Mac versus PC laptops

Right, I'm pretty much decided that i am going to break my computer up and sell its parts, to help raise some cash towards a laptop.

I was primarily looking at PC laptops, however, i noticed that on ebay you can buy reconditioned Apple Mac laptops, specification is around 1 Ghz / 1 Gb RAM / 60 Gb hard drive for around the £500 mark.

CPU apart, that doesnt seem to be that much worse than any of the new PC deals at a similar price.

I've always been curious as a long time PC user about macs, just as a change, a break from the norm, as it were.

However, i still regard PC's as looking a little more flexible with regards to software and customisation, and with me working in IT i'm not sure that getting one would neccesarily be a good thing from a point of view of keeping in with the knowledge.

Now, I cant really decide which to go for. On the one hand, if I could get a PC laptop that could perhaps play the occaisional game and possibly in the future run Vista for a budget of no more than £500-£600 then I'd possibly consider it. However, if its not possible to get such a machine then I'd give the Mac a look.

However, the other issue is warranty.

How reliable are the Macs?

Can anyone recommend good VFM PC laptops for no more than £600?

 

Hi Paul. From the perspective on 'working on them' you are pretty much stuffed with a mac, but closer examination will show you are pretty much in the same boat with PC laptops, tower PCs they ain't.

I am not sure preciesly what you are looking at but hot at the moment is 14inch iBooks going for around the 450 mark, these were current spec only 9 months ago and are only cheap because everyone is jumping to the new intel mac books, so good bargains to be had there.

Another bargain is 12inch power books.

Things to check for are bluetooth and wireless built in, both machines can have the ram upgraded by the user and with a lot of effort the harddrive on a powerbook can be swapped out, but you may as well forget it on an iBook.

Both machines will have firewire, usb, internal modem, minimum of a CDr/DVD Ethernet and DVI video out.

So in conclusion:

Powerbook 12 inch 1ghz to 133ghz
and
iBook 1.2-1.33ghz 14 inch. Solid machines one and all.

As for warrantees well, most will likely be out of them.

Vista will probably run on the latest PC laptops assuming the have a good amount of ram in, but apparently the Areo side of it or what ever the graphics layer is called will run only on machines with a very good graphics card some a lot of the experience of Vista will be lost on a laptop. The good news is if you plumbed for a mac now you would have everything that Vista offers, everything.

Final question what essential applications do you require for your job? A mac for instance will happily VNC to PC and run happily side by side on a network etc.

 

I wouldnt be using it for work per se, just that my work is all MS Windows based and I'm guessing it would be helpful for me to keep abreast of new versions of windows (like vista).

Apparently for vista some of the slightly better IG chipsets with 128 meg can handle everything that vista has.

A new machine is more peace of mind from a warranty point of view - some come with 2 year warranties.

I am tempted by the Apple, but i think perhaps the warranty issue is what might put me off... but we'll see. I have not made any decisions yet.

 

Go with a PC laptop they are a lot quicker and have more software, though windows is less stable than OSX on a Mac.

I would make sure you got a laptop with an intel chipset on the motherboard for stability.

 

Whatever you buy, make sure that the graphics chip supports Pixel Shader version 2 and has 128mb of on board ram if you want to see the full Vista 'experience' - isn't it exciting

 

Well I've done a load of searching today, and its proved to be something of a frustrating exercise.

Basically, it comes down to the fact I am a fussy bastid.

I wanted a laptop for less than £600. I wanted a guarantee. This pretty meant buying new. I want to be able to play the odd game if it took my fancy. I require a DVD writer, and wireless support. And the resolution has to be decent.

Try finding all that on a new laptop costing less than £600!! Pretty much impossible to be honest. At best, you might find one with the ATI X200 chipset which frankly, while superior to the Intel / SIS offerings on most machines, is still pretty hopeless for games. There were some machines that seemed promising, but scare stories about poor reliability and issues with wireless put me off.

Luckily for me, i spotted that evesham do clearance sales on ebay, and noticed that they have a number of laptops on clearance, which pretty much fit the bill, and some having actually really good graphics chips on (talking X700 or 9700 chips here), so hopefully i'll be able to pick up something like that towards the end of the month.

Then it'll just be a case of breaking the old faithful up and flogging it all on.

 

If you don't really need games don't get one with a good graphics card. It will suck the battery dry in minutes, get very hot and be very noisy. Having a reliable machine that lasts for longer than 1 hour on the battery should be more important to you. That means an Intel mobo chipset (not sis, PC chips, Via) and an integrated graphics system. Sorry, but laptops and high performance games don't go, unless you plan to keep the laptop sitting on a desk with its power supply.

Having said that, my laptop with an Intel integrated graphics system plays GTA vice city just fine in 1024 res. I don't see it doing Half Life 2 though!

You should also be looking at whether it has the right ports. I wanted one with fire-wire which cut the choices down, do you want Bluetooth?

You should be able to get everything you want for under £500 but you can’t have games.

HP's professional laptops are good ones (notice that they ALL use Intel chipsets, not just CPU's, not anything else in sight for people who need reliability ).

 

Good thinking. IMHO the warranty is the most important spec. I’d recommend going further and only buying a laptop with a three year warranty. They all break and in my experience (ex-IT manager responsible for many hundreds of the things) almost never last that period without having to go back to their makers. Things like a new screen or mainboard can be absurdly expensive to replace if you are not covered (sometimes more than the bloody thing cost in the first place!). Most reputable companies have an add on warranty that takes you to this point. Buy it, use it for just under three years, eBay it with about a month left on the warranty, buy another. That is how to use laptops!

Tony.

 

Dabs often have some on offer, usually for trade customers, but I think they sometimes have similar offers for individuals.

The last one I got was:
HP NX6125 AMD 3100+, 512MB, 60GB, DVD+/-RW, WiFi, Biometric Features, XP Pro - £350+vat


I have a nearly 3 year old Fujitsu, basic spec, 1.4Ghz Pentium M, wifi, cdrw/dvd, Intel Extreme 64Mb, yet it manages to play Vice City and San Andreas fairly well. Only thing to have gone wrong was the keyboard and that was my fault (apple juice doesn't go well with laptop keyboards)

 

Try Dell Outlet site. I picked up a Dual Core 6400 with an ATI 128 graphics card for £471 plus vat, plays Far Cry / Spellforce 2 pretty much OK. DVD r-w, wireless etc

Jeff

 

I've not got one, but am going to recommend the MacBook, even though it's a bit more money, as it will allow the OP to keep a foot in the Windows world and transition across to OSX and all things Macintosh rather than jumping in at the deep end. And, despite what someone claimed, the current Mac laptops are as fast as pretty much any of the state-of-the-art PC ones - as they're architecturally very similar these days.

 

Ahh okay I don't know about any MacBook, but the top range iBook I had was far slower than my top PC Intel based laptop.

 

What is this new "juice" product? Were there compatibility problems with a PC laptop keyboard?

 

Could well be, but the current MacBooks and MacBook Pros use the same processors* as the top end PC laptops these days, and can also run Windows (either natively, via Boot Camp or within OSX, via Parallels) which is a very compelling package for someone like me (who needs both).

* that is, up to 2.16GHz dual core 'Core Duo' CPUs, which are one heck of a lot quicker than what was in the iBook by all accounts, and arguably as fast as the faster G5s (though not 64 bit)

 

Yeah the MacBook looks like a dream machine, though undoubtedly a fair bit over £600. Are the DuoCore CPU's basically a centrinao with a double core?

 

No.

I think the point of these new intels is that they are signficantly cooler than previous versions, and certainly much cooler than G4 and G5 chips, hence why Apple had to do something and were stuck with the speed the powerbook/iBook range, the G5 chip was far to hot to put in them.

If you check out the new mac pro desktops as well, where as on the old G5 processor took up around half of the enclosure to keep it cool, a brace of intel cores only takes 1 fifth.

FWIW Microsoft demonstrated Vista at a conference on a macbook pro. Kind of telling that

 

Well i've had a change of heart. I'm just going to hang on to the desktop machine.

I cant really find a laptop i would like within the budget i have. I would have wanted a good warranty had i spent more money, but too many companies didnt offer it.

Incidentally, did you see how much Dell charge for a 3 year warranty? Hundreds of pounds. I cant see how they can have much confidence in their products to justify it.

So I've decided to stick with what I have for now.

I might reconsider when i have more money to throw at it, but for now, the idea is dead and buried.

I have however, told my dad that should he get a new computer then i think he should consider an Apple.

 

Dell are in the ****, what with exploding laptops and a rubbish year all round. Apparently they have their head in the sand though.

 

And yet the exploding batteries are made by Sony and just bought in by Dell, I wouldn't be suprised if they are in other manufacturers laptops and they aren't saying anything

 

If we are forced to have a swear filter does s h i t really constitute swearing these days?