Laptop dead thinking of getting a Macbook...

Shador

Shador

Shador

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Well my Dell laptop has just died a death and from the trouble I have had with it from day one I will never buy a dell again.

I have always been "PC" but due to exposure to my iPhone which I have been really impressed with I am slightly more aware of Mac products now- so much so I am considering getting a Macbook to replace my PC!

But I am concerned at the difference and if I will suddenly be unable to do things I can do with a PC - I have always viewed Mac products as being very inlfexible and not compatible with most mainstream software apps...

So I am basically looking for feedback from peeps who have been in a similar situation....I mainly use my laptop for office applications, web browsing/downloading/streaming, photo editing, studying and playing the odd game (World of Warcraft and will defiantly want to be able to play Starcraft).

Are there any major issues you see I might experience or weakness the Macbook would have over a PC in these areas? (Or indeed strengths!) And any other areas you have felt restricted since moving to Mac would be useful in case I have missed something here....

I guess as a comparison I would go for the Macbook (not Pro) or HP Pavilion Laptop, DV6-1140EA...

Many thanks for any feedback!
 
I would definitely choose a MacBook over an HP. I was in a similar position to you, around a year or so ago I was looking at getting my first laptop and having never even used an Apple Mac before I went into a licensed Apple dealer and picked up a MacBook and it's a decision I've never regretted. There's an excellent thread here for first time Mac users and trust me when I say you can have all of the functionality and access to your programs that you can with Windows. Even if you somehow find a program that you used to use in Windows but can't find a Mac equivalent then you can use BootCamp. BootCamp is a program that comes with every Mac that enables you to install Windows on your machine to use those Windows only programs, you can still have Mac OS X on the machine at the same time and installing it is a breeze.

Build quality is excellent and Apple tend to be very good with RMA's and warranty issues as well. Although you may have also looked at Mac's hardware specs, compared them to a PC and said " Hmm, doesn't look very good value for money" well, it is, very good value for money. I can tell you I'm still a relative novice when it comes to Apples operating system and I've had a year of trouble free computing, it's an absolute joy to use Mac OS X. The operating system is much less of a system hog than any version of Windows in my opinion. Things seem to run incredibly quickly and load times are fast in pretty much everything I do, and this is all on an entry level MacBook. I popped an extra GB of RAM in and it's now near instantaneous opening of programs and files.

Have a look at the thread that I linked a little further up, and have a look around on Apples website. If you've got a store or a licensed dealer near you then it might be worth going in and having a play on one and see how you like it. In my opinion though it's something I wouldn't even hesitate to do again, I still use my PC for gaming, but the Mac is used for everything else and compared to a PC it wins for me hands down.

:)
 
Thanks for the feedback some great info....I would definatly get a macbook (probably pro) but I have decided to go for a desktop now to replace my laptop.

I have been using a laptop since uni but realise that there is no need for me to have a laptop really so going back to desktop now!
 
Would third the above statements for going down the imac route. I have a MBP and the only desktops I would now consider would be OS X based.

Windows = bloat and regular re-installs.
Linux = too much hard work for drivers on peripherals
OS X = None of the bloat, and just works with everything I have thrown at it.

Enjoy!
 
iMacs look lovely, it's true. But where MacBooks are actually fairly competitively priced against decent Windows laptops, I continue to find the iMac pricing obscene.

The basic 24-inch iMac (C2D 2.66, 4GB, 640GB, 9400M) is £1,199 on the Apple site. I just specced up an equivalent Windows 7 PC (using quality components) and it came to £690.

OS X is going to have to be damn good to persuade me to pay a 73% premium for a machine I can't really upgrade. Come on.. £1,199 for a machine with a 9400M in it?
 
£1,055.70 with the Higher Education discount so if you know any students...
 
My HP laptop is lovely but jesus christ the battery life is atrocious.

I may get a MacBook when I qualify for HE discount, wouldn't mind one for Uni but we'll see what happens. I have a 15" laptop at the moment and to me it feels too big to log around, so for Uni if I felt a laptop would be a big plus I'd go for a smaller one, like the 13" MacBook.
 
Mattus said:
I continue to find the iMac pricing obscene.

The basic 24-inch iMac (C2D 2.66, 4GB, 640GB, 9400M) is £1,199 on the Apple site. I just specced up an equivalent Windows 7 PC (using quality components) and it came to £690.
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It's not a desktop - it's a laptop trapped inside a monitor. I dislike the thing personally. The big chin looks daft and you lose much of the advantage of a desktop computer for no gain.

Although if the 24" still has an IPS panel, that's a nice perk :)
 
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Mattus said:
iMacs look lovely, it's true. But where MacBooks are actually fairly competitively priced against decent Windows laptops, I continue to find the iMac pricing obscene.

The basic 24-inch iMac (C2D 2.66, 4GB, 640GB, 9400M) is £1,199 on the Apple site. I just specced up an equivalent Windows 7 PC (using quality components) and it came to £690.

OS X is going to have to be damn good to persuade me to pay a 73% premium for a machine I can't really upgrade. Come on.. £1,199 for a machine with a 9400M in it?
Click to expand...

OS X is very good indeed. As I've said above, with a Mac you don't pay for just the hardware, the software is very much worth the extra price and OS X simply doesn't need all the grunt that you have in equivalently priced PC's. With the exception of the graphics card, but then Macs are not designed for games anyway.
 
K1LLSW1TCH said:
OS X is very good indeed. As I've said above, with a Mac you don't pay for just the hardware, the software is very much worth the extra price and OS X simply doesn't need all the grunt that you have in equivalently priced PC's. With the exception of the graphics card, but then Macs are not designed for games anyway.
Click to expand...

You don't need extra grunt in a PC at all, lower specced computers are running Windows 7 at a great speed.

My laptop is so much quicker running 7 than it is Vista, the difference is insane, 7 loads 3x as fast at startup.
 
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