[Closed] laptop or Mac

A serious consideration with a laptop is the weight. Lugging a hefty machine around all day is annoying.

Apple replaced the top covers of the black/white MacBooks for free even if they were out of AppleCare. I had a a battery Replaced and a new keyboard on a 3+ year old black MacBook and then sold it for £500.
They may be expensive but the resale values are high, not something you can say about pc's.
If you are shrewd like me you sell your macbookpro every 1-2 years for £650 and buy a new or refurb with your discount and vat off for £670 8)

mastiles_fanylion - Member
You do realise that you do only get one licence for the software don't you? So when you install it on one machine you have to buy another copy for the next machine, so you could buy a PC and a corresponding legal copy of the software for it.

Really? I don't think that's the case. As long as it's removed from each machine as they get upgraded I think it's okay, and anyway it activates and runs with no issues.

So you buy an outgoing model (at a discount hopefully for your own sake) and wonder why 5 years later it won't run the latest OS?

No, it wasn't discounted or outgoing. It was sold as the newest machine out at the time, and they were sold for some time after I got mine.

MrSmith - Member

Apple replaced the top covers of the black/white MacBooks for free even if they were out of AppleCare

Yes, and mine has been, several times now. Point is that they should have been recalled, just like the iBooks should have been when they all ate their GPUs.

No, it wasn't discounted or outgoing. It was sold as the newest machine out at the time, and they were sold for some time after I got mine.

As long as it's removed from each machine as they get upgraded I think it's okay, and anyway it activates and runs with no issues.

Finally given up on my old acer laptop at 7 years old. Still ran XP fine (lid had fallen off but who cares it was only £500)

Some nice laptops around for £500 or less. As before get the monitor and keyboard for a proper desk setup and save problems later.

If software cost is a problem then Google Docs or open offce or full linux.

Bottom line:

Macs are quite nice machines physically, the OS is quite nice, but they are not double the price nice.

If you have the money to burn, then knock yourself out, but also check out the nice thin Toshibas and high end Sonys etc. Or get something designed to be robust rather than fancy, like a Thinkpad perhaps.

mastiles_fanylion - Member

It was a 2007 machine bought in 2008 as you said yourself.

Yes, that is the model identifier 'late 2007' is a Santa Rosa C2D 64 bit Macbook. There are various 'Macbooks', identified by the date they were introduced.

molgrips - Member

Bottom line:

Macs are quite nice machines physically, the OS is quite nice, but they are not double the price nice.

If you have the money to burn, then knock yourself out, but also check out the nice thin Toshibas and high end Sonys etc. Or get something designed to be robust rather than fancy, like a Thinkpad perhaps.

Yep.

So you buy an outgoing model (at a discount hopefully for your own sake) and wonder why 5 years later it won't run the latest OS?

Hard to know where to stand on this one. I suppose I'd be slightly peeved myself if I was in that position, but then again, there are SEVERAL laptop manufacturers that are making and selling machines currently that won't be up to spec for running Windows 8 on, and that's literally just round the corner!!!

Imagine it, you go into Currys/Comet today, buy your £300 laptop, then want to put Windows 8 on it when you get a cheap discount promotional price on it cos you bought your laptop within a month of it being released, only your computer is of such a lowly spec already, it won't run it!!!

Mac's are great. But then so are computers in general to be quite honest. Think of what they let us do!

Main reason to get a Mac though, is if you [i]need[/i] a Mac for any particular reason, or if you just genuinely prefer the software and the hardware and are prepared to pay the extra price for them.

That said, buying a Mac can be considered like buying a BMW/Audi/Mercedes/VW against a Ford or a Vauxhall. They all do the same job, the premium products feel slightly nicer to use but you do pay the premium for it... BUT... With a Mac as per BMW/Audi/Merc/VW when you come to sell it in 3/4/5 years time, it still has a fairly substantial resale value, whereas a Ford/Vauxhall/Windows laptop is worth the square root of naff all within about 6 months of being bought new.

If you're the kind of person that when buying a new car, is mainly bothered about the VFM, buy a Windows laptop. If you want a premuim experience and are the kind of guy that would buy an expensive car cos it offers a nicer experience to the user (even though it does the same job), buy the Mac and enjoy it (though for god's sake, don't be smug about it!). If you're the kind of guy that buys a "new" car that is 10 years old already and costs less than £1k (basically if you're from Yorkshire), then buy a 6 year old laptop for peanuts from a refurb place, whack a bit more RAM in it, put a clean install of XP on it (or possibly even Ubuntu) and tell her "in my day we didn't have computers, count theeself lucky!"

Is the Mac really worth £500 more than an Laptop when money will be tight.

Thanks for the comments so far

I doubt many batteries have the same performance after 4 years

So you buy an outgoing model

In fact, I'd held out for the new MBP model, but when I heard of so many screen issues (yellow cast on half the screen, etc.), I bailed, and bought the smaller 13in MB, which was only a few months after release.

I use an iMac at home, nearly a year old now, and a Windows laptop for work, running XP.
I prefer my Mac, but XP is fine for my work, I'm well used to it and it gives me no bother.
However, this weekend I borrowed a new-ish laptop running Windows 7. OMG that was horrible! What have they done to Windows? Ruined it.

Is the Mac really worth £500 more than an Laptop when money will be tight.

Short answer no

unless she needs it specifically it will be used for Facebook, typing and things you probably don't want to know about.

Any laptop will do.

Leave posh expensive things till she can afford them.

quite nice, but they are not double the price nice.

Not really double the price either. I priced up a Sony and a HP of similar quality (ie not the cheapo plastic ones) and to get the features i needed like powered FireWire 800 to run a digital back they were coming out at the same price or more.
If you buy the ram/hd upgrades from apple the price jumps but only a mug would do that when they are so easy to change yourself.

I don't understand people buying them because they look nice, that's just a vanity purchase.

Is the Mac really worth £500 more than an Laptop when money will be tight.

(all though I got mine for less than the closest equivalent Dell)

Ohh and by the way, I use Macs at work but have a PC laptop at home for personal use - simply because I couldn't justify the initial outlay (I just use it for music, pictures and a bit of interweb).

But judging by seeing the natural lifetime of machines at work I can see why Macs are preferred for many - we set up our business nine years ago with two Power PC Mac G5s - they both still work (albeit unable to run the latest OS) and have been used until very recently. They still sell for £100 on Ebay.

Last year we had a clear out of old PCs bought seven yearsago and they were simply binned as being worthless and unusable. Even our £14k 'investment' in a rack work server 3.5 years ago is now worthless - in fact the only thing of value is probably the rack box.

We have now taken the decision to only buy Mac from now on (especially as the things we needed PCs for (testing etc) can now be done via the internet or on a Mac.

molgrips - Member
Bottom line:

Macs are quite nice machines physically, the OS is quite nice, but they are not double the price nice.

No, they are triple the price nice when using them all day everyday in the context i work in. Mac Pro and/or MBP running 10.8 vs old PC running XP is the choice i have at work. No contest.

It's all very well talking about work situations & machines capable of powering digital backs, but I'm not sure whether that is particularly relevant to the OP.

The laptop will be used at uni. Probably mainly for internet & word processing? When I was at uni, any specialist software (cfd/fea stuff) had to be accessed on the uni computers or through the network.

Laptops at uni from what I have seen don't generally get well looked after. It will be lugged around, possibly dropped, possibly have stuff spilt on/in it, potentially nicked etc.
I don't know how much more durable a Mac would be, but unless it would be sufficiently more capable of dealing with uni life then I would go for a half decent laptop, and buy a back-up drive, keyboard, mouse & maybe monitor at the same time.
I would imagine a Mac would be more likely to be the Target of thieves?

All things to consider. Although, perhaps that is a cynical view of things.

For a uni machine I would get a cheap as chips PC and just run Google Apps - thereby securing your data with a guarantee of no loss of that important dissertation.

But still keep local backups somewhere (external HD, USB stick, or better still, the Uni network).
Still possible to get totally locked out of "cloud" based accounts.

I guess so, buut we have used Google email and apps at work for two years now and it has been almost faultless (and they provide great customer support too).

But I guess with important work you can never be *too* safe.

Yeah I switched from whatever the last OSX was to the whatever the newest one is and made no change to my life!

A few things seems to have changed for me:

1) Mountain Lion seems to manage its memory better
2) It has robbed me of the battery time remaining indicator on the status bar
3) I get an annoying pop-up everytime CRC or whoever wants to sell me something by email
4) My 4G dongle now only works intermittently
5) The only way I can now VPN in to work using said 4G dongle is via parallels
6) It now hangs for a few seconds when waking up from hibernation

So on the whole, Mountain Lion appears to have broken many more things than it fixed, and the fix shouldn't have been broken in the first place

The base level Macbook Air 13" is £859.20 with the education discount. You also get a £70 apple voucher, and 3 years apple care warranty.

I've had a good hard look and not been able to get anywhere near the equivalent Windows laptop spec & form factor at that price, as i7 SSD windows ultrabooks are a fair bit more.

You can buy a cheaper windows laptop, it just won't be as nice. It's a bit like the age old Cotic Soul vs On-One question...the fancy-dan geekboys (like me) on here would pay the extra, but if you didn't understand and don't care what an i7 SSD is then save £400 and get a dell or hp windows laptop.

She will love you forever if you get a Mac though...

i7 SSD windows ultrabooks are a fair bit more.

a) do you really need a super thin computer? Of course not, it's a luxury, which is what I alluded to above.

b) are the base model macbook airs i7? It says i5 on the website.

In fact it's a dual core i5 and only 64GB hd which is tiny. Also only 4GB ram. For that money you could do way way better with a normal windows laptop. I can't think of any application where super thin size is a requirement. Maybe if you have some kind of disability.

if you didn't understand and don't care what an i7 SSD is then save £400 and get a dell or hp windows laptop

Now you are being silly. Of course HP and Dell do i7s and SSDs, and for less money, which is the point. Don't try and make out that Macs are higher performance than PCs, cos that's garbage.

See, I've got nothing against Macs, but fanboi-ism really gets on my nerves. The insides are the same nowadays, the OSes are comparable, the build is nicer on Macbooks, and the software and peripheral environment is different (meaning that the more strictly controlled driver/hardware setup means less dodgy crap to break your computer). That's just about it. There are no other differentiators.

drinkingwally, you haven't said what course she's doing - although I doubt it would make much difference to the choice. Is there any information on the university website? It's possible (although unlikely) that they specify a minimum configuration, or Windows-or-nothing... Worth checking out.

Assuming it's a "normal" course, I'd get a 400-500gbp Windows machine, ideally with enough money left over to get a basic home/student version of Microsoft Office. I can't see any justification for a Mac at university, however much nicer (subjectively) they may be.

Although weight can be an issue I would maybe steer away from Mac Book Air and similar as they are very limited in storage.

We recently used Handbrake to copy lots of DVDs to my boy's laptop which is really convenient. If you do something similar it may reduce the amount of stuff your daughter has to cart about (if she likes films) although I guess you could just stick them on USB keys if needed.

The new Lenovo Thinkpad X131e might be worth checking out. It is a 11.6 inch i3 laptop with USB3 and HDMI out and is designed for the education market - i.e. tough - and has good battery life.

http://www.slashgear.com/lenovo-thinkpad-x131e-laptop-aims-at-hardcore-students-31241110/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/aug/24/cheap-computer-laptop#

Personally, I'd have a 11" macbook air and a c20" monitor for use at home

Ha ha ha!

So a bunch of middle aged men are discussing what the best laptop is best for an 18yo off to uni!

Get the Mac - all of her friends will have a Mac and she will feel left out if she has a crappy brick of a laptop.

Get the Mac Book Air. They are dam cool but most of all it is the best laptop available that is actually portable and she will be lugging it around all day, to and from lectures (if she goes!), the library and the union and actually using it wihout wanting to plug it in to charge.

The 3 year apple care free will mean when it breaks she can take it to the apple store and they will fix it. Rather than you having to do it, getting frustrated and then buying a new laptop for Xmas in her second year. Also because its a lovely mac she will take more care of it in the first place.

she will feel left out if she has a crappy brick of a laptop.

Whatever princess wants, princess gets, eh?

You could offer her a 'crappy' (ie normal) laptop and 500 notes, see what she says then.

Also because its a lovely mac she will take more care of it in the first place

Lol, and we're the ones who know little about students, are we? Hehehe.

Re the weight, there are plenty of laptops that weigh that little and are perfectly adequate for surfing and student work. An i7 is a complete waste unless she's doing computational modelling or something. Which is unlikely on a personal laptop.

An i7 is a complete waste unless she's doing computational modelling or something. Which is unlikely on a personal laptop.

I'm far from being a student these days, but back then I used the same software I do now, and I use the grunt of my i7 MBA quite regularly for modelling and statistical analysis

Lol, and we're the ones who know little about students, are we? Hehehe.

I'm not saying she will take care of it to the same extent you or I would, I don't know the girl.

But it is definanely true that kids take a lot more care of the things they want/like/cherish than things they don't. Buy her the crappy laptop because Daddy knows best and she will break it. Buy her the thing she wants and will feel proud of and she will try to look after it.

If she says she doesn't want a Mac then she doesn't need it either but with the student deal and the 3 year waranty and back up of the Apple stores network it is actually quite a sensible option.

+ she will fit in with her friends. The average 18yo girl with a crappy laptop will definantely come back from her first term wanting a MBA for xmas. Not all 18yo girls are created equal.

(For context I have a "crappy" £500 laptop so not a fanboi in the slightest!)

I've got the best of both worlds - PC/laptop hardware, Mac OS X on top of it 🙂

PC hardware is from 2008 era, yet runs OS X 10.8 rather nicely...

Back to the OP's question...

I'd opt for a Mac, for it's simplicity and stability. And I'm a Windows/Linux systems admin for my day job....

molgrips - Member
An i7 is a complete waste unless she's doing computational modelling or something. Which is unlikely on a personal laptop.

PMSL

I doubt the majority of students have a Mac Book. If they do and she's feeling jealous, she can just get over it, part of growing up.

Molgrips, thanks for calling my post garbage, and implying some sort of disability, but do NOT call me an Apple Fanboi! I spend most of my time in Visual Studio, not caring about the hardware at all.

I've spent time looking at this for myself, and could not find a 13" i5 4gb Ram, SSD equipped laptop for less money than £859. YMMV. but Dell do not do 13" laptops with a decent processor for less money than Apple.

Finally though, if you actually read my post - I actually recommended that she would be better off getting a PC! Back to the OP,[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Series-NP535U3C-13-3-Ultrabook/dp/B008KGXMF6/ref=pd_sim_sbs_computers_4 ]This one looks like a good place to start[/url]

Buy her the crappy laptop

No-one's saying buy anything crappy. £500 is NOT a crappy laptop.

If my daughter came back from uni at Christmas begging me for a grand's worth of kit she didn't need I'd tell her to save up.

To be fair, anything more than the bottom end CPU is overkill for 95% of students.

Let's face it, Facebook, YouTube and MS Office don't require that much computing power...

But people are technology snobs, and feel they [b]need[/b] Word to open 0.03s faster.

iPad. I've ditched my laptop completely now.

No-one's saying buy anything crappy. £500 is NOT a crappy laptop.

And an MBA on the student deal is not a grand.

* A big plastic shell is crappy for carrying around
A big heavy screen and battery is crappy for carrying around
A spinning hard drive won't like being carried around
A laptop with an SSD will be as much as a MBA
Low battery life is crappy carrying around.
A big bulkly transformer is crappy for carrying around
£500 laptops are basically home PCs for people who don't have a desk in a room for a tower.

If my daughter came back from uni at Christmas begging me for a grand's worth of kit she didn't need I'd tell her to save up.

iPad. I've ditched my laptop completely now.

Friend just going to uni next month - apparently it's still wired LAN in all the halls, so he's gonna be ripping the p155 out of all the fondleslab users unable to connect to the free network 😉

jfletch - Member

A £500 laptop will not be crappy on the inside, it will do everything, but it will be crappy as an actaul portable computer*. Students are one of the few dermographics who actually take their computers with them most of the time.

And an MBA on the student deal is not a grand.

* A big plastic shell is crappy for carrying around
A big heavy screen and battery is crappy for carrying around
A spinning hard drive won't like being carried around
A laptop with an SSD will be as much as a MBA
Low battery life is crappy carrying around.
A big bulkly transformer is crappy for carrying around
£500 laptops are basically home PCs for people who don't have a desk in a room for a tower.

If I was going to buy a computer for my daughter I'd rather her have something she wants and is the right tool in the first place rather than waste money on something she didn't want. If I didn't the money then a laptop is better than no computer but the OP said he could afford either.

Your arguments for getting a Macbook Air are valid, but equally so for a (much cheaper) netbook/ultra book - e.g.:

http://www.ebuyer.com/288876-toshiba-portege-z830-10n-ultrabook-pt224e-00h00len

Are people suggesting 13" screens assuming that the op will also be forking out for a monitor (?) because I wouldn't want to be doing hours of uni work on a teeny screen.

All this stuff about laptops not being durable enough etc for student life...everywhere I have worked there have been people who have travelled weekly either nationally or internationally. All of them have had normal laptops & didn't seem to have any bother. a lot of them didn't seem to take good care of the equipment either as it was 'works equipment' and 'backed up on the server'.

Spinning hard disks have been carried around for years..... only numbskulls who drop laptops need SSDs.... 😉

apparently it's still wired LAN in all the halls, so he's gonna be ripping the p155 out of all the fondleslab users unable to connect to the free network

Well thats definitely going to get him laid...

That'll be a fun task typing up a dissertation

Getting the hang of pages now and it's not too bad....

everywhere I have worked there have been people who have travelled weekly either nationally or internationally. All of them have had normal laptops & didn't seem to have any bother.

Every work laptop I have ever had has been considerably less crappy on the outside than my home laptops, (but a lot more crappy on the inside). IT purchasing people tend to favour cheap but robust models but de-spec things like screens etc to get a cheap machine that they don't have to fix all of the time.

Consumer models have shiney plastics and high headline specs to attract buyers at the expense of durability.

Your arguments for getting a Macbook Air are valid, but equally so for a (much cheaper) netbook/ultra book

But netbooks are crappy for anything but very casual use and ultra books are just crap MBA copies but that still cost the same.

I still say if you can afford it get the MBA as on the student package it actually represents the best deal.

but it will be crappy as an actaul portable computer*

I don't agree. I'm a mobile consultant, I carry spinning hard drives around all the time. As do a lot of people in all sorts of lines of work.

64GB is minute, that'll fill up in no time. No way would I sacrifice 90% of my disk space for a few ounces.

I'd rather her have something she wants and is the right tool in the first place

A £500 laptop IS most definitely the right tool. No question.

SSDs exist for performance reasons, not light weight afaik.

Consumer models have shiney plastics

OMG! Not plastic! However will I show my face in public?