<p>I'm on the hunt for a laptop to use at Duke. I will be a student at Pratt and I was wondering whether or not there is an advantage to getting one type of laptop over another. I havn't even narrowed it down to Mac or PC yet. I'm open to all options.</p>
<p>No there’s no real advantage to getting a particular type/model over another. If you are BME, then your laptop is expected to be able to run Microsoft Office/OpenOffice, SSH terminal, X-Windows (terminal graphics), NI LabVIEW, and possibly MATLAB if you want a local copy (which is actually a pretty good idea). </p>
<p>Any good laptop (e.g. not a netbook) today will be able to do all of that.</p>
<p>i dont recommend TAP bundles for they are expensive. buying from the duke store directly is good tho (speaking for the models i wanted)</p>
<p>Is it worth $700 to upgrade from the Macbook to the Macbook Pro?</p>
<p>its never worth any money to get macs. I always find apple a big rip off.</p>
<p>Get a life, get Lenovo.</p>
<p>@harvardwaitlist</p>
<p>are you speaking from experience?</p>
<p>I think what harvardwaitlist is trying to say (and I realized too because I was in the same boat as you in terms of mac vs. pc) is that Macs are really expensive, when in fact you can get a really nice laptop pc that has really good hard drives and process speeds such as 4GB RAM, 320GB Hard Drive with pretty good graphic cards for less than a thousand dollars. On the other hand, I don’t know of many macs that cost less than a thousand dollars (at least from what I’ve researched), whereas even the really nice macs like the macbook pro, are $700 on top of that. So IMHO, I think you can still get a nice PC for almost half the price of a nice mac. Then again, macs are arguably the hottest selling laptops for incoming college students, so there must be something about them that people like and are consequently willing to pay more money for.</p>
<p>^ I fully agree with what you are saying though I wouldn’t mind hearing the other side of the argument from a Mac owner. Can someone expand on what the big deal is with a Mac?</p>
<p>My sister will be a junior at Duke next year and she had an HP for her first two years but when she got an internship this summer she needed a more portable laptop (hers was 17in) and she decided to go with a mac. She absolutely loves it and says she would never go back to an HP or anything of that sort. I on the other hand have a dell adamo 13.4 inch and love that so i guess it is just personal preference on what you like.</p>
<p>Our son graduated from Pratt last month. He used a mac for all 4 years. His comment: I haven’t asked it to do anything that it can’t do. He had NO problems with it. Compare that to some of his peers who seemed to be reinstalling their Windows operating systems a couple of times a month.</p>
<p>I’m not saying you need a mac, of course. Just that this was a problem-free solution for one student.</p>
<p>
I can provide the mac side the argument (although I can’t apply it to Pratt).
- Macs have better battery than most PCs. Compared to HPs (which I also use-a tablet and a 15.4 in-the battery life of Macs is pretty much twice of that of HPs) and Lenovo, which my high school classmates used. Also Mac’s battery is made out of Lithium-ion Polymer, which allows it to have a longer battery life (both in the short term and long term). One charge on a Mac lasted longer than one charge on PC. Also, if you noticed that in the long run (say 10+ month), your PC battery’s life is diminishing. It begins to last an hour or two compared to the advertised 4. This is because the battery is loosing some of it’s ability to recharge. Lithium Polymer on the other hand doesn’t have that much of an effect. Yes, it does occur, but it occurs at a significantly slower rate. My friend has a Mac (purchased four years ago) that has a lithium polymer battery, it can still go 2-3 hours on a charge (while surfing the web and simple word processing). My other friend’s Dell and my HP tablet (which is 3 years old) both lasts less than an hour just surfing the web. The graphic cards in a Mac are many times faster than most of the graphics card in the computer at Best Buy (again the two types I explained before are the exception). Mac’s battery life is advertised to up to ten. PCs advertise 4, only some advertise more but those are the higher end laptop.
- Graphics: many of the casual everyday laptops you buy at like Best Buy have poor graphic cards. This are usually the cheap, low end graphic card (unless you buy a high performance laptop or gaming one but those are the same price as Macs). A lot of the laptops will have an Intel graphic card or a low end NVIDIA/AMD graphic card. Macs have a higher end NVIDIA graphic card.
- Processors: the processor speed on Macs are faster (2.4 GHz with 3MB Cache) and many other brands of laptop. HP often use AMD processor (which are usually ~2 GHz). Some of the more expensive PCs have 2.0-2.26 GHz).
- Weight and Size: This I have to say is a great advantage of Macs. I have felt the difference between a Mac and Lenovo of about the same size and I have to say, Macs are lighter (and Lenovo have some of the lighter PCs). Macs are lighter than most PCs that are around the same size. Also most PCs come in screen size of 15.4 which makes it significantly bulkier (this is because smaller PCs overheat). Macs are 13.3 in, smaller and lighter, a advantage if you have to walk across campus.
- Pre-installed software: this is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to new computers. I hate buying new PCs because it takes me hours and days to uninstall the useless OEM “trial” software (such as the notorious Norton Antivirus). A lot of the don’t fully uninstall too (I have to use a specific uninstall software that scans for left over files and registries). When they don’t uninstall fully, they make your computer less efficient when it runs. Also, many of these software will be running in the background and you won’t even know it, which further slows your newly bought computer down. Macs don’t have that issue. Their computers don’t come with as many pre-installed software as PCs.
- Virus: you probably heard this many time but the number of Mac virus is dramatically less than Windows. So the chance of your Mac being hijacked is slim. Also there are many free Mac anti virus software if you are still afraid.</p>
<p>Okay now to price. You probably would say: why buy a mac when I can buy a PC?
Well let me help you on that part.
- Education discount: You can get anywhere from 100-200 bucks off on a new macbook (200 for the 15 inch Macbook pro I think). The 13.3 macbook gets 100 dollars off.
- Buy Now and Get a Free Ipod Touch: Now that’s a 200 dollar value. If you have a ipod touch, you might say: well I don’t want another one. Guess what? There is something called Ebay where others will bid on an brand new ipod touch and can even bid pass 200 sometimes. If you don’t have a Ipod Touch, then wouldn’t be lovely to carry around a device that can check your email, read articles required by classes and even your textbook? Also wouldn’t it be lovely to carry around the Duke app?
So essentially, you can save $300 bucks on a new macbook. That can put a macbook (the regular) from 1000 to 700 dollars.</p>
<p>^helpful</p>
<p>I saw that buying a computer through Duke is more expensive. Is this because of software and a warranty or are there other factors involved?</p>
<p>and I do have an Ipod touch already so woo</p>
<p>So a few points to address:</p>
<p>1) While I’m certainly no expert in this, according to many sources online, Li-Polymer battery actually lose capacity faster than Li-ion batteries. Just do a google search for Li-Polymer batteries and capacity. </p>
<p>What makes Li-Pol batteries attractive to manufacturers are certain attributes of the the polymer matrix. For example, Li-Pol batteries can be made thinner, lighter, and more fire/explosion-resistant than Li-ion batteries. They can also be made into a variety of shapes to fit the needs of the device. </p>
<p>The disadvantage is that they lose capacity faster and they are more expensive than typical Li-ion batteries. </p>
<p>I’m speculating here, that Apple chose Li-Pol batteries because of the fact that it can be molded to fit the inside of the laptop and take maximum advantage of the available space. Since it’s not designed to be user-replaceable anyway, there’s no need to worry about accessibility or ease of removal. </p>
<p>2) Graphics: Mac book graphics high end? Not quite so:</p>
<p>A cursory glance of apple.com shows that Macbooks and Macbook Pros run a mix of nVidia GeForce 320M/330M or 9400 and start at $1000 (without educations discounts and such). They comes with at most 512MB VRAM. </p>
<p>GeForce 300 series GPU’s are a rebrand of GeForce 200 series DirectX 10.1 GPU’s and are not based on the most current chip architecture. </p>
<p>A cursory look at the HP website shows a 15.4" consumer laptop that has an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 which is actually of the same equivalent generation as the the Mac chips. The only thing is only 128MB VRAM (but the laptop starts at $550). And the kicker is that an upgrade to ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 (switchable) graphics with 512MB VRAM is only $100 more. You’d need to get a $2200 Macbook Pro for a 512MB VRAM graphics card. Furthermore, 5470 is the current generation GPU supporting DirectX11 and one generation ahead of mac offerings. </p>
<p>3) Processor:</p>
<p>Based on clock speed, PCs win hands down. A 2.8GHz AMD chip is $50 more than the base config. </p>
<p>I’ll grant that AMD chips are general acknowledged to be inferior to Intel Core chips. </p>
<p>But, HP also has Intel laptops. The same 15.4" laptop, if equipped with the same 2.53GHz Intel Core i5 540M chip as the $1999 15" MBP or the 17" MBP is only $200 plus a base price of $650, same graphics upgrade choices as before. </p>
<p>4) Weight and size: this is an area in which macs have a slight advantage. Macs are small and light, as long as you stick with the 13" models. The 15" models are also probably lighter than their 15.4" PC counterparts. But then again, it’s already 15" and a few ounces after that is just peanuts, it’s probably safe to say you won’t be lugging either around all day long.</p>
<p>But PCs come in those sizes too. While 15.4" is certainly a popular size, PCs come in 14", 13.3", 12", 11", 10", and even smaller as well as bigger. I’m typing on a 12" Thinkpad right now (and loving it). Also, on the plus side, many newer 13" and 14" PC models now use the current generation Intel Core i3 processors whereas the Macbook (the only 13" model) still use the older Core 2 Duo processors. </p>
<p>5) Pre-installed software: yup PC manufacturer’s are notorious for this crap. It’s one way to keep their prices down. You choices are 1) keep it (not recommended) 2) Uninstall yourself (maybe a day’s work max) and clean it up 3) get your computer literate friend to do it for you (plenty of those at Duke) 4) reformat and reinstall (my personal favorite). </p>
<p>Oh well, PC has got to have some downsides.</p>
<p>6) Yeah, there are fewer mac viruses than windows viruses. However, keep this in mind. Mac users are growing, sooner or later hackers will take notice. Also, many online attacks nowadays do not attack the operating system directly. Attacks such as phishing, exploits through other software such as flash, PDFs, Word documents, XML, etc etc can render both PCs and Macs vulnerable. </p>
<p>In this category, neither macs nor PCs are all that great but PCs are more vulnerable to viruses. In the end, nothing can beat vigilance and common sense when web surfing. </p>
<p>7) Price: I don’t really think I need to go there…</p>
<p>8) iPod Touch is very nice and all, but when the difference in price is around $500? It’s a hard pill to swallow based on price alone. </p>
<p>In the end, I’m not against Macs. They are easier to use and more carefree than PCs. Having both software and hardware design under one roof and distribution controlled by one company makes it easier to fine tune the user experience. And their design is truly superb, user-friendly, and elegant. More importantly, they are just as capable as PCs at handling most if not all that you can throw at it in either trinity or pratt and they are as supported as PCs.</p>
<p>I’m merely pointing out that specs and prices aren’t really the strengths on which macs compete (even apple knows this. Why do you think there’s no Mac netbook?) so it’s probably not a good idea to choose based on that if that’s all you care about. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if you feel that a mac is right for you and that’s what you like, by all means get what you want, it’ll serve you well.</p>
<p>Edit: I’ll just note also that the best time for buying a mac (or any computer) is right before school starts as that’s when there are most discounts and sometimes apple refreshes their macbook specs at that time too.</p>
<p>The free on-campus service is a big benefit of buying through Duke.</p>
<p>I think someone already mentioned the free on campus service in another thread but the gist is that the only advantage to that is you get to drop off and pickup your machine for service at the OIT desk on campus. </p>
<p>On the other hand, most companies ship boxes to you and will ship your computers either overnight or by 2-day Fedex/UPS (at least Dell, Lenovo, and HP did all of that for me) when you do a warranty repair. </p>
<p>Software problems can be debugged by OIT free all four years whether or not you bought a computer at Duke. I’m not actually sure that OIT handles hardware problems in-house either. </p>
<p>Anyway, be aware that at least until 2 years ago, the macs bought through TAP are only covered for hardware issues for 3 years because that’s how long applecare lasted. Not sure if that’s still the case. </p>
<p>Also all PCs, not matter how long warranty is or where you bought it (TAP, Duke, OEM, etc) will only have a 1 year warranty on the battery as that is considered a consumable. Apple covers defective batteries as long as AppleCare or your warranty lasts (whichever is later) but that doesn’t include batteries whose capacity is diminished through regular use (charge/discharge cycling) so you’d be out of luck anyway unless your battery failed.</p>
<p>Does cephas have anything to say 'cause I know your creeping out there somewhere .</p>
<p>I bought a Lenovo through Duke 4 years ago. My warranty expires in July.</p>
<p>Before I left school I got it cleaned, had a new fan installed, and a new LCD screen. All of it was free because I bought it through Duke. The 4 year warranty has its benefits, especially since I was always running software for Pratt.</p>