Is my only option a Mac?

As for OSX, I think Win 7 is way better, so my ideal machine would be a MBP with Win7 on it.

The problem with that is?
Install Win7 on a MBP, and just boot it up in Bootcamp. Or see if you can wangle a deal and get VMWare or Parallels installed from new, then you can install all the OS you want and swap between them on the fly.

I currently run XP under Parallels, but it’s a poor second choice and runs very slow. Disk access seems to be poor under Parallels.

Got a 6 year old MacBook here, still runs perfectly and not got a single issue with it.

Only upgraded in the last six months with a MacMini as a desktop, laptop is still in regular service but lacked the oomph that I requires as my needs have moved on. Can’t see it going anywhere for quite some time, although the battery life on the new MacBook Air has me tempted…

I’m on my first MacBook here…it isn’t perfect and I’ve been back to the ‘genius’ bar twice (with associated frustrations with the appointment system). I’ve also had to reformat / reintsall my hard disk on another occasion (which is all the genius bar did the first time it screwed up). I’m not convinced that they are any more reliable than windows laptops in general but I would’t buy either without at least a 2 year warranty as I’ve learnt that all laptops can go wrong.

danielgroves – Member
Got a 6 year old MacBook here, still runs perfectly and not got a single issue with it.

Only upgraded in the last six months with a MacMini as a desktop, laptop is still in regular service but lacked the oomph that I requires as my needs have moved on. Can’t see it going anywhere for quite some time, although the battery life on the new MacBook Air has me tempted…

Six years is nothing, I have a thirteen year old thinkpad still in regular use. Thing is nails. In fact I reckon you could use it as a hammer so maybe it’s tougher than nails. 😆

If your macbook from six years ago is still on its original PSU and case, it must have had a very easy life. Mine’s on about it’s third or fourth palm rest and second or third charger. No strain relief on wire = guaranteed failure, and everybody i know who actually uses a macbook out and about has had the same issue. Plus the hinge is on its way out, fan keeps getting blocked, display has lost a lot of its brightness etc.

That’s not to say it’s a bad computer, it’s not, it’s really good. But it’s not really sturdy. The only reason I keep it going is because it was expensive, I have all my stuff installed on it and I like the keyboard.

I have a MacBook Pro, a nice bit of kit, that said I installed Ubuntu for my neighbour (50+) and he’s really happy with it, it’s like windows used to aspire to be before it got all “new”

If your macbook from six years ago is still on its original PSU and case, it must have had a very easy life. Mine’s on about it’s third or fourth palm rest and second or third charger. No strain relief on wire = guaranteed failure, and everybody i know who actually uses a macbook out and about has had the same issue. Plus the hinge is on its way out, fan keeps getting blocked, display has lost a lot of its brightness etc.

Those people clearly don’t look after their kit then. It’s all original, bar an SSD and maxing out the RAM. It most definitely hasn’t had an easy life either… I take it pretty much everywhere with me and push it pretty hard.

I’m not saying 6 years is a lot, but it’s certainly good. Still in near daily service, so who knows how long I’ll still be using it for?

Got first mac, a macbook ( white one) 7 years ago, still going strong. Got a mac mini in 2009 likewise (I did put more memory and a bigger hd in recently though). I find the OS and whole usability just light years ahead of Microsoft rubbish which id been using since the early 80’s. In my experience dell / HP kit used to die in 2 or 3 years. Sony Viao lasted well but cost same as a mac and the Microsoft OS was out of date within 2 years, compare that to MacBook above which was bought by wife at the same time.

If you buy a mac and don’t like it you can sell it, used windows machines are worthless.

My laptop (Sony Vio) is 8 yrs old and going okay still – never broken. Saying that, my weapon of choice is my work Mac Air. Beautiful. Could start it up, check email, BBC and STW website, shut it down and make a coffee in the time the laptop takes to think about starting up and then proceeding to make the latest set of software updates…

fwiw my mates macbook broke at the charger port and it would cost pretty much a new macbook to fix it as it required the motherboard changing or something. Better to just get a sturdy windows one with as little non-proprietary components as normal. Should’ve been a £1-2 fix on a normal laptop!

johndoh – Member
My laptop (Sony Vio) is 8 yrs old and going okay still – never broken. Saying that, my weapon of choice is my work Mac Air. Beautiful. Could start it up, check email, BBC and STW website, shut it down and make a coffee in the time the laptop takes to think about starting up and then proceeding to make the latest set of software updates…

So comparing an 8 year old laptop to something new and work supplied is a fair comparison?

The modern laptops I have all boot/open fairly fast, I don’t really bother shutting down much these days – just at airports really.

I’d be looking at a high-end Lenovo or Toshiba: proper metal chassis and well thought out specs. HP are quite nice but I have ethical issues with them, having worked at their Bangalore site for a couple of weeks.

Avoid Dell, as the components aren’t necessarily designed to work well together at a driver level. Our Dell Precisions (£3500 with the spec I get) don’t like being on the road for very long before suffering from rover SD1-esque trim failure issues (disk drives that fall out of the bays, screen bezels that disintegrate, power cords that magically lose their insulation or in one case, suffer random spontaneous combustion). Mine has taken to ejecting its batery on being moved from the coffee table to my lap. There’s also a big likelihood that once they go private the hardware business will be wound down to nothing or flogged off for pence.

Windows 8 is indeed pants, but the latest update with a proper start menu and non-hidden off button is supposedly quite good. With most manufacturers though you can still spec windows 7.

Macs are really very cool. If I could, I’d have one for work but ist verboten 🙁

Sony Vaios seem to last forever. I hate my mac pro, i wish it would die so I have an excuse to buy a new Vaio.

Conversely in this household Macs last an average of 6-8 years, Vaios last <6 months.

Meh

I don’t really bother shutting down much these days – just at airports really.

Why would you need to shut it down at an airport?

Another +1 for buying a good quality Dell/Lenovo business class machine. If two motherboards have gone (even on cheap machines) you have either been very unlucky, or your doing something bad to them.

A big problem with lower grade PC’s is amount of junk installed when you buy them, which can cause problems and poor performance. With the business class machines, they come with less junk and sometimes a copy of the OS which allows the machine to be reinstalled cleanly.

I recently bought a new PC for use with my TV, and until all the junk was removed, it was unusable (that’s not overstating it). I don’t think you have problems like that with a Mac.

Although I can see some advantages with Apple, unless AppleCare covered 5 years, there is no way i’d consider one, they are just too expensive to risk having a brick after 3 years if something fails.

Why would you need to shut it down at an airport?

I just tend to turn if off properly before flying never sure if it’s needed just might as well do it once every so often

danielgroves – Member
Those people clearly don’t look after their kit then. It’s all original, bar an SSD and maxing out the RAM. It most definitely hasn’t had an easy life either… I take it pretty much everywhere with me and push it pretty hard.

I’m not saying 6 years is a lot, but it’s certainly good. Still in near daily service, so who knows how long I’ll still be using it for?

I simply can’t believe that a Macbook which has seen any real use is still on its original palm rest. That and the PSU cable fraying dangerously are known issues which Apple replace for free. It is not from maltreatment, they are design flaws, same with the hinge cracking. The plastic goes brittle over time, it is not strong enough.

And again, it isn’t just me with these issues, we have 5 in my family, they ALL suffer the same issues and some have had a very easy life never leaving the house. All the ones I see at work are the same also. Apple value aesthetic over functionality, and this is one negative aspect of that.

“The motherboard’s gone” is tech speak for “it’s broken and we don’t know why.” The last one I had on the bench with a PC World-diagnosed motherboard fault needed a new fan.

Motherboards of a certain vintage were prone to failure due to a very widespread batch of faulty capacitors; google “capacitor plague”. This might have been a cause of failure on your earlier laptops, but a modern board shouldn’t be affected in this way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

The first flawed capacitors were reported in September 2002.
…

As of 2013 the problem seems to have receded, with the last major surge of complaints being reported in 2010.

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/

@retro in the family (inc adult kids) we have 4 MacBooks, the eldest 6yr old machine has had one new battery, frayed power cable and damaged palm rest, the 5 yr old machine had a new power supply and the two MacBook,pros have had no issues. No issues with mac mini. Overall Im happy enough with that and the other benefits far outweigh these issues, IME the apple batteries have lasted much better than cheap windows laptops which is fair enough as they cost less.

My 2 failed MacBook batteries lasted about 18 months and 6 months respectively. And I mean complete failure. Right down to 0% charge, not just degradation. Unplug (or just knock) the power lead and on a good day it may last as much as 2 sec before instant power-off.

Vaio lasted about 8 years at which point I sold it. I know the guy used it for another year before sticking it on eBay.

Would never buy Dell. Plasticky rubbish that weighs a ton.

Lenovo Thinkpad is on my shortlist for when the eeePC dies, and that’s outlasted the Macbook (and it’s replacement batteries) by a factor of 2 so far.

Hi guys, just reading all this with interest. As was painfully aware from my first post I am pretty clueless when it comes to the inner workings of computers. And thankfully this hasn’t turned into a Mac / Windows bitch fest.

Luckily this week I only have to submit a couple of invoices which I can do at the library so I’ll be doing a fair bit of research on high end business laptops as advised. Doubt I’ll go down the Mac route just yet :-).

We all have Dell laptops at work. Have to same I’m quite impressed with them. They run hotter than a MBP, but are lighter and seem fine to me. Not that I really care what’s under hood….

That and the PSU cable fraying dangerously are known issues which Apple replace for free. It is not from maltreatment, they are design flaws, same with the hinge cracking. The plastic goes brittle over time, it is not strong enough.

Thats a simple misunderstanding then, mine is the first of the aluminium unibodies. They don’t suffer from the issues the plastic ones had. 🙂

danielgroves – Member

That and the PSU cable fraying dangerously are known issues which Apple replace for free. It is not from maltreatment, they are design flaws, same with the hinge cracking. The plastic goes brittle over time, it is not strong enough.

Thats a simple misunderstanding then, mine is the first of the aluminium unibodies. They don’t suffer from the issues the plastic ones had.

Ah, I see – you said 6 years old which would make it a plastic one. You’re right, those are a lot better built – unfortunately the strain relief on the cables is still not good even on the brand new ones, and those are almost completely non-serviceable as well. Can’t even change the disk or RAM. Planned obsolescence.

non-changeable discs and RAM is acceptable, unless maybe you’re using it as a desktop replacement, with shed loads of video files etc.

non-replaceable batteries is definitely planned obsolescence, imho.

If the battery will tank within 3 years, then I see the whole laptop as a throw away device, not something that might fetch a good price on ebay. In which case… buy cheap, and dispose in 2-3 yrs.

Typing this from my BBC Micro, still going strong after 30 years.

Hang on – in Macs you can’t change the disk, ram or battery?

FFS!

That’s flat out disgraceful, Apple don’t deserve a penny of my money or anyone else’s.

Hang on – in Macs you can’t change the disk, ram or battery?

You can in my MBP…..

CaptJon – Member
Typing this from my BBC Micro, still going strong after 30 years.

Pfft, my Toshiba MSX pwns your BBC Micro

molgrips – Member
Hang on – in Macs you can’t change the disk, ram or battery?

FFS!

That’s flat out disgraceful, Apple don’t deserve a penny of my money or anyone else’s.

Only on the Retina and Air models. The MBP is user serviceable. I’ve changed the HDD to SSD in mine and upgraded the mem.

Hang on – in Macs you can’t change the disk, ram or battery?

You can in my MBP

Soldered in RAM in the new MB Air
Non-user-servicable battery in at least the Air
SSD is changeable but they chose a non-standard connection, so either Apple only updates at Apple prices, or wait until Kingston et al licence the right to make 3rd party SSD in that format.

Luckily this week I only have to submit a couple of invoices which I can do at the library so I’ll be doing a fair bit of research on high end business laptops as advised.

Rather than spend a load on a laptop get a desktop, they are cheaper, more powerful for the money and much more robust, spend the change on something portable 🙂

oooh, can i get my case fixed FOC on my macbook?

I thought it had cracked from general abuse…

(3.5 year old macbook here, never missed a beat, with no maintenance needed, i.e no disk frag, anti virus, spybot nonsense)

To be honest I can understand the Airs being non user serviceable, when you’re going for the absolute smallest possible enclosure, there’s going to be some compromises. If you want to upgrade etc, just get a MBP rather than an Air.

So comparing an 8 year old laptop to something new and work supplied is a fair comparison?

I was mentioning the laptop because it has never broken down or caused me problems – it is a good piece of kit but just struggles with running latest OS and software.

oooh, can i get my case fixed FOC on my macbook?

I thought it had cracked from general abuse…

(3.5 year old macbook here, never missed a beat, with no maintenance needed, i.e no disk frag, anti virus, spybot nonsense)

Except that it is cracked and falling apart ?

I’ve never broken a laptop, always passing on my old models to others who have lesser requirements. My 2001 Dell is still working, having been passed to my mum and then on to my aunt and uncle to use to look at their photos. My 2004 Dell is parked in a cupboard but still working, having been retired because my mum got a tablet. My 2006 Dell gets used in my workshop.

Thinking about it, in the last 13 years the only laptop of mine that has failed, out of 3 Dells and 3 Thinkpads, is an X60 that I sold to a friend and died when he nearly burnt down an airliner.