Right.

My laptop is getting old. I'm seeing the odd stumble, skitters now and again and after a hip (HD) replacement its never been the same animal. I'm going to be doing my dissertation, and I don't want to be giving it to the old dog if dementia's going to set in and he forgets where he's buried it, or if i'm halfway through and need to get a new dog.

Sadly, I'm coming into some inheritance, so im thinking I get something worthwhile. I'm between a new laptop and Taylormade Tour Burner TP Irons.

So to the question at hand - are Apples that good? Yes I know it looks like sex, and it's not running Vista, but what about the other stuff that I just don't know about (I'll be mainly using Office and Internet, but I like video converting, the occasional game that I've found and lots of music):

Realistically, how long will it live for in doggy years?
How easy is it to upgrade?
How easy is it to fix problems like viruses, green apples etc?
I like to acquire things. Will this dog fetch them?

Which hound do I get?

Much love.

If you want to play commercial games, avoid getting a Mac. They'll do all the other stuff no problem but if playing games is important, go for a pedigree mutt.

As for the other questions -

As long as you want.
Not very.
You wont get any.
Fetching capacity is similar on both breeds.

Unless youre a wanky designer, or a wanky designer wannabe, stick with the labarador and avoid the poodle.

Oh, and ignore everything Debbie says

Mac is style over substance, they are lovely laptops though, and you can put windows vista or xp on them now, so if you cant get along with osx, you have an option.

You can get a similar specced laptop for half the price of a macbook though, obviously without the style and kudos owning a macbook gives you.

get a macbook you'll be a better human being for it.

I agree with every word of that. Macs just arent that good, style over substance and poor specs.

trust me...no matter what the cheapskates say a mac is a better thing for a person wanting a multimedia laptop.....

Look at this website for free mac programs....i've virtually always found a free programme to do what I want other than the imovie/iphoto stuff.

The video editing stuff is great and works without any jiggery pokery.....if you like downloading patches and meddling with stuff then get a pc...if you want it to work and work first time get a mac.

Tish piffle and balderdash.

In terms of Macs, they are overly expensive, can't even come close to having the range of software of a windows machine, and uses proprietary hardware which is more awkward to upgrade (that is more pertinent in the desktop boxes than laptop). All in all you are buying it for the design. And to be honest, a Dell laptop at £300 will do everything a mac does yet at 1/3 of the price.

You also look a complete w**k with any Apple product. It's been proven. While they look sleek in design on the website, or with some model holding it, but when you're sitting in your Costas with an Air the width of a needle, everyone will be looking at you and thinking "what a complete w**k".

Personally wouldn't get a Mac or a laptop or the Burner TP irons. I'd go for Mizuno MX-25 irons...

you so want a mac.

Had one, thought it was shit, got rid of it.

In fact I've had 3 if you count the ones I've used at work too.


Win/PC > OSX/Mac

I upgraded to a macbook pro recently (came into some inheritance too), and I've not regretted it even slightly - its a brilliant machine. I can run windows xp (or vista if I wanted to) using parallels while running mac osx, or boot directly into windows. It's extremely reliable, and seems a lot more "sensible" than windows. For example, if you want to uninstall a program, instead of going to add/remove programs, you go into applications and drag the icon into the rubbish bin.

If you decide against a macbook pro, then I'd suggest an alienware laptop instead. They're the only manufacturer that comes close (although you have to put up with windows).

really.....how queer.




the whole thing just works better....it's like the difference between a person who wants a car that works and someone who wants a car they can tinker with...Ric obviously has a hard on for fiddling with his system bios ,...I just want it to turn on and do as it's told.

Alienware machines are simply dell machines now, but with an inflated price tag.

Ric has a dell, so cant fiddle with his bios.

shame....


imoview 08' which comes bundled is a work of genius....almost worth the price alone.

Er yes I can..

Although fiddling with my BIOS isn't my concern. Having a PC that I can do everything I want on plus play games is my priority and I sure as hell can't do that with a Mac (especially one at twice the price).





You know what is really funny? I bet I've used Mac's more than you have!

You cant really fiddle with it though, you can only pretend fiddle, you cant adjust your memory or cpu settings, which real mens bioses can.

Yeh, I can. I have the schematics of the board from the Dell website, which gives me all the jumper positions on the board, and I have a full Award BIOS (including chip clocking, etc) available at boot time.

thats not funny, simply indicative.

You're going to take my title of geek of the year this year with this one post.

I can out geek any of you. Easily!


I just don't win that award because I'm not as popular as you..

I know

I would advise against buying a MacBook or Macbook Pro at this point in time, they will be releasing the next cycle of laptops in the Autumn. I think it will be worth the wait though, will probably end up buying a 17" Pro and new MacBook.

Get a laptop.

Macs are shit.

Click for help

Indeed. To continue Rons car analargy, Macs are the computing equivalent of an Audio TT. Overpriced and bought only by hairdressers, homosexuals and wanky Creative Directors.

Gotta love maddox.

Here are a couple of other classic Mac rants..

http://tv.truenuff.com/mac/

people who like macs also like sucking big boabys

audo tt's are notoriously unreliable...more like a sony vaio with Vista.....I am a bit wanky though.



classic but ultimately flawed.

In other words, they dont do what they're designed to do as well as others you could buy for less money.

I love my Mac. I (probably) wouldn't buy another Windows-based machine again. I've had no problems with it and have had it almost a year now. By this stage with every windows machine I've owned, I've had to fix something. The Mac even survived me throwing it across the tiled kitchen floor (by accident, of course).

I see you too have mac envy....rightly so.

I see you have run out of arguments ... rightly so.

I never thought he had any to start with..

My advice is try a macbook first and see if you like it, if you like it and don't mind losing out on a few games etc etc then get one.

It's really about personal preference and only you can decide if you want one and nobody here is likely to be neutral when it comes to advice when it comes to either a Mac or a PC

Why would you lose out on games when you can boot into full blown windows?

Because they're not spec'd high enough to play some games on?
Although you could argue that with some PCs and it depends how much money your going to spend.

If you are going to run windows on it why pay extra for a macbook?

i'h hurt.

You typing that on a Mac?

Macbook has onboard graphics, so while you can play football manager and games maybe 4-5 years old at a reasonable pace, the chances of running new stuff is next to nothing.

With the macbook pro, it has 8600GT graphics, which would be good if it had ddr3 ram, but as far as i know it has ddr2 ram, which is not much better than onboard graphics.

To put it in laymens terms, a £500 dell 1530 with 8600gt ddr3 graphics would outperform the highest spec macbook pro in every 3d game.

Before I bought my mac I did a fair bit of research and was almost put off by the "it just works" patter I got in the shop.

I took the plunge and have became all the cliches I hated before I owned one.

It does just work and things work exactly the way you would expect them to. All of the native applications on it

(mail, calendar, contacts etc ) are IMO better than their PC equivalent not to mention the safari browser which is very good.

ilife 08 allows gives you the ability to mess around with photos , web sites and movie making all of which are very easy to use.

You now have the added bonus of an apple store in Glasgow which has a genius bar attached. Any problems with your mac, all you need to do is book a FREE appointment at the genius bar and they will fix the problem NO CHARGE (parts excluded). This is also true for general enquiries in terms of how to use your mac. Basically free advice which you don't get at PC world.

Anyway, don't take my word for it, check these guys out mac

Apple is a disgusting company. That reason alone is enough to put me off Macs, iPods etc.

My pc just works as well, everything you get with apple you get on pc, safari is a poor browser compared to firefox, which most apple users switch to.

Vista is a massive improvement over XP, while OSX may be better than Windows xp, vista is every bit as good as the latest osx, with the benefit of being faster.

You'd need to evidence that for me to believe it.

I don't know of one single mac user that doesn't use safari.

One other thing that seems true is that while mac users may be guilty of talking up their products, PC users seem to be more concerned about talking macs down as opposed to their PC up.

That's because it comes installed as default. In the same way a lot of people use IE on Windows.

I use firefox

I also prefer max OSX to vista My laptop starts up in 40 seconds and shuts down in 8, so its all good. When I bought it I added an extra 2 gigs of ram to make it 4 gigs, and increased the speed of the hdd to 7200 rpm.

I added an extra couple of gigs too. Just get a mac. Vista is just a poor imitation of Safari. You'll notice that everyone deriding Macs is an absolute retard. That should prove something.

That doesn't adress the point under discussion at all mate.