bugfixes are necessary. An old mac runnning 9.2 is too buggy for my liking. My mac's the last model that'll but in OS9 but I tried it once and found it to be tedious (thought it would be fast but I forgot how buggy the pre-OSX systems were).

If I had a mac that ran 9.2 I'd try to load Tiger on it so you could run your old software but without the bugginess (and access to up-to-date options like dropbox). I've old software like appleworks that are brilliant and I'm happy to keep running them for the foreseeable future.
But many updates aren;t that great.

Office 2004's not bad but 2008's a complete waste of time. If I could run Word 5.1 in classic I would -there's never been a better version since.

Running youtube's easy for me but not in HD. But my telly's not HD either so I don't know what I'm missing.


Apple never warn you of the software that'll stop working when you upgrade OSs or chips. Tiger to Leopard loses all your classic software and i've got tons of useful and very user-friendly stuff. I think a lot of stuff stopped working with late upgardes too.

I feel computers (more specificaly macs) peaked in the early 2000s and became easy to use for tall the tasks I need (but I'm not a gamer)

If I had an infinite budget I could maybe buy upgraded version of all my old software to run on a new machine but it would be a ton of learning for an ounce of improvemnt and hey this is MSE so I'm not interested in making a big corporation richer when we can get by with older models and versions.

prowla

I had a MacBook some years back (a G4 running OS X), and I was never really happy with it. It was not really that fast. The hard disk failed and it had to go back to Apple to have it replaced.

As far as the hardware goes, current PCs and Macs are of similar spec, so performance-wise they should be similar. Top quality laptops (I have a Dell XPS of my own and a Lenovo T500 for work, both of which are 3+ years old) should be expected to last as well as a Mac.

On the OS front, OS X is nice but does have its niggles. But Windows 8 is just so awful that my next machines won't be running it.

When/if I next buy a laptop, I will probably go for a Mac or a Wintel one without an OS, and use Ubuntu Linux. Work-wise I'm due to get a new one in a while and it'll be a Dell running Windows 7 (I don't think 8 is on the radar).

A couple of things I don't like about Mac hardware: (i) the keyboards have a cheap look to them, and (ii) I need a middle button on my mouse.

Of course, if I did have a Mac, then I would run VMware and have a Windows VM to run the Windows-only apps like Visio and Project (and also IE for a couple of sites which need it).

John_Gray

prowla wrote: »

When/if I next buy a laptop, I will probably go for a Mac or a Wintel one without an OS, and use Ubuntu Linux.

Really? And why not Mint Cinnamon?