I’m looking at changing my laptop. Currently have a Dell with XP on it, but its getting a bit old now and it’s quite large.
Macs are obviously top end in terms of price, but build spec and quality looks good, so are they worth it compared to getting another well specced (but cheaper) windows laptop?
Also, I’d be looking at running some windows apps within the Mac OS – I see two options available – which is best? I’ll be running tracklogs/ memory map type applications.
Thirdly, and lastly. The "old" macbooks are a bit cheaper now that the newer alu one is out. Does anyone have experience of both – is the new one worth an extra £230?

thanks for any advice,

Ian

I have a 2 year old macbook which I recently replaced the hard drive for a 320Gb. I’ve installed vmfusion and XP pro in order to be able to run tracklogs and to log into my office from outside – this is as fast as my office pc (but without the advantage of twin monitors).
It all works pretty well, the best thing about the new alu macbooks is that the screen is noticeably better and they’ll take 4Gb of memory – apart from that…

I’ve got one of the new aluminium ones to replace a white plastic one that got nicked. It’s much, much better built, the plastic ones were decidedly flexy and creaky by comparison and scratched easily. I also love the new multi-touch trackpads, after being able to swipe and drag away a standard trackpad feels very poor in comparison.

I use VMware fusion for running Windows apps which works well.

As for whether or not the price premium is worth it is a less clear-cut matter. Personally I think the combination of hardware design and Mac OS are worth it over a cheaper Vista laptop.

I’m still using my 12" PowerBook with 512MB RAM (4-5 years old now I think). It works absolutely fine and usually has 2 desktop sessions opened at once (one for my wife and one for me). Macs don’t tend to degrade in the same way which PCs do so you’ll get a lot of life out of a second hand or older model quite happily. Check the Apple Refurbished store for great deals too.

I’m also using a 6 year old 12" powerbook. And running the latest OS too. I had to replace a drive last year, but it was a cheap and (delicate) DIY job. They hold a good price second hand too, so any premium over other machines is ofset by the service life and the resale

Thanks for the responses chaps. Is the general concensus that VMware Fusion is the better option to run windows apps as opposed to Parallels Desktop?

I have to say my Dell has served me well, though it’s been back to Dell a couple of times for repairs, but it’s over 4 years old now. My inclination is to go for a new one, so reports on better build quality is good, as is people telling me they’ve had older modesl for years and they’re still working fine 🙂

I went into the apple shop in town and asked them about the differences between vmfusion and parallels and it seemed to come down to do you prefer the white box or the black box?
A colleague (very techy) runs parallels and likes it and didn’t think that there was any significant difference between the two – except that he prferred parallels (because that was what he had).

There’s a reasonable looking conclusion on Parallels vs. VMware here:

http://www.macworld.com/article/137524-2/2008/12/parallels43540.html

Have an aluminium MacBook here, think it’s brilliant. Have XP running in Fusion and it handles anything USB I throw at it.

Thanks again aP, jim & flaperon. Followed that link above, very informative – the black box appears to have a slight edge 😉

There’s a freeware virtulisation option – http://www.virtualbox.org – It’s supported by Sun. I have it installed on my iMac and it works fine. It runs XP for my Anquet mapping s/w with no issues.

Tell me about Macbooks… ok.

Over rated, Crap battery life and fatigue, A company that like to hide problems under the carpet rather than deal with them face on.

Spec to £ is totally over rated.. compare spec by spec to any pc alternative in that price bracket and you will see.

Sold to the unknowing as some super computer

Bought by the "cool kids" as a fashion statment

—— Im not arguing pcs are better than macs, but on a purely hardware basis they are. Shame that im in a catch 22 because I need a mac for some of the software I use.

The older Macbooks are alrite if your after a surf the net kinda machine but they are pretty slow… the newer macbooks are totally over priced (hiked up £200 in the last year just because they look "prettyer" yet they have a worse screen, no firewire ports and nothing to justify that £200 hike." the macbook pros are also a little more pricey but with a better screen, firewire ports and still a pretty average spec.

If your emailing, listening to music, want a bit of windows aswell as osx get a 2nd hand ebay macbook for sub £700

If your doing more stuff like simple video editing or photoshop and dont want to waste your life with render and load times get a macbook pro… 2nd hand for around £1000 and new for around £1200

I really do hope the credit crunch affects apple because they are on cloud kukoo yet people seem to lap it up!

Last generation (Nov 2007 on) white MacBooks will take 4Gb RAM. Video performance for intensive use (not normal office/browsing etc) isn’t as good as some models so it wouldn’t be first choice for a dedicated Photoshop manipulator, but the same goes for many other laptops. Monitor isn’t huge at 13.3", but then a laptop with large screen is less portable and more resource-hungry.

Some of the white ones had an issue with cracking around the sides, though only 1 out of 4 in our office affected. Apple will replace the case under warranty.

Macs are not just for ‘cool kids’, that sounds so much like sour grapes. Some people enjoy the brand’s aesthetics more than others. OS X is a far more user-friendly interface than XP or Vista, and a recent survey seemed to indicate that Macs are more reliable than the competition. However, that’s not to say you shouldn’t choose a Windows machine if it suits you better. I use Macs at work and PC at home and, shock! horror!, both work fine.

I didnt say they were just for cool kids but a lot of "cool kids" buy them for the reason I stated above.

OSx is a better op system (esp if your not to savvy in windows), but it will be interesting finally when windows 7 comes out if they dont make a hash of it like vista.

Dont be fooled tho you still get spinning wheels of death and unexpected program crashes.

My old white mac cracked and the superdrive broke (only used it about 5x) but apple at the time didnt want to know even being within the 1 year warentee!

like said above the newer ones can take 4gb.. the older ones are caped to 3.3gb I believe.

either or whatever you prefer but I think you’d be kidding yourself if you think your cash would be going to the same spec’d mac as pc laptop.

Over rated, Crap battery life and fatigue, A company that like to hide problems under the carpet rather than deal with them face on.

Spec to £ is totally over rated.. compare spec by spec to any pc alternative in that price bracket and you will see.

The crap battery remark is completely wrong – I have an almost identically specced Sony Vaio and Macbook, and I get roughly half hour more from the Macbook (full brightness on both screens etc). My father has a 3 year old one used on battery every day which still holds it’s charge perfectly well.

The problems-under-the-rug thing I can agree with, mine has a cracked case too which seems to be a design fault they refuse to acknowledge given how many I’ve seen with exactly the same fault.

As for the price, obviously you’re paying for OSX development which is worth it IMHO.

Ive had a battery swell, a battery so hot you can cook an egg on it (google it theres vids to someone else doing it aswell) infact go on the apple site for replacment batteries and look at the user reviews theres 300 moans about crap batteries 😛

the old batteries are rated to 300 full cycles thats 300 full charges to full drains.

the new macbook pro 17" aparently has 1000 cycles but the battery isnt hot swapable which seems a bit mental!

– useful bit of advice to mention tho – if your using it with ac power just leave the battery out and put it in when its not on ac power then your battery life will be longer 🙂

I presume Apple’s move to an alu "unibody" solves the cracked case problems of the previous version? I read about the battery recall too, and experienced something similar with my Dell, so a problem not unique to Apple it seems.

I guess I’m swayed by aethetics, both of the machine itself (size, build quality/ detail) and the intuitive nature of the OS but have to weigh that up against the price. At the end of the day, for the hours of use it’ll get, maybe it’s worth the premium. I endured over four years of a rattley keyboard on my current one, two motherboard replacements and declining performance and sub 2 hour battery life.

On the OS front, I recall Windows 98 being replaced by Win 2000 only to find it wasn’t that good. Then XP came out to fix all the problems and that wasn’t right either. Vista seems not to be the cure for XP (not saying it’s rubbish, but it’s not without problems either), and now we’re waiting for version 7 to put it right 😕

In an idle few minutes, I checked out an up to date Dell XPS and you can easily get a better spec for the same money as a Mac, but then the customer reviews are riddled with fried motherboard/ graphics card problems or hardware/ driver bugs that Dell haven’t found a solution for yet. Given that four years on, they’re still having the same problems that plagued by Inspiron 9100, it isn’t confidence inspiring.

Still, you pays your money…

Thanks for the input tho’ It’s good to have opposing views 😉

the newer macbooks are totally over priced (hiked up £200 in the last year just because they look "prettyer" yet they have a worse screen, no firewire ports and nothing to justify that £200 hike.

Oh you’re quite right, no improvements at all. Um, apart from being machined from a solid lump of aluminium instead of plastic. And having a big multi-touch trackpad. And greatly improved graphic performance. And an LED-backlight.

At the end of the day you pays your money and you takes your choice.

(No, I’m not a Mac fanboy. Honest)

mine gets very hot and the fan sounds like a paper shredder, this is my second one and I’ll probably get a third. They are better than PC’s, they still suck though.

I would get a new alu one – I love mine and have had 2 years of ridiculously heavy use out of it – but the case is cracked a little and my return button has stopped working. Ppl forget when comparing the specs/price with a PC, that you get loads of really good, nicely integrated software with a Mac, rather then most PC laptops which come bloated with rubbish. Garageband for example is a cracking piece of software and I use it at work all the time. I have a pc at home but it literally never gets used any more since I got the macbook.

Dont bother… unless you work for the BBC.

Skip them macbook; the next gen – macbook wheel has cometh

linky

I’d like to see someone do 80 words/ minute on that wheel 🙄

Er, I thought that macbook wheel was a spoof.

(Have I just made myself look stoopid?)

yes it is and no you haven’t 🙂