Thread: Macbook or Any other kind of Laptop

Originally Posted by Yasmine

Recently I just bought a new laptop: Mac Book Pro 15,4 inch. But before I bought it, I was really hesitating of what to buy, a regular one (VAIO, Acer, Asus etc.) or a Macbook. The difference is... Macbooks are waaaay more expensive then just a regular laptop with the same specs. Because I'm a designer, I chose for the macbook. But I just wanna know if I did the right thing x3.

So here we go: what would you prefer to buy... A expensive Macbook with the cool brand, or any other normal priced laptop with the same specs?

Well, I would normally take a diffrent laptop with thesame specs for less cash. The only problem is that Apple has that luxury feel to it, everything in the Macbooks is thought about and the quality of the components is also really high. Now I would say that Sony Vaio has thesame or maybe even better quality components, but it's also the reputation you need to hold high with your macbook. Designers are often judged on whether they have a mac or not, so I'm pretty sure you did the right thing

I currently have a VAIO notebook and it includes 2 Duo processors, 4 GB of RAM and I customized it with other cool stuff and it cost me 2,000$.......
And I know that it sounds expensive...but I just started college and I need a computer that I can lean against and not worry that it will break and that it will be able to handle the mass amount of work that I do on it...
So it is up to you.....I definitely pick quality over quantity........and it also depend on what are the reason you really need it......

you've made the right decision. Design/ Art/ Music-wise you are set with your sexy Macbook. I won't go over the laundry list of positive features for the art savvy since you will see for yourself. The one drawback is not being able to play any sort of entertaining pc game. FPS, MMOs, etc.

bottom line I've had both. Macs are generally tailored for the types of apps a creative person will love.

Regardless, with the new OS you can just partition your drive and intall/run Windows if you need to get your gaming fix, etc.

So for me its a no brainer: Mac

Originally Posted by Astaroth

I currently have a VAIO notebook and it includes 2 Duo processors, 4 GB of RAM and I customized it with other cool stuff and it cost me 2,000$.......
And I know that it sounds expensive...but I just started college and I need a computer that I can lean against and not worry that it will break and that it will be able to handle the mass amount of work that I do on it...
So it is up to you.....I definitely pick quality over quantity........and it also depend on what are the reason you really need it......

So nice to see that more people do know what quality is, I really don't see a lot of people choosing quality over quantity.

I bought a Sony Vaio too over a year ago. It's the Vaio FE21H which I clearly also chose for the design. It's really important to me what the quality of the components is but also how the whole thing looks and makes you feel when you use it That is probably also why I can understand Yasmine's choice for the Macbook Pro...

Originally Posted by Evol

you've made the right decision. Design/ Art/ Music-wise you are set with your sexy Macbook. I won't go over the laundry list of positive features for the art savvy since you will see for yourself. The one drawback is not being able to play any sort of entertaining pc game. FPS, MMOs, etc.

bottom line I've had both. Macs are generally tailored for the types of apps a creative person will love.

Regardless, with the new OS you can just partition your drive and intall/run Windows if you need to get your gaming fix, etc.

So for me its a no brainer: Mac

I must say, the mac book pro is uber sexy. And you're right, a design lover like me, looooooooves mac. It's really different from windows XP though, and I thought about putting XP on it for games and such, just like you said. Do you know if I can share my documents within Mac & Windows? Or do I have to save everything twice... Would cost me a lot of space I think =_=

Originally Posted by Yasmine

I must say, the mac book pro is uber sexy. And you're right, a design lover like me, looooooooves mac. It's really different from windows XP though, and I thought about putting XP on it for games and such, just like you said. Do you know if I can share my documents within Mac & Windows? Or do I have to save everything twice... Would cost me a lot of space I think =_=

I just found something nice btw, it's software you have to pay for though, but if you really want to use windows xp on it, THIS is worth a try I guess... It's a prog called MacDrive 7 and will make sure you can use your mac formatted drives in Windows (so you can get to your documents whenever you want )

Originally Posted by Evol

you've made the right decision. Design/ Art/ Music-wise you are set with your sexy Macbook. I won't go over the laundry list of positive features for the art savvy since you will see for yourself. The one drawback is not being able to play any sort of entertaining pc game. FPS, MMOs, etc.

bottom line I've had both. Macs are generally tailored for the types of apps a creative person will love.

Regardless, with the new OS you can just partition your drive and intall/run Windows if you need to get your gaming fix, etc.


So for me its a no brainer: Mac

That's not exactly true anymore. Its a common misconception that there aren't any games for Mac OS X, and most of that comes from the Redmond, WA propaganda machine. There are many FPS and MMOs available for the Mac including World of Warcraft and the Unreal Tournament series among a huge list of others which are Mac OS X native. Uising CEDAR developed by Transgaming companies like EA are porting their Windows based games to the Mac without the need to recode them. CEDAR is a standalone, single-application specific implementation of Wine for Windows games to run seamlessly on the Mac for game developers. The Macbook Pro, even the lower end model, has more than enough power to run Windows games this way without any performance loss. There is also CrossOver Mac which is another implementation of Wine for Mac that anyone can purchase for almost nothing which is optimized for many games. It can run TeamFortress 2 and Portal without any performance hits at all. Finally, there is BootCamp. Its a set of programs and drivers which resizes your Mac partition and creates one for NTFS as well as adds a PC BIOS emulation-layer so that you can dual-boot Mac OS X and either Windows XP or Vista. PC Magazine called the Macbook Pro the fastest Windows Vista PC they've ever seen. The Windows Driver CD that the BootCamp installer has you burn makes all of the features of the Macbook Pro available to Windows. BootCamp works in every Mac model from the Mac Mini to the powerful Mac Pro.

So the options for a Mac user to play games, even Windows games, are quite unlimited despite what some might try to have you believe. Especially if that someone happens to be Steve Ballmer. You can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. This is a lesson that Microsoft is learning the hard way.

WARNING: nickhoge you suggested MacDrive. A MacBook Pro user I know tried it and it trashed his Mac partition. After doing some research it was discovered he wasn't the only person who had problems. That was a few months ago, things might have changed but for now MacDrive is proven to not work. Do thorough research before trying it.