JustJess

*Purrrrrr*
It's so pretty. I looooove it. I want it now... but alas, I am still saving. $2800 WITH an education discount!! The only thing I'm waivering on is what hard drive to get. What do you think?

MacBook Pro 15.4"

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Plaid13

Pretty... i think $2800 is way way way too much for any computer. Only reason i could think of spending that much on a laptop is if you plan to be gaming with it... but as a mac i doubt thats gonna be happening. What exactly do you plan on using it for?

Charlatan

They are very nice... a colleague has one. I am slowly being converted to the world of Mac.

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JustJess

Well, mostly for school stuff. I'm applying to a PA program that wants you to come in with a Mac laptop, plus we already have so many Macs in the family, it means I have easy access to software etc.

So mostly, it's schoolwork, DVDs (programs and entertainment), some music stuff, etc... I'm going for the upper end of things because I want it to last me a loooooong time. I won't be able to buy any kind of new computer for at least 5 years after this. So I figure the faster the processor and the bigger/better RAM will last me longer.

No?

And Charlatan - yeah, they really are Very Pretty. Plus, if you're really using them for their full range of graphics and editing type stuff in the entertainment world, it's the only way to go.

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Charlatan

Here's what I want

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JustJess

Those are very very hot, but ! No expandability! For a desktop system, don't you want to be able to add stuff? I do love the fact that the screen is all there is, however...

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My heart knows me better than I know myself, so I'm gonna let it do all the talkin'.

amonkie

I originally wanted the Pro, but I opted for the Macbook instead - I still have a functional PC at home that has over 40g of space on it - and it's much easier to get a USB hard drive than pay $$$$$ for an internal.

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Willravel

Well, you can get an upgraded processor (from a 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo to a 2.33 GHz), you can add more ram(anywhere from 1 to 3GB), you can upgrade from the ATI Radeon X1200/128 MB to 256 MB for the graphics, and you can get a larger hard drive (from 250 to 500 BG). But yeah, there's no room for like 6 hard drives or a 2 slot graphics card. If you want that, you'll have to get a tower, be it Mac or PC.

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ubertuber

Jess:

Personally I'd get the faster drive (and sacrifice the space). Get an external later when you run out of storage. I highly doubt you'd fill that drive up with things you NEED.

I'd also get the 17 incher. More money, but more real estate for the life of the product.

P.S. I have your sweatshirt.

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Manic_Skafe

They're beautiful laptops but the specs just don't seem to justify the cost.

What is it that I don't see?

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Willravel

The laptops are a little more expensive, but you get Mac OS, which is surprisngly more stable than anything Windows has ever, or will ever, develope. You're paying for, in Mac OS, features and abilities that might get to PCs in 5-10 years. You're also paying for an OS that is litterally germ free: there are no known viruses for Mac OS X. My computer, in the 3+ years that I've had it, has never frozen once. I've not had programs quit. I've not had to restart. I'm not saying that Windows does this on all of the PC x86 machines, but you do have to spend a lot and probably customize (break the thing open and tinker with) a PC to make it anywhere near as stable as a Mac. Also, Mac doesn't give you free trials of their software like Windows. If it's on your computer when you buy it, you have it for life. That's gotta be worth a few hundred bucks.

Also, they're pretty cool.

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ubertuber

I restarted once, back in 2005. For now I've only been up for 19 days. I think I installed a software update.

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KnifeMissile

As willravel has pointed out, there's some expandability. There are other ways to "expand" your mac, like external harddrives and such. Mostly, you're not supposed to expand your mac. It's all the computer you need... and if it's not, what you need is not a mac...

I'm interested to know if you make a distinction between MacOS and MacOS X.

I also can't help but notice some of your claims have dubious relevance. For instance, your claim that you've never "had programs quit." What does this have to do with the OS? ...or the computer, for that matter?

I'm told that they are excellent laptops.

Personally, I'm holding out until they replace their current processors with the Core 2 Duo, although I can understand if you can't wait that long...

Willravel

Writing too fast.
Yes. The more stable the operating system, the less likely the program, whether stable on it's own or not, is to fail. I've had AOL crash on my comp at work, but never at home. I've had Firefox, Explorer, etc. all crash or freeze at work, on a technically faster machine, but not at home. The comp at work is basically a Gateway, 2 point something GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, 200 GB memory. It has all the basic programs, and I only run a few at a time, nothing that takes up a lot of popwer like games and such. My comp at home is a second gen eMac with a 1GHz G4 processor, 1024MB (1GB) of RAM, and a slight modification (I built in a video card). The computer at work should be faster, but it's not. Not by a long shot.

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NotAnAlias

God i want one :P

I need a new lappy, and i need an apple, so i thought "hey, why not an Apple laptop?".

Problem is, i'm poor.

Got my eye on some second hand liquidator auction ibooks - don't need much speed - they're around $400-$600 (NZD), which is a bit of money but still....so...so purdy. And stable - based on BSD baby.

Good work jess _b

Also, the apple cinemas...jesus christ, i think i almost came when i saw a couple of them hooked up!

KnifeMissile

Okay, so you're not making a distinction. That's good, because MacOS 9 was less stable than anything Microsoft has ever and, it looks like, will ever put out...

You're still drawing false conclusions.

You're not running the same programs on your Mac that you are on your PC, especially when you talk about running "Explorer" and stuff. Because these are not the same application, your comparisons of application stability being attributed to the OS is deeply flawed...

Indeed, and this is not an attack of any kind, you don't appear to be too familiar with how computers work. For instance, when describing your computers, you refered to the processors as being 1 or 2 GB. This clearly makes no sense. You obviously meant GHz and I would normally just take this as a typo (although that, too, is unlikely) but you did so rather consistently, leaving me to believe that you don't really understand what these things are measuring. Furthermore, I get the impression that you think your work computer is "technically" faster than your home machine because it has a higher clock frequency. Is this correct?

I would be more than happy to weigh the honest merits of Windows vs MacOS or even Macs vs PCs (although this would be a shorter debate). I am intimately familiar with Windows and I have a passing familiarity with MacOS X (and MacOS 9) having developed software on all these platforms...

Ch'i

The thread will be called Mac vs. PC KnifeMissle.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Great choice JustJess. I'd be inclined to purchase the same thing.

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Willravel

Or....Explorer, whether it be for Windows or MacOSX is made by Microsoft, yes? The it would follow logic that if it were to perform better on a computer running Mac OSX or Windows XP, it'd run better - despite obviously not being the same program, as linux and DOS are completly different - on the Windows OS. If two computers, one a Mac and one a PC, with comparable clock speeds were to run the same system of tests on Explorer, which do you think would run faster?
Is there a name for the computer version of a grammar nazi? I am well aware that the processor is measured in hertz, or in this case GHz, where as the RAM or HD would be measured in bytes, or in this case GB. It was a very, very simple mistake, a mistake even computer geniuses could make. Yeesh. While my mistakes lead you to belive that I don't know the first thing about computers, that simply isn't true. I know at least the first 3 things about computers, maybe 4. I belive that, based on estimate and not actual clock tests, the computer at work should be a lot faster than my computer at home.

Home - eMac, second generation, 3+ years old (or 76 in computer years), 1GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 1GB of RAM, 80GB HD, with a 250GB external HD through firewire, and a graphics card (I'll have to go home and check to see which) that was put in aftermarket.

Work - Gateway GT4022, like 2 weeks old, 2.4 GHz AMD Athelon 64 processor, 2 GB RAM, 200GB HD, nVIDIA GeForce 6100 graphics card.

Which do you think should be faster? Without running tests, my comp at home should be a lot slower with comparable tasks than the Gateway at work.


//end threadjack....sorry JustJess

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KnifeMissile

I was well aware of the dangers of a threadjack but I was hoping that we can miss this mark and simply go for a more reasoned look at the Macintosh computer, if they're still even called that...


I had to read this paragarph serveral times over before I understood what you are saying and I think I may still be misunderstanding you. Can you rephrase this, please?

Explorer is an MS Windows program. It is the desktop, task bar, and all the GUI file browsers. Is there a version of Explorer for Mac OS X that you are using? ...or, are you talking about Mac OS X's file browser, whatever it's called... Finder, maybe? It is written by Apple for OS X...

Either way, you are running two different programs on the two different platforms. Any difference in behaviour is much more likely to be attributable to the program, itself, rather than the underlying operating system...

It sounds like you might be saying that if a company were to write the same program (defined by intended behaviour, here) for two different platorms, it should run better on the "favoured" platform (that would be Windows for Microsoft and Mac OS X for Apple) and, if it doesn't, that's a failing of the platform and not the program. Is this right?

Again, I had a really hard time understanding this paragarph...

Lastly, if I were to judge by your use of the term, clock speeds don't mean as much as you think they mean. Either that, or you're using the term in an extremely colloquial manner. I'll have more to say about that, later...

I don't know. My anal retentive demeaner has worked so well for me in my career but it appears to be hampering me in this thread...

Like I said, it wasn't an attack. I was simply expressing a (harmless) opinion based on what I had read.

Clock speeds, in and of themselves, are no indicators of processing power. A 1 MHz machine can be more powerful than a 4 MHz machine. This was a huge problem for AMD (and, to a lesser extent, Apple), whose chips were more powerful than Intel's but ran at slower clock speeds...

I agree that your work computer should be the more powerful machine.

So, if you run a program on your work machine and run the "same" program on your home machine and find the program to run faster on your home machine, you'd blame the OS?

Well, to be fair, if anyone threadjacked, it was me. Sorry JustJess, I didn't think the discussion would go this far.

I'm looking forward to a rational conversation in the Mac vs. PC thread, if only Ch'i would say somethng meaningful...

Willravel

I'm sorry, but it appears that I know more about Windows than you know about Mac. Apple makes Safari, their own web browser. Finder is a way of finding files and such on a computer, similar to the search function on Windoes (but for real fun, try Searchlight...you'll see a version of it in Vista later). Microsoft writes and distributes Explorer for Mac OSX. It has nothing do do with Apple, except for permissions and all that jazz.

Well let's put this back in the context of my original response to the question of MackKnife's question as to the benifit of Mac, justifying the cost. My answer was that programs shared between Windows and Mac OSX, in my experience, run better on Macs. Then you pretended like I was saying that the software is perfectly comparable, and therefore I'm insane.
That's the idea.
Actually, I first blame Microsoft. It's a kneejerk reaction for those of us who have had Macs for more than 10-15 years. I also have to blame a combination of mixed and matched parts in the Gateway machine, and the lack of stability in Windows, be it 2000, Me, XP, et all. It's a combination of faults that lead to the disfunction, but those faults are not to be found in a Mac. That was the bottom line. I was supporting that by explaining that my computer, that should be an inferrior machine, is somehyow able to perform better in comparable tasks (not perfectly comparable, as DOS is drastically different than lunix, but close enough for the comparison to be apt).

I also mention that the freeware that Apple bundles with the Mac comps is superior to Windows on PCs, as they are not 60 day trials. I get to keep everything from Grage Band to Safari to the aforementioned Spotlight to Dashboard. No need to go download them or to purchase them or even to put in CD keys. The plug and play aspect of Mac comps is attractive to people who don't build their own comps.

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ubertuber

I love the conversation, but it's a serious threadjack. Let's find another home for it.

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spectre

Not to take any sides in this argument, but a work machine may also be running applications in the background that are large and will help bog down a machine on any platform.

And the Explorer argument is a misunderstanding. will: you're talking about Internet Explorer, which is the web browser available for both platforms. Microsoft also has Explorer which is their equivalent to the Mac's file browser.

Let's try to keep this civil gentlemen.

And Jess: that is freakin' sweet!

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KnifeMissile