Apple Macpro or Lenovo?

almillar

You'll have things to learn if you buy a MacBook Pro, and I think most people would agree that MS Office isnt' quite as good on it as it is on Windows. I don't see your reason to move. Stick with Windows and buy another Lenovo. You say the Lenovo is nearly as expensive as a refurb MBP, I say it's cheaper! I'm sure Office 2013, 2010 or 2007 can be had quite cheap these days, depending on what programmes you need within them.
Oh right, £500 compared to £849?
My question - what are you getting for that extra £350?!!

Fightsback

Lleucu wrote: »

Thanks.

This Lenovo http://www.johnlewis.com/store/lenovo-z50-75-laptop-amd-fx-8gb-ram-1tb-8gb-sshd-r7-m260-2gb-graphics-15-6-fhd/p1756529?navAction=jump or similar. The Lenovo is just under £500 compared with £849 for the Mac. The Office 365 is around £70 for a year for either option. I am currently on Office 2003 for Outlook/Access and 2007 for Word, Excel and PP.

On the point of security, many professionals esp those in regulated professions refuse to keep their contacts online despite the convenience, you only need to look at Facebook invitations on email that I have seen on Hotmail (do you know X variety) to see how insecure an address book can be, hence the use of an old Bberry which can sync locally.

Avoid that laptop, it's AMD CPU based. Stick to Intel.

Tropez

Fightsback wrote: »

Avoid that laptop, it's AMD CPU based. Stick to Intel.

AMD CPU's are perfectly capable of running Office and the like.

shortchanged_2

So you want to pay more for a refurb apple. OK then.

Fightsback

Tropez wrote: »

AMD CPU's are perfectly capable of running Office and the like.

AMD chipsets are full of strange quirks and bugs, nowhere near battery efficient as Intel, slow memory controllers, poor FPU performance - shall I go on ?

The i7 solution mentioned above is a much better bet, it does more with two hyperthreaded cores than the AMD does with four. The CPU benchmark is about 20% faster on mutlicore and wipes the floor with the AMD on single threaded apps.

http://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-g50-70-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-ram-1tb-15-6-black/p1741059

shortchanged_2

Fightsback wrote: »

AMD chipsets are full of strange quirks and bugs, nowhere near battery efficient as Intel, slow memory controllers, poor FPU performance - shall I go on ?

The i7 solution mentioned above is a much better bet, it does more with two hyperthreaded cores than the AMD does with four. The CPU benchmark is about 20% faster on mutlicore and wipes the floor with the AMD on single threaded apps.

http://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-g50-70-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-ram-1tb-15-6-black/p1741059

But to be fair it depends what the op is using the computer for. There is no point in paying a lot of money for a high end i7 if they are only doing basic tasks. Most people will barely notice the speed difference for tasks that are not particularly intensive.

Anne_Marie_2

Fightsback wrote: »

AMD chipsets are full of strange quirks and bugs, nowhere near battery efficient as Intel, slow memory controllers, poor FPU performance - shall I go on ?

The i7 solution mentioned above is a much better bet, it does more with two hyperthreaded cores than the AMD does with four. The CPU benchmark is about 20% faster on mutlicore and wipes the floor with the AMD on single threaded apps.

http://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-g50-70-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-ram-1tb-15-6-black/p1741059

You have linked to a different model. Just pointing it out for the OP's info. Links below are same model as OP linked to, but with Intel processor.
http://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-z50-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-ram-1tb-8gb-sshd-15-6-/p1857170?colour=Silver
http://www.johnlewis.com/lenovo-z50-70-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-ram-1tb-8gb-sshd-15-6-/p1603672?colour=Silver

Tropez

Fightsback wrote: »

AMD chipsets are full of strange quirks and bugs, nowhere near battery efficient as Intel, slow memory controllers, poor FPU performance - shall I go on ?

I've used plenty of AMD CPUs in my time and experienced no problems with them at all, even when running much more intensive tasks than Office, such as modern games or Adobe Premiere.

That AMD FX-7500 uses slightly more power than the Core i7-4510U that I have; understandable really since the Core i7-4510U is a processor designed for ultrabooks.

The i7 solution mentioned above is a much better bet, it does more with two hyperthreaded cores than the AMD does with four. The CPU benchmark is about 20% faster on mutlicore and wipes the floor with the AMD single threaded apps.

Which would be worthy considerations if the requirements for the system were for intensive tasks such as video editing or gaming (although it would need a better graphics chip really). But based on what the OP said, we're looking for a system mostly for Microsoft Office. AMD can handle that with ease and there's little tangible performance benefit between an Intel Core i7-4510U and an AMD FX-7500 for that.

The G50-70 you link isn't a bad laptop, I'll grant you that, but it does lack the SSHD of the Z50-75 and it has a 1366 x 768 resolution screen. The lack of an SSHD will result in a more noticeable performance hit, particularly on startup, than a FX-7500 instead of a i7-4510U. The screen I'll give you is a matter of personal preference.

Fightsback

If your going to spend £849, this will blow the macbook out of the water for £757.97 and have change to swap out the HDD for an SSD and use the 1TB as a back up disk.

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Asus_15.6_FHD_LED_Glare_Touch_-_i7-4710HQ_-_Nvidia_GTX850_2G_-_8G_-_1TB_-__N550JK-CM531H/version.asp

Note this is the Hi-res model (1920 x 1080) where as John Lewis do the lower res (1366 x 768) for £799

Moneymaker

I've used Macs forever and I have a MacBook Pro. Security is pretty good but I wouldn't recommend YOU switch. PGP for secure emails is a pain to set up and, whilst syncing between Apple products is usually straightforward, syncing with anything else isn't. It will be expensive with a frustratingly steep learning curve. Don't do it. Stick with what you know.