megan ([info]gibbsey76) wrote in [info]computertalk,
@ 2007-10-25 19:36:00
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i need a new laptop
 hi..sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this question..but..

im looking for a new laptop..and i have no idea what to get. ive used pcs all my life but ive recently been looking at the macbook pros because they are really a lot more geared towards multimedia (which is what im looking for in a laptop right now). is a mac really better than a pc in that area? or is it more cost-efficient to get the more loaded up pc with all the software (im also just drawn to pcs because i really like windows/and the new windows vista). i dont really know a lot about macs..but i feel that you sort of are paying more for less? for some reason i think pcs can just do more/have more for your money. im not really sure how right i am..so if you guys have any input that would be awesome. 

so i guess im asking if you were willing to pay a reasonable amount (haha, i hope that its reasonable enough), like probably no more than 1800...what kind of laptop would you get? like how do you rank hp, sony, or dell compared to a mac?


thanks for your help :)

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[info]jeffreyatw
2007-10-25 11:55 pm UTC (link)
A "loaded-up" PC? What do you mean, like, with stuff provided by Dell or Toshiba or something? To that, a resounding "NO, PLEASE GOD NO."

PC manufacturers are pushed to add a bunch of free-trial crap onto their computers when they sell them. The stuff is usually badly functional and horribly gimped unless you pay a whole lot extra for it.

Macs, on the other hand, come with a plethora of great multimedia applications built-in, made first party. I highly, highly recommend a Mac if you're looking for whole lot of functionality built-in.

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[info]jeffreyatw
2007-10-25 11:57 pm UTC (link)
By the way, one thing you might want to look into if you get a Mac is Windows. Although Mac OS X can fulfill almost any multimedia need you can think of, there are some Windows-specific applications. You can always install Windows as a second OS on your Mac and run that extra application, if you need it.

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[info]gibbsey76
2007-10-26 12:03 am UTC (link)
yeah haha, i basically meant by loaded up..like is it cheaper to buy the multimedia software to put onto a pc or get all of it on a mac..which i have found to be more expensive than a pc. and i think its a lot more expensive to put windows on a mac..which sucks, but its good to know that i have options and can use both if i really need to.

haha...sorry im not the most literate person when it comes to computers.

but i definitely appreciate your input, thanks!

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[info]kentox
2007-10-26 01:16 am UTC (link)
What, exactly, do you mean by "geared toward multimedia"? Are you watching media, or making it? Because if you're just watching it, then there's a bunch of freeware media-playing software out there for all OSes. For Windows, MPC and VLC are both excellent. In fact, if you download the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, I think both get installed with it, and MPC can then be set to your default player.

If you're trying to produce media, then that's a bit more interesting: do you have your software already picked out? What are you planning to do with it?

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[info]jeffreyatw
2007-10-26 01:27 am UTC (link)
I bypass MPC completely; I greatly dislike having a bunch of codecs installed separately. VLC does the job without fail.

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[info]kentox
2007-10-26 01:32 am UTC (link)
That's definitely a point in VLC's favor; and for a while I went along with that. But to be perfectly honest, I just couldn't stand the aesthetics of VLC. The traffic-cone icons, the UI, and so forth: I found myself missing my old MPC. So I reverted, despite the need for a codec pack.

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[info]jeffreyatw
2007-10-26 01:35 am UTC (link)
But what about all the ugly ffdshow and ac3 or whatever icons in your systray? :P

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[info]kentox
2007-10-26 01:41 am UTC (link)
Usually they don't show up, and when I'm watching a movie I'm not looking through my systray ^_^

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[info]vash3857
2007-10-26 04:49 am UTC (link)
yeah, I use MPC as well, its cool. BTW, do you know if you can have vista aero running while having MPC running? cuz for me, in vista business it turns off aero when i open MPC...

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[info]jeffreyatw
2007-10-26 01:31 am UTC (link)
Piece by piece, Macs are pretty much the same price as PCs nowadays. There might be some discrepancy but it's negligible.

And yes, you have to buy Windows ($200-$400 retail, depending on version) to put it on a Mac.

I also wonder what you mean by "multimedia software" - any computer on the market is capable of playing videos, music, or DVDs. I just suggest Macs as a great value because it's got so much in terms of stability, features, usability, etc. going for them.

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[info]vash3857
2007-10-26 04:56 am UTC (link)
macs were originally better for graphics stuffs because the colors on the screen resembled the actual colors more closely than PCs, not so much anymore since they switched to the intel architecture. The macbook pro's are more expensive than the average, average/low high end laptops, but if you are doing graphics, youll prolly want a high end laptop, unless all you are doing is watching movies, in which case you could just get the $400 dells...

if you are in college, see if the college gives you a discount on them, im in northeastern and i get an 11% discount, thats $200 dollars off the low end macbook pro,

also, if you are getting a mac, and need to get vista, id recommend getting vista home premium, you could say it is the sweet spot in terms of functionality and price. you get basically all the funcionality you need, plus media center is built in, and you only pay 169, while for business, which doesnt have media center, but it does supposedly have some extra security features you pay 200, and for vista ultimate, which is basically vista business plus media center you pay 299...

yeah, these are my two, well, 3 cents, hope it helps...

P.S. if you want a good cheap laptop, try powernotebooks.com (specifically for example the Sager NP2090, the laptop that I am currently writing this on)

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[info]shadohrt
2007-10-26 12:38 pm UTC (link)
My rundown not using Vista (because in my experience it has more problems that it solves.... it is basically prettier and more troublesome) and having limited experience working with OSX 10.4

Apple:
stable, comes with a plethora of software like iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, etc built in.
Windows:
usually comes with a lot of crap that has to be uninstalled because it takes up space and resources. Rarely comes with anything good without extra cost.
Apple:
seems to run more efficiently and with fewer "resident" agents that suck up resources for no reason.

Windows:
has viruses that are so prevalent that they can be installed by drive-by installs on websites.
Apple:
one virus has been in the wild and you need to authenticate for it to do anything.

Windows:
releases updates regularly.
Apple:
not so good on the OS updates when they are needed.

Apple:
can run windows
Windows-based laptop:
cannot run apple (easily).



For me the choice is clear. If I had the money I would buy an apple macbook and get Parallels so that I could install windows (and linux if you wanted) to be sure I had whatever I wanted when I wanted.

If you are a college student check with the campus bookstore and library. My old college had (has?) an agreement with MS that every student had a license to use any MS product for free as long as they were a student and we could simply go and check out the title from the library. You may be able to get XP (and, ewwwww, Vista) there for $0 along with MS Office for both Mac and Windows.... then again, you might not be able to do that... but it is worth looking into.

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[info]kentox
2007-10-27 05:29 am UTC (link)
For what it's worth:

My computer is not unstable, and did not come with any crap that needed to be uninstalled. With free software off sourceforge.net and some other websites, I got plenty of good things without extra cost. I've not noticed any problems with efficiency, nor resident agents. I've never gotten a virus, and if I had, there are free virus-checkers for me to pick and choose from.

I have done this with Windows XP. (I've also done it with Ubuntu Linux.) The only disadvantage that I see is that I cannot run Apple's OS -- but I haven't actually ever needed to, in any circumstance.

I really don't understand why people would buy from a brand that likes to lock you into a certain set of hardware. For example, I have an iPod: but even on those things, Apple's uber-proprietary policies annoyed me, and I found it much nicer when I switched, again for free, to the Rockbox OS for my iPod. The fact that it can now calculate the Mandelbrot set while I'm listening to Jonathan Coulton sing about the Mandelbrot set is icing on the geek cake.

Like, I really just don't see a particular way that Apple stands out, except in one case: someone who doesn't know where to get free software and values their time too much to go looking. I'll concede that Apple comes with many more options pre-installed; but it's never felt like a big ordeal to find the software I like on Windows or Linux.



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[info]shadohrt
2007-10-27 02:33 pm UTC (link)
You correct me as though the original poster is as informed as you. I doubt this otherwise they would not be asking the opinions of the group.
I stand by my statements, but not in respect to advanced users. I managed to keep a Windows ME installation stable and in use for years because I know how. My parents and grandparents, however, manage to gunk up their windows installations and cause instabilities in new and innovative ways that I have never even thought of. Inexperienced users can manage to make windows unstable and corrupted very quickly. I have not seen them do that nearly as quickly with OSX and, when they have, it has always been isolated to their specific user account, not the entire machine therefore I can say that I find it more stable an operating environment.
Open source software, while powerful and free is often not as easy to use as the proprietary counterpart. You may disagree, but that is my opinion and it is the general opinion I have observed of people who are not super-users who have the swap made on them. They notice and they don't like it. They do, however, get used to it eventually.
As for not having crap that needed to be un-installed: where did you buy your system? The major manufacturers (again, the places that non-geeks go) all install free trials, etc with the OS. They subsidize the machines that way. I don't buy from those venues myself and, thusly, I don;t have to worry about it: i just buy the hardware and install the OS from scratch, but I would not expect 5 of my 6 siblings to be willing to undertake that, let alone my parents or grandparents. They simply want to turn it on and have it work when they get it home and that means other crap.

So, basically, your arguments are aimed at those that have a greater knowledge of the field. If the original poster qualifies as such then my estimation of their knowledge is under-estimated, if not than my summary of pros and cons if solidly based on their level of knowledge and ability to support their own equipment.

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[info]kentox
2007-10-27 03:11 pm UTC (link)
I didn't present any "arguments" -- I presented comments and questions.

Like you, I also buy hardware and install my OS from scratch: hence, no third-party add-ons. It's not as difficult a technical ordeal as you're making it out to be: really, it's mostly just plugging things into certain slots; and there are several guides to that sort of thing. (I've even referred people to "mysuperpc.com", which has lame graphics but basically takes you through the whole process.)

I've also set up a computer for my parents to use, and they easily qualify as "inexperienced users." I can't say I've ever seen it becoming "unstable and corrupted." And the comments you make just don't stand to reason: most Windows users are probably "inexperienced," and most computer users are Windows users: shouldn't we expect then that a sizeable amount of the world's computers are all "unstable and corrupted"...? This is just not something I've seen in practice.

I'd disagree that free software (by which I mean free as in beer) isn't easy to use. (I make the distinction because you were talking about having to pay money for stuff, which does not necessarily mean "open-source.") Here is a list of the free-as-in-beer software running on my computer presently, which are all quite easy to use: Firefox, Thunderbird, World Community Grid, μTorrent, Media Player Classic, Tor, Daemon-Tools, PeerGuardian, AOL Instant Messenger + middle_man, AVG Anti-Virus, and NetMeter. None of those has any complicated parts to them. Furthermore, I've got a bunch of other programs which aren't running right now, but which are installed, which are also free and easy: Audacity, Autoruns, BitTornado, CPU-Z, eMule, FileZilla, FoxIt PDF Reader, GIMP, MakeTorrent2, metapad, OpenOffice.org, PDFCreator, Process Explorer, Spybot Search & Destroy, TrueCrypt, VLC, WinRAR, and WZGrapher.

The software that I've paid for is mostly limited to video games. Of the software that I haven't paid for, I don't think any of it is especially complicated. I used to have Azureus, which was, but that's why I uninstalled it and started using μTorrent instead. I remember putting InfraRecorder on my parents' computer and worrying that they'd be unable to use it, but they seem to have figured it out.

And that's just Windows.

I just... I can't reconcile your comments with my own personal experience. That's all. I don't mean it to be viewed as an "attack" or an "argument:" I just sincerely don't know why someone would choose Apple over brands that have a nicer history.

And let's face it: John Hodgman is just plain cooler than Justin Long.

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[info]aetherspoon
2007-10-26 12:40 pm UTC (link)
I typically recommend people a Lenovo laptop or an Apple Macbook.

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[info]gibbsey76
2007-10-26 10:27 pm UTC (link)
..thanks everyone! sorry i wasn't able to respond to whatever questions you were asking, i was at work all day. but i appreciate everything you had to say and all your knowledge about this stuff, haha. i think im gonna go with a mac! thanks again for your help!!

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