<p>in the car analogy u defintely said that people are sacrificing performance for performance?</p>
<p>4 gb adds $100 over 2 gb; photoshop is the one thing you mention that could benefit from it. If it lasts you four years, isn’t $25 per year close to zero cost?</p>
<p>get 4gb. 2 gb will be obsolete in a year and might be too slow for some apps like downloading and running multiple programs, of course depending on the programs.</p>
<p>The notion that macs are better built than thinkpads is simply false. In fact thinkpads are designed incredibly better than macbooks, for the simple reason that they are meant for business. A business doesn’t want to deal with fragile products, they want a product that will last, has good support and will be able to be resold at its end of life. If you sit a macbook next to a thinkpad, the macbook is simply fragile, especially its screen. While on the other hand the thinkpads screen in properly secured. The thinkpad has a titanium roll cage around its internals and around the screen. The macbook has rounded aluminium which has been shown to be think and crack and dent easily. </p>
<p>As for its design, both notebooks are designed by a similar set of engineers. When it was time for apple to really start making their push and ibm was selling off its pc division. Apple took around 50 of IBM’s thinkpad engineers from rhode island. Those 50 still work at apple and the rest still work at the same place now just for Lenovo. So both have great design simply because they are made by similar engineers. All of the apple products are designed in California. Well all of the thinkpad products are designed in rhode island. Apple support is in California or Texas, Lenovo in in Atlanta.</p>
<p>“In fact thinkpads are designed incredibly better than macbooks … So both have great design …”</p>
<p>:) 
:)</p>
<p>I meant that the design was different for different needs. Thinkpads are designed to be rugged while macbooks are designed to be pretty.</p>
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<p>How about this analogy? Most college students get relatively cheap cars because that’s all they need to get from point A to point B. They don’t waste their money and buy a Lamborghini just because it looks better. Same goes for laptops.</p>
<p>of course, the difference between a macbook and other computer is only a little more than a couple of hundred bucks. What’s the difference between a Lamborghini and a cheap car?</p>
<p>Obviously the difference in cars is a lot greater, which is why the analogy was silly in the first place. But if you’re going to use a silly analogy, it should at least support your point. If cars are like computers and students should use similar criteria for the two purchases, then pretty much every student would/should get a PC.</p>
<p>Another_Adam: I’m sorry, you must be either incredibly ignorant, or just flat out dumb. Giving side by side comparisons of performance to price ratios is the epitome of factual, evidence. If you REALLY want some hard numbers, go to notebookreview.com and look up the 3dmarks for a PC vs a Mac of the same costs, is that clear cut enough for you?</p>
<p>I just want to say this is totally stupid. Let people do what they want to do, it is a capitalistic society. I do want to do say this to some of you: please educate yourself the difference between macs and pcs before you start saying things that are completely untrue. </p>
<p>I’ll be quite interested to see how some of you fair in college. Good luck!</p>
<p>I’ll leave you guys with this: Macs and PCs are generally marketed towards different types of people.</p>
<p>I don’t know about you Colbs, but I live in the real world, and out here people care more about day to day usage than some number on the side of a box. I highly doubt you know much about computers, but in case you do, perhaps you should google Darwin, the name of Mac OS X’s UNIX core. OS X is built on top of the same OS that powers mainframes, which means that my Macbook gets hundreds of days of uptime and I don’t even have to break a sweat with maintenance. Now you can say whatever lies you want about Windows being stable, blah, blah, blah, but I’ve never owned a windows PC that even came close to that number, and I’ve owned at least 20 or 30. When I’m plonking out a bibliography for a 30 page research paper, I don’t care whether my processor is 2.66ghz or 2.93ghz. I don’t care if I have a 512MB 9800GT or a 256MB 9600GT. I don’t care if I have HDMI or eSATA or a Card Reader (all of which can be added to a macbook pro, BTW). I care that my computer isn’t going to crash on me and take a couple of sleepless nights worth of work with it, and if you think that saving a couple dollars saved is worth that peace of mind, then you are a dangerously insane individual. Unlike you, I actually experienced both sides of the argument, and I can make an informed choice. You think macs suck just because they’re more expensive and you can’t afford one. I think PC’s suck because I’ve used PC’s and I know from personal experience that there are better alternatives. Perhaps you see the difference.</p>
<p>I know a kid like you, he sits in the mac lab and loudly complains about ‘how slow these pieces of garbage are’, and so on. In fact, he says the same thing that you do about being annoyed about people wasting their money. Meanwhile, everyone else is happily minding their own business and ignoring him. Please, for your own sake, just stop, you’re embarassing yourself.</p>
<p>“I don’t care if I have HDMI or eSATA or a Card Reader (all of which can be added to a macbook pro, BTW).”</p>
<p>If you’re talking about external add-ons, any computer can add those. If you’re talking internal, you’re embarrassing yourself. Last time I checked, no laptop, PC or Mac could upgrade their motherboard or video card.</p>
<p>It’s sad that a product which has 90% of the market seems to require dumping on the niche products.</p>
<p>The Macbook Pro has an Express Card 34 slot. Internal add-on cards with those functions are available.</p>
<p>^ I don’t see that on the specs page on the Apple website. Either way as far as hardware goes, I would buy a Macbook Pro if I had money to blow and it ran windows. For the 95% of people who don’t, a PC is a better option.</p>
<p>Yeah of course. Except a Mac does run Windows. Natively or in emulation.</p>
<p>^ Then I’d be paying a whole lot of money for a Mac which I would never run OS X on. Since I’m not in the lucky 5% of the population, I’ll buy a dedicated windows machine instead of paying double for a Mac.</p>
<p>Again, why does the simple choice of a computer bring out the jerks who can’t accept there are alternatives to Windows? It’s ridiculous. Microsoft is one of the largest Mac developers - including one of my old friends - and they have less of an attitude.</p>
<p>When comparing a Mac and a PC, obviously a PC has better cost to specs ratio. If you cannot see that, you are stupid.</p>
<p>Mac is gaining popularity because the OSX works pretty much flawlessly, while Vista has its fair share of problems. Also, Mac spends a lot of money on R&D to have features and a more sophisticated look than similar PCs. HP laptops are big culprits of ugly bulky machines. HPs cost a hella lot less too. Another plus is that when you purchase the Mac “AppleCare,” they cover your laptop for three years, and will even replace it if something cannot be fixed. </p>
<p>Overall, the products inside the laptops are the same. PC and Mac use the crappiest components inside their laptops, so it is not like Mac uses a better motherboard or better quality memory. Mac does not do anything a PC can’t do. It just might do it (arguably) better.</p>