Well I started this thread and suppose I ought to follow up.
Before I tell you what I bought I want to say that whenever I buy something expensive I become obsessive and find out every last detail and weigh up the pros and cons of every little spec/feature. Wish I didn't do this but can't help it.
I bought a Wintel laptop ! So why did I do this?
1. I am used to lots of pixels. My dying laptop has a 1600x1200 display and my main desktop has a Dell 24" TFT. You get used to lots of pixels and the MacBook has a relatively low resolution. I tried a MacBook in a high street store and decided that I wanted (needed ?) a bigger display. So,
2. I then considered a MacBook Pro. Better resolution and nicer GPU etc etc. But, when compared to a Wintel laptop it doesn't look so good. The one I bought had 2GB Ram,Core2Duo,Nvidia7600/256Mb for a lot less than a Pro
3. Software. I have a fair amount of money invested in PC software. Mainly graphics apps. There are a few that don't exist on Mac and others that require a license transfer fee which is £75 in one case - enough to make it a consideration. Inititially I wasn't even considering a laptop as being capable of running my graphics stuff but eventually decided that a little more expense would give me more flexibility. I could have course use Bootcamp but I couldn't justify another £350 for a lower spec.
4. I don't dislike XP and don't fear Vista. I have 4 PCs at home, and have no problems at all. I accept that some people have had major security problems but I have no idea how they get in such a mess assuming they have SP2 and don't use IE. OSX looks really nice and I'm sure it is but XP does what I need. I have downloaded the public betas of Vista and quite like it. Don't care what the anti-MS boys and girls think about this! The laptop I bought came with Media Centre which appears to work and with a free upgrade to Vista Home Premium which I will certainly take them up on.
Now the downside!
1. The sheer amount of utter crap that is preinstalled is a joke. I cannot believe it and, whilst mostly installed in "Program Files", doesn't appear to have an uninstaller. To me this is totally unacceptable. Why don't they just have the basic OS and have a CD/DVD with the rubbish? Digging around I found (literally) gigabytes of things like media files and other stuff which seem to have no purpose at all. This sort of thing IMHO gives MS a bad name and they should pressure manufacturers to just install the OS
2. OS installation. The laptop I bought does not come with a DVD to install the OS. It has a "restore partition" although there is a utility to create revovery DVDs from this. Ridiculously this needs 3 DVD disks - no doubt to backup all the crap they insist on preinstalling. How much would a OS install disk add to the price for heavens sake?
3. Widescreen displays don't have enough vertical pixels. I went from 1200 to 900 vertically by moving from a 4:3 to a 16:9 display. Same thing would apply on a Mac of course.
There you go.
Before I tell you what I bought I want to say that whenever I buy something expensive I become obsessive and find out every last detail and weigh up the pros and cons of every little spec/feature. Wish I didn't do this but can't help it.
I bought a Wintel laptop ! So why did I do this?
1. I am used to lots of pixels. My dying laptop has a 1600x1200 display and my main desktop has a Dell 24" TFT. You get used to lots of pixels and the MacBook has a relatively low resolution. I tried a MacBook in a high street store and decided that I wanted (needed ?) a bigger display. So,
2. I then considered a MacBook Pro. Better resolution and nicer GPU etc etc. But, when compared to a Wintel laptop it doesn't look so good. The one I bought had 2GB Ram,Core2Duo,Nvidia7600/256Mb for a lot less than a Pro
3. Software. I have a fair amount of money invested in PC software. Mainly graphics apps. There are a few that don't exist on Mac and others that require a license transfer fee which is £75 in one case - enough to make it a consideration. Inititially I wasn't even considering a laptop as being capable of running my graphics stuff but eventually decided that a little more expense would give me more flexibility. I could have course use Bootcamp but I couldn't justify another £350 for a lower spec.
4. I don't dislike XP and don't fear Vista. I have 4 PCs at home, and have no problems at all. I accept that some people have had major security problems but I have no idea how they get in such a mess assuming they have SP2 and don't use IE. OSX looks really nice and I'm sure it is but XP does what I need. I have downloaded the public betas of Vista and quite like it. Don't care what the anti-MS boys and girls think about this! The laptop I bought came with Media Centre which appears to work and with a free upgrade to Vista Home Premium which I will certainly take them up on.
Now the downside!
1. The sheer amount of utter crap that is preinstalled is a joke. I cannot believe it and, whilst mostly installed in "Program Files", doesn't appear to have an uninstaller. To me this is totally unacceptable. Why don't they just have the basic OS and have a CD/DVD with the rubbish? Digging around I found (literally) gigabytes of things like media files and other stuff which seem to have no purpose at all. This sort of thing IMHO gives MS a bad name and they should pressure manufacturers to just install the OS
2. OS installation. The laptop I bought does not come with a DVD to install the OS. It has a "restore partition" although there is a utility to create revovery DVDs from this. Ridiculously this needs 3 DVD disks - no doubt to backup all the crap they insist on preinstalling. How much would a OS install disk add to the price for heavens sake?
3. Widescreen displays don't have enough vertical pixels. I went from 1200 to 900 vertically by moving from a 4:3 to a 16:9 display. Same thing would apply on a Mac of course.
There you go.
