non-techie people expecting a "good" computer/laptop for £100-200
- Thread starter terley
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QFT! BSD base, pf firewall built in, BSD terminal running zsh, no-nonsense good looking UI slapped on top, broad ecosystem, fast and lean (my mid 2012 MBP 16GB + SSD still runs like new on Mojave), homebrew for my GNU userland tools and fun stuff, Atom for coding, VMWare for testing and not only does the original battery last 6+ hours but it is still immaculate 6 years later. Not a squeak, creak or rattle - no loose or missing keys, no dodgy trackpad (oh, the trackpad...!) and it just works. I use it for everything from coding to network admin to pen testing to browsing t'interwebs. It's my most treasured possession. <3
Nonsense. My experience proves you wrong. My 6 year old machine still flies along and literally looks brand new still. The new machines with NVMe are even better. Please spec me a Windows laptop with a unibody aluminium chassis, IPS UHD screen with sRGB colour profile, large glass trackpad, USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, server grade motherboard and other internal components, a Coffee Lake processor, and all the usual bells and whistles; that will still be solid, fast and working nicely with the OS and software of the time in six years.
For £500-600.
Go go go.
You forgot to link me to the £600 hardware equivalent (that's still worth a large percentage of its' retail price several years later when you want to upgrade).
know that one, just paid £460 for a new screen for my MacBook Pro at 22 months old
apple weren't interested as it wasn't bought direct from apple.that said I still think overall they are fantastic value for money over a longer term of ownership.
just look at the price of old Mac Pro desktops,
workwise I tend to find our Macs are better for productivity resale value and "staff morale". no one gets excited about getting handed a boggo laptop by their employer, but going by our staff you hand them a shiny new MacBook Pro and thats a big deal
know that one, just paid £460 for a new screen for my MacBook Pro at 22 months old
that said I still think overall they are fantastic value for money over a longer term of ownership.
just look at the price of old Mac Pro desktops,
workwise I tend to find our Macs are better for productivity resale value and "staff morale". no one gets excited about getting handed a boggo laptop by their employer, but going by our staff you hand them a shiny new MacBook Pro and thats a big deal
Well besides the desire for an employer to care about their employee, they can also join the frivolous and pointless rat race to show off their temporarily acquired wealth to their temporary friends/foes.
Truly a marvel this society.
Soldato
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Second hand shouldn't really be an issue re 'good for a non-techie'. BINB is a lark. Though things much improved in this regard, it's a tall ask to get something decent essentially at cost.
from a complete cost of ownersship from a business perspective they are great cost effective bits of kit,
have a look at some of the Mac resellers and see what they are putting out second hand MacBooks for. £250 for a 8 yr old MacBook eek. reduced support costs over the whole life of the product and less downtime, granted W10 is a fans tacit stable OS and we very rarely have any issues but osx just works full stop no issues no faff. and the fact the guys in the office prefer the kit be it for bragging rights or shiny shiny apple loving keeps them happy.
Soldato
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That's rather subjective to the work being done, the IT ecosystem deployed, the deal you get from Apple/re-sellers and the technologies the lot interacts with. It also stands to reason that if there were no issues and no faff, the OS would not get critical and regular patches - it does, and they are not just feature updates either.
I know its "cool" to dislike apple and I'm a pc man at heart, christ my personal desktop at work is my trusty old battered phantom thats been running the 4.8ghz 2600k for the last 7 years.
but for us the overall cost of apple products if you include productivity overall ownership cost and the benefits to staff morale make them far and away far better "value" than any other laptop manufacturer.
but for us the overall cost of apple products if you include productivity overall ownership cost and the benefits to staff morale make them far and away far better "value" than any other laptop manufacturer.
Pointless looking at component cost for Apple products,that is not what you are paying for. You are paying for a complete package,including the OS. OSX is light years ahead of Windows,and Windows is dire for many professionals. I used to do the whole dual boot Windows + linux,but they is a royal pain, VM was better but slow. Why bother when you can get a proper OS and ZSH with a GUI that will run office and Adobe products when needed. My 2011 iMac27" is lighting fast,responsive and does everything I need in a compact form with a fantastic IPS screen. It probably cost the company 2K back in the day but I imagine at least 10 years of use out of it
Soldato
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As above, that doesn't generalise. Their products aren't more or less disliked than any other big suppliers' output; the Zen spiel and emotional ownership arguments are.
Say, if I had a marketing department going to conferences, plugging graphic arts and not pushing the productivity beyond what their phone can do, then some argument can be made along the lines above. Even so, cost of ownership depends on the length of time the asset is kept, discount you get from Apple for your business, income raised and indirect costs incurred in supporting and accommodating Apple's presence in your ecosystem (noting D.P. posting the above too). Even if you buy into the whole closed garden, you still have to interact with businesses, technology and networks that aren't in it; support your employees trying to get the job done; training; security; and so on. The resale value per unit has to balance out the total cost per unit, otherwise you aren't even getting the benefit of the main advantage. Likewise if your team morale is through the roof, but your margins are still slim, sales steady and average slack doesn't move, then you have made an error.
Frankly it's even stevens once you get down to brass tacks: you will still be managing a complex system; likely Intel based; likely interacting with other complex systems; and the associated costs throughout. As with all things IT, just because you think you are winning at something or something - financially at that - doesn't mean you actually are getting the perceived benefit. This is similar to the effect of perceived (and self-reported) productivity vs actual work done.
Associate
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Honest truth is that £200 can buy you a laptop that will cover the majority of tasks done by non-specialist / gaming users. You can always see the muppets that go into retail stores and are convinced they need the latest i7 powered Macbook pro when all they want to do is watch netflix and use Excel. Just looking at my usual place to buy second hand laptops you can get a second gen i7 powered HP elite book with 8GB RAM and a small SSD at the £200 mark, which for the vast majority will do fine. I grew up in a time when you *had* to have the latest kit to keep up with the latest software, today even a early i3 will do everything you need albeit slower than top of the line hardware.
I agree with this. It is really annoying how many sales people over-sell to customers needs. I can understand why they do it, for sales, but its not honest and is purely a business practice NOT a computer persons practice.
You've been making some top quality posts lately. Well said. I know 80+% of people who purchase apple crap just do it to show off.
This tbh. I know some of these salesmen, the amount of times he makes people buy an iPhone to make calls send texts and other low level stuff. These idiots buying the stuff then allow software designers to go lazy and make poorly coded software. Things like Snapchat have increased in size and in efficiency by thousands of percent because idiots are buying hardware that's too powerful for their requirements.
But I don't expect an Apple owner to be able to understand the intricate relationship between software and hardware at this level.
You get an operating system with all laptops. You're arguing based on a clearly incorrect assumption that a cheap laptop won't have an operating system when they are certainly "complete packages" too lol.
Also I know windows 10 is horrible but they too have to pay their devs, you seem to assume only Apple needs to pay dev teams. Lol.
Also "a GUI that runs office and Adobe" lol seriously? Once you have office or Photoshop loaded, the OS GUI becomes completely useless. What has the base OS's GUI got to do with photoshop's interface once you're in Photoshop?
This is why I think it's sad how little people do on such overpriced crap. Most people just get one to awe at the bells and whistles, and buzzwords. People are so brainwashed it's VERY interesting to see people's defence of their purchase.
I have a q6600 system from 10+years ago, I remember back when I could run Photoshop faster than a top of the line Mac costing 4 times the price. Yet people seem to think Mac's are faster???? Is this based on reality? Or just a defence mechanism to justify getting extorted?
I simply cannot find one legitimate, non showoff, reason why a Mac is better at anything.
Heck even the exclusivity aspect of being presentable is just wrong. I'd be ashamed to pull out a Mac at a business meeting for example lol, the most mass produced and lie-marketed systems ever. Doesn't give a good message about the person if he's easily manipulated.
Heck even the exclusivity aspect of being presentable is just wrong. I'd be ashamed to pull out a Mac at a business meeting for example lol, the most mass produced and lie-marketed systems ever. Doesn't give a good message about the person if he's easily manipulated.