do you think macbooks are good, or overrated, or what?
They’re a bit pricy for what you’re getting. If I hadn’t just bought a car and wasn’t trying to supe up the stereo system I’d probably buy a regular Macbook for school without hesitating.
Not actually that pricey when you compare the hardware you get with other notebooks. Comes with a good one-year warranty, which hopefully won’t be neccasary but I needed mine so thats good.
Also if you are smart, runs windows and Mac OS no problem with a little hacking you can even swap files between the two. I love mine, and am currently missing it dearly while its logic board is being replaced.
I love mine. Got mine (1st gen macbook) and I only had a few problems with the screen (all my friends who have 2nd gen haven’t had any problems). Overall it’s been a great laptop… especially since it’s easy to upgrade the ram/hard drive on your own. You can replace the hard drive with any 2.5" SATA laptop hard drive, and the ram is easy to replace/upgrade as well. I upgraded my stock 512MB ram to 2GB, and I’m about to replace the stock 60GB with a 250GB 
i got a black mac book, solid computer. a few of my buddies have the pro, very very nice computers, they are work horses!
my girlfriend just copped one… she is trying to figure out what can she use or do to get internet from ANYWHERE if she is on the go (ie traveling…etc.)… any suggestions??
I just recently switched to Macs with my recent purchase of a Macbook Pro. I love it and I’m really happy with OSX over Windows (XP and Vista). I think that the retail price is a bit high, but you can get them for a good amount cheaper than retail from reputable sellers (check Macworld for price shopping). I got mine for $2000 for a 15.4" 2.4GHz 2GB RAM with glossy screen which is typically $2500 plus tax.
One thing I’d recommend is to NOT pay for extra RAM. It’s foolish because RAM is so cheap but Apple charges ridiculous amounts for it. Example 4GB RAM for MBP is $500 at Apple but I jut got mine for $100 (and even less when I send my old 2GB back for a $30 rebate for a total of $70).
As far as running Windows, MBP was the second best laptop as far as running Vista. With Leopard you get Boot camp so you can dual boot for free (just need your own copy of Windows) or you can do what I did and get a virtualization program like Parallels or VMware Fusion (I have this), but I think you’ll find that you don’t need it. I’ve only used mine twice and am about to get rid of it completely.
All that said, you can get a PC laptop for SO cheap that it might not be worth it for you. High end PC laptops like the XPS are the same price range as the MBP, but on the low end, you can get a PC laptop easily for sub $1000 while regular Macbooks start at $1000. In the end it’s up to you. I can personally say that I doubt I’ll go back to a Windows machine for my personal use, but unfortunately the laptop I got issued at work has Windows. : P*
~Paik
Wack, what are you gonna run with it? Good luck finding compatible programs. Also for that price, I’d get a high end laptop with XP or Vista that can run almost all of the programs out there, all the games and anything else I might run into. By the way, I hate apple.
i’ve hated apple my whole life. but with the new intel chips, they are basically pc’s…i like the idea of boot camp, and even parallels, just as a backup…i dont play games, so thats a non issue…i’ve been a mac hater for so long, but now im running out of reasons to hate…i think i will purchase a 2.4 ghz 15" macbook pro in the near future…i like the idea of browsing the web more securely mostly
Why make the switch in the first place? do macs do anything better than normal PCs? is there anything it’ll do that ubuntu / windows won’t? (not a snark, i’m just curious.)
if you don’t work/study in some creative arts field that pcs don’t have top-of-the-line software for, you don’t need it enough to justify the added cost, relearning basic things, etc.
Again, independent tests have actually shown that a Macbook Pro runs Vista (and one could infer XP) faster than all PC laptops except one (which costs even more than a MBP) as of October 2007. So your comment sounds pretty typical of a Windows user who just doesn’t know much about Macs (believe me, I was one until recently so I’m not trying to insult you, just pointing out the facts).
Looking at performance/price, MBP is probably the best laptop out there. What’s especially nice is that you can choose to run both Windows and OSX.
leaveal: Moving to Mac is just a personal choice. I found that OSX is a lot nicer to work with and a good deal more customizable with applications that help personalize it in ways that neither XP or Vista offer. OSX is a linux based system, so if you’re hardcore you can mess with it a lot. I find a lot of things are more intuitive (after unlearning the Windows way). I would say that OSX falls somewhere between unbuntu and Windows in terms of degree of freedom with the OS.
pdk: I don’t think you can go as far as to say that you should only consider a Mac if you need it for top of the line software. I personally think it’s a much better and efficient OS. It runs leaner and thus faster. What your saying is similar to saying that people shouldn’t buy high end cars unless they intend to max out the performance on them. A lot of people buy nice cars and never use them to their potential, but they still love the other benefits over other cars like comfort, style, engineering, etc. That said, you’ve got to ask yourself whether those extras are worth the premium you pay over other cars.
Oh, and just in case you guys didn’t know, Intel PCs can actually run Leopard (although not 100% perfect yet).
~Paik
I’ve heard about that test too, but that still doesn’t mean all the software in the world suddenly runs on the Mac OS. You’re gonna be limited to an X amount of programs that only work on the Mac, and Dual Boot is not a convenient option. I’m not gonna run dual book just to able to run a couple programs here and there.
Though I am a Windows user, thats primarily because it’s the OS that comes on the computer and it’s the most used, I’m actually a huge fan of Linux.
I run all my shit, TO THE MAX.
One of my gripes with macs is relearning a bunch of basic shit. Artsy hipsters like them because they can be creative (i.e. gay) with macs, despite the fact that you can run a lot more and even better programs on windows already.
That test has nothing to do with Mac OSX…It is just running Windows from a Mac which does support all software that you would run on a PC running Windows. And again, at least you have the option to run Windows with full functionality on a Mac, while the vice versa is not true…at least not yet…I was actually waiting on a better “hackintosh” so I could just install Leopard on my home built PC, but unfortunately, Windows failed on it.
I’m actually reinstalling Windows onto my old desktop now since I want to remove my Windows virtualization from my Mac. That way the few Windows only programs I want, I can still have without eating the, what I consider small, 160GB internal hard drive. I’ve also found that so far, Mac torrent clients are REALLY slow compared to Windows clients like utorrent. The difference is not like a few dozen kbs, it’s like 4 times slower downloading the same file during my tests. Mac clients find much fewer people to connect to and actually connect to even less. It’s the one HUGE setback that I’ve found from my switch over.
will: So if you’re a huge torrent user, you are going to probably want to either stick with a Windows machine or use Parallels or Fusion, but I wouldn’t recommend the latter just because using a virtualization takes resources from your main OS, making both slower. You wouldn’t want to keep a virtualization continually running just to run a torrent client at all times.
~Paik
azureus has a mac client for torrents btw and it works great. or you can use a native app like transmission.
In the end, macs aren’t that different from pcs, there is just alot of built up brand stereotypes.
Here’s what a mac has
- For the hardware same price as most pc laptops…
- Much better case design than a pc laptops (gotta love that magnetic power cord)
- Very easy battery life extender stuff thanks to easily accessed monitor brightness adjustment and other little tweaks)
- Lots of sweet free software cause mac geeks code tons of useless crap and it all runs better than free windows software. If you are running a mac and reading this, get quicksilver it will change your life.
- Mac OS less buggy than windows for the most part
- CAN RUN ANY OPERATING SYSTEM YOU WANT, MEANING ANYTHING YOU CAN DO I CAN DO BETTER
What mac doesn’t have
- Low starting cost
- Lots of viruses written for it
- The need for system slowing anti-virus
… ummmmm… CRICKETS CHIRPING
yeah thats about it.
only get it if you’re a designer and/or drink coffee.
Azureus is too much of a resource hog and is still a lot slower than PC clients. I’m currently using the newest version of Transmission that came out the other day just because it’s nice and small and had decent speeds for a Mac client.
I’m really waiting for the Mac version of uTorrent, but according to the uTorrent crew, it’s slow coming because their only Mac developer is really slow.
~Paik
Azureus is written in Java, meaning that the code goes from source to bytecode where the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) will read it. This contrasts with other languages that are less portable, but don’t need a virtual machine to interpret anything. Thus, it’s a resource hog.
The more you know…
Getting back to the topic at hand, though, I don’t see why so many people have to fiercely hate operating systems. Everyone always goes off with “I use OS X, so Windows, Linux, Free BSD, and Solaris all suck!” You can switch the order of any of those and the same still holds true.
It’s really a matter of preference and each OS has its pros and cons. Personally, I think that MacBook Pros are sex-tactular. Other people don’t. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re bad, though. With OS X you gain security and stability, but sacrifice some of the applications that you can find on Windows. Windows is basically going to have an application for anything you could ever want to do. With Linux you gain more control over your system but sacrifice simplicity, support, and applications (barring emulation). In the end, though, any system will give you a machine where you can check your email, do your banking, and flame up SRK.
Still with a macbook you can do it in whatever operating system you please… Just put on three partitions and boom! All done.