<p>If your time is valuable then the Mac is worth it. If you just stay at home all day and don’t work then get a PC. Tinkering with the system and fixing all its problems will cure your boredom.</p>
<p>Macs are defiantly worth the price for me. I am going to be entering my first year of college in a Graphic Design major at Chapman University, and they require Macs! Macs are amazing art software computers, and Photoshop was built for them.</p>
<p>So don’t go on being “disgusted” with them. Obviously you have absolutely no need for them, so of course you aren’t going to like it! Personally, the extra money is worth the benefits Macs can offer me for college!</p>
<p>"In the past, Apple zealots claimed superiority on two factors: hardware and software. They asserted that PPC was better than x86 and that OS X was better than Windows.</p>
<p>Now, Macs use x86 (64) processors. Now, the only difference is OS X. A Mac is simply a PC that runs OS X as a supported operating system."</p>
<p>AMD pushed Intel to improve while IBM went nowhere with PPC development. The vector instructions in PPC processors were far superior to what Intel and AMD had. Until Intel caught up a few years later.</p>
<p>I’m a happy Mac user. I use it 100% for professional work and about 90% at home. When you get to the point where cost doesn’t matter, you pick what works best.</p>
<p>When I decided to purchase a laptop, I went back and forth between a Windows computer and a Mac. I eventually went with the Mac. Yes, it’s more expensive but with that comes fabulous programs and unsurpassed reliability.</p>
<p>My Dell XPS 1530 has the exact same components as a top of the line MBP. Peryn C2D, 4 GB, 8600m GT, 250GB 7200rpm HDD, etc. I paid a $1070 for it after CA taxes [8.5%] and it came with free shipping. MBP with the same exact hardware would have cost $3040 after taxes.</p>
<p>Deals like this are pretty common if you check Slickdeals.net every day or two.</p>
<p>So what this ends up being is $2000 for OSX and the programs that come with it. Personally, I’d rather have the money left over to pay for Adobe Lightroom and CS4, which are far better than iPhoto. I know enough about computers that I have yet to have a crash on Vista that wasn’t caused by defective hardware so admit that OSX may be a better choice for those who are stymied by the simplest of computer mishaps.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that the MBP is a bad computer, not by any stretch of the imagination is it slow or crappy. It just isn’t a reasonable choice for most college students. Yes, there are tons of them out there, but they’re just buying it since Macs have basically become a fashion accessory.</p>
<p>As BCEagle91 said, if cost doesn’t matter, buy whatever you fancy. But if it does, realize that you stand to save quite a bit just by taking the time to adjust settings for Vista. You can get performance that exceeds the MBP for a fraction of the cost, leaving you with the ability to buy your own spread of programs.</p>
<p>I have a Dell XPS M1330 that I bought last summer for traveling. I didn’t want to risk the MPB but I should have purchased a MacBook in retrospect. I had a fair number of BSODs in Vista x64. I think that Microsoft fixed them as I haven’t seen one in a while. My complaints are that Vista takes forever to boot and shut down.</p>
<p>Dell’s business model does not appear to be sustainable. I’m on a forum for Dell XPS systems and the number of complaints on quality and fit and finish are off the scale. Many of the problems are a result of nVidia chips and that’s an industrywide problem. But many XPS owners are reporting multiple motherboard replacements to deal with various problems.</p>
<p>Did you get the LED-backlit screen?</p>
<p>You pay for the OS and the level of service in the stores. Apple reports continued strong profits. Dell stock has declined 75% from its high. Apple, about 50% but Apple is still growing nicely. Dell has also had several rounds of layoffs in 2008.</p>
<p>The main issue with Vista x64 is compatibility with 3rd party programs that don’t run on 64 that well so the blame for the crashes isn’t completely on Microsoft. As for slow boot/shut down, I suggest you take a look at your services [services.msc] and configure them so the only things that start up automatically are things you need. The Blackviper site below is really useful for tweaking your system.</p>
<p>[Windows</a> Vista Service Pack 1 Service Configurations by Black Viper](<a href=“http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm]Windows”>http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm)</p>
<p>Like I said, Vista take a bit of tweaking to get it right. You have to keep in mind that Microsoft caters to a much broaders spectrum of users so their code base has to account for more possible options, making it less polished than Macs right out of the box. That’s why I mentioned in my last post how people who either don’t know or don’t want to deal with fine tuning their OS go with Apple. The price difference is a significant enough deterent for some, but not for others.</p>
<p>No, for my uses, I don’t see a point in paying an extra $150 for improved viewing angles and a bit less power consumption. Still doesn’t quite close the gap between the prices.</p>
<p>I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Dell XPS CS. We had a minor earthquake and my laptop fell off my desk, rendering the webcam inoperable. I spoke to them through chat for about 20 minutes and within two days, there was a new integrated webcam [I opted to fix it myself to save time].</p>
<p>Stock value doesn’t really mean much here since Dell doesn’t have the iPhone/iPod lines that Apple has.</p>
<p>I’d just like to reiterate that I don’t hate Macs, I’m just a poor college student and paying extra for thing I can handle easily myself makes no sense. On top of that, I’m a stereotypically cheap Asian and performance/price has special meaning for me. :D</p>
<p>“The main issue with Vista x64 is compatibility with 3rd party programs that don’t run on 64 that well so the blame for the crashes isn’t completely on Microsoft. As for slow boot/shut down, I suggest you take a look at your services [services.msc] and configure them so the only things that start up automatically are things you need. The Blackviper site below is really useful for tweaking your system.”</p>
<p>I was an early adopter of Windows XP x64 edition back in 2004 before it was released. I did development work and have been through the rounds of finding a bunch of drivers on my own for many years. I also work with HP-UX, VMS, Solaris, etc. going back to IBM 360 days.</p>
<p>XP x64 was very good. I’d say that Vista is a notch lower.</p>
<p>I shouldn’t have to configure Vista to turn off services that I don’t need. This wasn’t a problem in XP [though OEMs typically loaded XP systems with a load of crapware which did have to be removed.</p>
<p>“Like I said, Vista take a bit of tweaking to get it right. You have to keep in mind that Microsoft caters to a much broaders spectrum of users so their code base has to account for more possible options, making it less polished than Macs right out of the box. That’s why I mentioned in my last post how people who either don’t know or don’t want to deal with fine tuning their OS go with Apple. The price difference is a significant enough deterent for some, but not for others.”</p>
<p>Microsoft f’d up. Human Design Factors isn’t exactly new.</p>
<p>“No, for my uses, I don’t see a point in paying an extra $150 for improved viewing angles and a bit less power consumption. Still doesn’t quite close the gap between the prices.”</p>
<p>How about 30 extra minutes of battery life and a backlight that will last far longer than a CCFL?</p>
<p>“I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Dell XPS CS. We had a minor earthquake and my laptop fell off my desk, rendering the webcam inoperable. I spoke to them through chat for about 20 minutes and within two days, there was a new integrated webcam [I opted to fix it myself to save time].”</p>
<p>[Dell</a> XPS and Studio XPS - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion](<a href=“TechnologyGuide - TechTarget”>TechnologyGuide - TechTarget)</p>
<p>“Stock value doesn’t really mean much here since Dell doesn’t have the iPhone/iPod lines that Apple has.”</p>
<p>You clearly don’t read earnings reports. iPod growth was 3%. Mac growth was 9%.</p>
<p>“I’d just like to reiterate that I don’t hate Macs, I’m just a poor college student and paying extra for thing I can handle easily myself makes no sense. On top of that, I’m a stereotypically cheap Asian and performance/price has special meaning for me.”</p>
<p>'m a cheap asian too. At some point in your career, cheap becomes inefficient.</p>
<p>No.
…
…
…</p>
<p>Let me think about it…</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>Since you’re in the field, I’m sure you’ve seen the reports on the multicore capability of Vista and the Windows 7 Beta. It’s an accepted fact that Vista was the “bitter pill” that had to be gotten over with while the core code was refined. XP is a far better choice in the present because of the lack of processors with far more cores. Once again, with a broad user base, Microsoft is trying to lure enterprise-level businesses to upgrade from 2000 and XP by providing them with a system that is not only stable but more efficient.</p>
<p>5 hours of battery life is plenty enough for me with the abundance of power outlets. By the time the backlight on my LED breaks, I’ll have a new laptop. With the money I save from buying a non-OSX laptop, I can afford to do that more often. It doesn’t matter if your laptop will last 10 years if you’re not going to use it that long.</p>
<p>Posting a link to a laptop forum doesn’t prove anything. Any product that is used by a lot of people will have problems. A consumer is far more likely to be going to a forum to get help with problems they are encountering. But I’ll play your game if you want:</p>
<p>[Apple</a> - Support - Discussions - MacBook Pro](<a href=“http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=190]Apple”>http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=190)</p>
<p>Here. Enjoy the 707 Reply, 26k View thread on Wifi problems on the MBP too. Macs are far from perfect and reliable.</p>
<p>[Apple</a> - Support - Discussions - MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless …](<a href=“http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1352518&tstart=0]Apple”>http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1352518&tstart=0)</p>
<p>I’m sure the Steve Jobs factor on Mac’s stock prices was related to their product lines, right? Stocks are not an accurate prediction of a company’s worth, especially now. I’m sorry that I don’t care enough to read earnings reports for Apple but I have no vested interest in the matter. I think its hard to doubt that the iPhone hasn’t played a significant role in making Apple a more visible option for people.</p>
<p>I don’t see how it will become inefficient if I saved a ton of money getting a laptop that worked just as well, if not better. I don’t see myself switching over to Apple anytime soon. Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 run perfectly fine on my XPS and I don’t think I will ever see a day that Microsoft Word won’t work right with a Windows OS. Besides, at every law firm I’ve encountered thus far, the prevailing laptop in use was the Thinkpad.</p>
<p>How about returning this post to its original question now? I make a post saying that for Me, a Macbook Pro is not a reasonable cost-effective purchase and somehow it incites a tirade against Dell and Microsoft. The protection against easily preventable things is not worth $2000 to me, maybe it is to you.</p>
<p>“Since you’re in the field, I’m sure you’ve seen the reports on the multicore capability of Vista and the Windows 7 Beta. It’s an accepted fact that Vista was the “bitter pill” that had to be gotten over with while the core code was refined.”</p>
<p>Vista was an engineering failure. Engineering can be filled with politics, people going for their own bonuses and stock options at the expense of the project or the company and managers that were already wealthy. It’s frequently hard to motivate people when they have ten million in their bank accounts and are worried about who to take on their yacht for an extended vacation.</p>
<p>“XP is a far better choice in the present because of the lack of processors with far more cores. Once again, with a broad user base, Microsoft is trying to lure enterprise-level businesses to upgrade from 2000 and XP by providing them with a system that is not only stable but more efficient.”</p>
<p>Quad cores are affordable and I have a friend that’s running Vista x64 on a Mac Pro with 13 GB of RAM and a bunch of disks. He’s told me that performance is fine on that platform. It’s a bit harder to do that on a laptop though.</p>
<p>“5 hours of battery life is plenty enough for me with the abundance of power outlets. By the time the backlight on my LED breaks, I’ll have a new laptop. With the money I save from buying a non-OSX laptop, I can afford to do that more often. It doesn’t matter if your laptop will last 10 years if you’re not going to use it that long.”</p>
<p>I have a laptop that is nine years old and it still works just fine. It’s a Dell Inspiron 4000 with a Pentium III processor. We have a total of eight laptops purchased since 2000 - they all work. The CCFL screens are a little darker but they can be hooked up to external monitors. The old laptops are nice if you need to bring something where the risk of loss is higher than usual, or someone needs to borrow a laptop or yours is unavailable for some reason.</p>
<p>“Posting a link to a laptop forum doesn’t prove anything. Any product that is used by a lot of people will have problems. A consumer is far more likely to be going to a forum to get help with problems they are encountering. But I’ll play your game if you want:”</p>
<p>“Apple - Support - Discussions - MacBook Pro”</p>
<p>I have both and read both forums. Both sets of laptops have the nVidia problems but it seems to me that Apple is doing a better job in repairing their system and not causing further problems. There are further problems with the Dell systems. Probably related to a ton of cost cutting in their company.</p>
<p>“I’m sure the Steve Jobs factor on Mac’s stock prices was related to their product lines, right? Stocks are not an accurate prediction of a company’s worth, especially now. I’m sorry that I don’t care enough to read earnings reports for Apple but I have no vested interest in the matter. I think its hard to doubt that the iPhone hasn’t played a significant role in making Apple a more visible option for people.”</p>
<p>iPhone growth rates were something like 88%. Apple contines to increase sales and units on their Macs. I like to trade the stock of a company to make the profits to buy their hardware. Apple has been a great company for short-term trading.</p>
<p>“I don’t see how it will become inefficient if I saved a ton of money getting a laptop that worked just as well, if not better. I don’t see myself switching over to Apple anytime soon. Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4 run perfectly fine on my XPS and I don’t think I will ever see a day that Microsoft Word won’t work right with a Windows OS. Besides, at every law firm I’ve encountered thus far, the prevailing laptop in use was the Thinkpad.”</p>
<p>I’m not an expert at what is done at law firms but consider a company like Google which allows their employees to choose their platform. Guess what employees overwhelmingly choose there. What do you think they use at Mozilla? Arguably a great engineering company.</p>
<p>The efficiency is in time. I do software engineering. My server systems are Linux. Working on Mac OSX is pretty close to working in Linux. Having that capability makes me more efficient. I also do work on Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.</p>
<p>On Windows, I have to run a fair amount of anti-malware programs. On Mac OSX, I don’t have to. I have a dual-boot system with Mac OSX and Windows XP and the differences in bootup and shutdown times are noticeable. One of the networks that I use regularly is infected with Downadup. I would just assume use something other than Windows when connected to that network.</p>
<p>“How about returning this post to its original question now? I make a post saying that for Me, a Macbook Pro is not a reasonable cost-effective purchase and somehow it incites a tirade against Dell and Microsoft. The protection against easily preventable things is not worth $2000 to me, maybe it is to you.”</p>
<p>I have three MacBook Pros. Two for college students. They love them.</p>
<p>This is like Stabucks vs Dunkin Donuts.</p>
<p>SBUX is down over 75% from the highs in 2007.</p>
<p>I don’t understand people saying Macs can doing some things better than a PC, which is false.
Macs are easier to use with its pretty GUI, but thats about it.</p>
<p>I can do all that video/audio editing, 3D graphics, etc… just as well on a PC</p>
<p>“I don’t understand people saying Macs can doing some things better than a PC, which is false. Macs are easier to use with its pretty GUI, but thats about it.”</p>
<p>Macs have Unix under the hood. For those of us doing software engineering in the Unix environment, it provides a more familiar and efficient interface.</p>
<p>Being easier to use is worth something.</p>
<p>As far as efficiency goes, not having to run several anti-Malware programs means that your computer can spend more time actually running your application.</p>
<p>BCEagle91, what a weak argument… doesn’t justify the mac premium at all.</p>
<p>Unix/Linux can be installed on a PC in case you didn’t know.</p>
<p>" not having to run several anti-Malware programs means that your computer can spend more time actually running your application."</p>
<p>You must be talking about a very slow PC…
I run a few anti malware programs and they don’t use CPU power unless I do a virus scan or spyware/adware scan or w/e. They do take up memory, but that isn’t a issue at all if you have sufficient memory.</p>
<p>“Unix/Linux can be installed on a PC in case you didn’t know.”</p>
<p>We, we have a a Linux team to maintain our Linux development systems. But there’s a certain amount of work and overhead to installing and maintaining Linux on PC hardware. I once had the enjoyable job of trying to support a non-standard laptop display along with an attached monitor. I don’t think that the average user wants to use vi to fix display settings at the console.</p>
<p>I used punched cards on IBM 360 systems back in the 1970s. I worked as a consultant in the early 80s and have been a software engineer since the mid-80s working on a variety of operating systems. So yeah, I know a little about Linux.</p>
<p>“You must be talking about a very slow PC…
I run a few anti malware programs and they don’t use CPU power unless I do a virus scan or spyware/adware scan or w/e. They do take up memory, but that isn’t a issue at all if you have sufficient memory.”</p>
<p>The biggest headache is downloading new virus definitions on startup. My Windows system is basically unusable until this operation is finished. I download new anti-malware definitions weekly and run scans weekly. This was before moving my main hardware to Mac OSX. I don’t bother with that stuff on Mac OSX.</p>
<p>Sure, you can tweak Vista, install and maintain Linux, run all of your scans from time to time. Many people would rather not have to do all of that stuff. We have staff at work that maintains Windows systems too. We don’t have staff to maintain Mac OSX systems. I wonder why.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=BCEagle91]
there’s a certain amount of work and overhead to installing and maintaining Linux on PC hardware.
[/quote]
And it’s very low these days. From the way you talk, it sounds like the last time you used Linux was back in the late 90s when Red Hat and Debian were all the rage.</p>
<p>Guys, it all comes down to personal preference. I could sit here and extol upon the virtues of OS X and then turn around and do the same for Vista.</p>
<p>Just be thankful that we can make the choice, and agree to disagree.</p>
<p>“And it’s very low these days.”</p>
<p>Well, low is a pretty relative term. Perhaps my company is wasting millions of dollars a year on its linux support team. But I really don’t think so.</p>
<p>Why do other open source projects and a place like Google have employees that prefer Macs when they were gung-ho on Linux several years ago. Perhaps they don’t want to deal with the maintenance issues and would just prefer to work on their software engineering.</p>
<p>“From the way you talk, it sounds like the last time you used Linux was back in the late 90s when Red Hat and Debian were all the rage.”</p>
<p>I use Linux daily. It’s nice to use when you have someone to do the maintenance.</p>