Reply to: MAC vs PC

[Spacecadet]

I have got one of these, I had to replace the screen as I was carrying it in my soft bag and if you press the top of the case too much it damages the screen. I was running for the train alot and the screen really suffered.

Personally I would not buy a dell again, I had to spend 50 minutes on the phone telling Bob the screen was shafted. The engineer came round and first thing said was "WTF is wrong with that?"

I don't like the mac keyboards TBH.

On Site engineer support... the very reason you SHOULD be buying a Dell
And if you purchase through the company then you get the irish call center and things are sorted out in a much more polite and efficient manner.

[minestrone]

I've just bought a new Dell Studio 1555 laptop which I picked up for £499.

The spec's:-
Processor: Pentium dual core T4200 @ 2GHz
Memory: 4Gb
System type: 64 bit
O/S: Windows Vista
Disk: 300Gb
Graphics card/Resolution: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 1366*768

It looks nice. Sony Vaio's are even nicer but also a bit pricier. I like the MacBook and MacBook Pro's but not enough to pay the premium price asked. I think the desktop monitors and keyboards are cooler and wouldn't mind buying these on their own.

I have got one of these, I had to replace the screen as I was carrying it in my soft bag and if you press the top of the case too much it damages the screen. I was running for the train alot and the screen really suffered.

Personally I would not buy a dell again, I had to spend 50 minutes on the phone telling Bob the screen was shafted. The engineer came round and first thing said was "WTF is wrong with that?"

I don't like the mac keyboards TBH.

[ForkBoy]

You can run Solaris x86 on a lappy, what's the problem? Or Linux if you wish. But why Solaris? Surely MacOS does what you want better on a Mac than anything else ever could.

And you might also be amazed to hear that Putty isn't the only terminal program available for Windows.

Oh, Linux, Solaris and BSD will run fine on a lappy but getting various drivers running properly and getting sleep/hibernate to work is generally more work than I can be bothered with, unless i can invoice for it of course.

Why Solaris? Just what I'm used to. Been paid for using it for years and would rather not invest the time learning anything else in as much detail, again invoice permitting.

As for Windows terminals; who cares?


[Sorry if i sound stroppy. It's been a long day of dealing with architects who were too important to attend design meetings 6 months ago and are now throwing their toys out of the pram because things are not working the way they expected.]

[mace]

I've just bought a new Dell Studio 1555 laptop which I picked up for £499.

The spec's:-
Processor: Pentium dual core T4200 @ 2GHz
Memory: 4Gb
System type: 64 bit
O/S: Windows Vista
Disk: 300Gb
Graphics card/Resolution: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 1366*768

It looks nice. Sony Vaio's are even nicer but also a bit pricier. I like the MacBook and MacBook Pro's but not enough to pay the premium price asked. I think the desktop monitors and keyboards are cooler and wouldn't mind buying these on their own.

[Moscow Mule]

You can have a uber-specced PC (and no, I don't mean an off-the-shelf one...read a few issues of Custom PC and you'll be able to build one easily) which will tear strips off anything Apple can produce.

If the OS isn't named after a big cat, I'm not interested.

[Board Game Geek]

Why not get both ?

You can have a uber-specced PC (and no, I don't mean an off-the-shelf one...read a few issues of Custom PC and you'll be able to build one easily) which will tear strips off anything Apple can produce.

That way, you will have decent PC for serious work and gaming, and yet still have a nice shiny Macbook to wave at people so they can massage your style ego.

[scooterscot]

Hardware aside the experience between OS cannot be compared IMO.

I feel Apple focus on user experience while Microsoft tend to do things by the book, even if that means allowing the machine to grind to a halt.

Come the end of the end stress levels are not near as high using OS X compared to XP after a good 7 or 8 hours for example.

[DS23]

mac and pc. why not have your cake and eat it? macbook rather than macbook pro will be fine. you'll probably want to biggie up the hard drive though.

[Platypus]

I'd trade it in a thrice for a Solaris lappy if I could find one that worked properly out of the box.

You can run Solaris x86 on a lappy, what's the problem? Or Linux if you wish. But why Solaris? Surely MacOS does what you want better on a Mac than anything else ever could.

And you might also be amazed to hear that Putty isn't the only terminal program available for Windows.

[ForkBoy]

Hi,
I don't know too much about Mac's so not sure what the benefits are! did I mention that is a sexy looking machine?
Thanks

Posting this from a 3.5 year old MacBook. This one has been dragged round the world several times, it has several cracks in the casing and looks about as sexy as a 57 year old belly dancer with varicose veins.
The keyboard is pants, the one button mouse is annoying and a lot of the software is flaky.
On the other hand, the screen is pretty good, it beats using Windows, there's a proper terminal - which I need for work, PuTTY is not a viable option, the MS Office stuff will run OKish, it has a flaky X server and the developer tools are included in the price.
I upgraded the memory and the hard disk soon after I bought it and apart from having to send the battery back to Apple a couple of years ago I have had no hassle from it in the 3.5 years that I have been using it daily.
I wouldn't want to go back to a Windows box but I'd trade it in a thrice for a Solaris lappy if I could find one that worked properly out of the box.

[Spacecadet]

At the top end a Mac book pro is comparable in price with a Dell Precision

Only things which stop me getting a Mac over a Dell (apart from the image):

1. No real business support. Dell offer onsite support and having used the business support I really can't fault the process. After trashing my laptop keyboard with orange juice once it took a 5 minute phone call (to the irish call center) and less than 24 hours to have a replacement to me at no cost to myself

2. No 1920x1200 screens on the 15" MBP laptop.
Having used this for 2 years now on the Dell precision I couldn't get anything less. It really does feel like there is a massive amout of screen real estate at that resolution

[Sysman]

I think something worth mentioning that I've not read before is the cost of software. Over the years I've spent more cash on software for my XP machine than I have for my Mac. Even then the cheaper software on the mac has been far more reliable.

I have mentioned that, but maybe elsewhere on the net. When I was running Windows at home I was always buying some bit of software or other. The only OS X apps I have bought since 2002 are:

• Quicktime Pro - used for a one off project, so worth it
• Toast
• iLife '04 - mainly for iPhoto which is still going strong
• Keynote V1 - it did a good job of reading PowerPoint stuff long before OOo could
• iWork '08
• iWork '09

(The Numbers spreadsheet which comes with iWork is more form than substance, but useful for "pretty stuff"; I use OOo for serious spreadsheet work.)

The Development Kit is included at no extra cost with OS X, so nothing more to fork out there and the documentation is good. You can subscribe to the Apple Developer Network for free, but of course there are paid options available for higher levels of support if you need them.

The multilingual side is a dream too. The OS itself, all the Apple apps and many/most third party ones come as multilingual versions. You can switch languages at will; bloody useful when working in Europe or if the gf wants to use it.

[MikeC1408]

I was looking at Macbooks the other day. They seem to have changed which models are aluminium since I got mine, the equivalent model to mine is now sold with plastic case.

The Mac Book Pro comes in Unibody Ali case

[d000hg]

I was looking at Macbooks the other day. They seem to have changed which models are aluminium since I got mine, the equivalent model to mine is now sold with plastic case.

[scooterscot]

I think something worth mentioning that I've not read before is the cost of software. Over the years I've spent more cash on software for my XP machine than I have for my Mac. Even then the cheaper software on the mac has been far more reliable.