Need a new laptop – MacBook or Windows?

Your phone can let other devices share its internet connection, right. So your tablet can do this too. Say, your phone or someone else’s tablet.

So this setting allows the other person’s tablet to remotely turn on the hotspot on your W10 computer and connect to it. So that you don’t have to leave the hotspot on all the time.

The apple thing is the other way round. So when you want to connect your mac to your iPhone to use the iPhone ‘s internet connection, it happens automatically without you having to get the iphone out first and enable the hotspot.

Aaaah, right. That I’d pay a fiver for, but not 800! 😉

Anyways, as you were…

[PS are we sure the answer’s not Linux? 😉 ]

Nope, nothing like that. I’m on a Mac for starters

Picture the scene…
I’m in a hotel room and my iPhone is connected to 3/4G
I open up my MacBook and want to get online
I click on the little Wifi symbol that is ever-visible top right corner of my Mac
There are no “normal” wifi networks available so I select “iPhone”
My iPhone automatically enables the hotspot
My MacBook is online

You little tinker, you had me going with that one. Tried doing this on the MB Pro and Air using both mine and the wifes iPhones and you have to have the hotspot turned on first before it allows you to connect, none of this press the icon on Mac and the hotspot on the phone switches on malarkey 🙄

Hah!

craigxxl I can assure you I’m not making it up and, just to eliminate all doubt, I am posting this on my MacBook whilst connected to my iPhone hotspot, without having to go into my iPhone settings to enable the hotspot.

Was it already enabled?

How to Use Instant Wi-Fi Hotspot in Mac OS X with iPhone

Was it already enabled?

without having to go into my iPhone settings to enable the hotspot.

Have I pedalled (pun intended) some lies on here before? Why the doubt?

Screen Shot 2016-10-20 at 19.57.25 by stilltortoise[/url], on Flickr

[edit] ah, you’re being funny. I think 🙂

Have we talked about resale value? An often overlooked part of the purchasing decision. Every windows pc or laptop I’ve had has had a shocking resale. Switched to mac a few years ago – buy a refurbished mac for 15% of retail then move it on after few years brings a very low cost of ownership.

Must not work on EE or Three networks then

Some mobile networks only allow limited or no tethering though, as it stops people with unlimited data plans using thier mobile as a full on broadband replacement.

PC laptops may have low resale value but can I find a cheap x58 or x79 motherboard? Can I fudge.

(Actually serious point – with the recent stagnation in performance, hasn’t everything (in GWO) started to retain more value?)

No, because the stagnation in performance has been driven by a decrease in price of new stuff.

Some mobile networks only allow limited or no tethering though, as it stops people with unlimited data plans using thier mobile as a full on broadband replacement.

I can connect to the hotspot if it’s switched on phone but it won’t switch to on via the MacBook.

Some tips on that article molgrips posted earlier regarding be on the right OS version etc.

Chance’d be a fine thing.

Picture the scene…
I’m in a hotel room and my iPhone is connected to 3/4G
I open up my MacBook and want to get online
I click on the little Wifi symbol that is ever-visible top right corner of my Mac
There are no “normal” wifi networks available so I select “iPhone”
My iPhone automatically enables the hotspot
My MacBook is online

Pull down notification bar on Android, tap hot spot
Laptop connects to the phone as a preferred connection and enters a restricted data usage mode acknowledging that it’s not on a free for all connection (settings can be changed) all automatically. I tell you it’s a struggle some days…

Have we talked about resale value? An often overlooked part of the purchasing decision. Every windows pc or laptop I’ve had has had a shocking resale.

You mean the Apple deposit scheme 😉 resale value doesn’t count if you just pay a load more upfront.
Previous work laptop – did 4 years and is now my personal one – Dell cost about 500 quid
Current Work laptop another decent spec dell does what I need cost again about 500 quid – 18 months in going fine.
For that I’m not exactly bothered by resale value.

Recently sent an old and decrepit samsung laptop to the local computer shop. It was unusable due to just being so darn slow.

They changed the hard drive to an SSD, and did a clean install of win10. £130.

This computer, despite being seriously low end by modern standards, is the quickest and best computer I have ever owned. Has made me wonder what shite the off the shelf options are like from the big retailers.

Will be sending the bigger better newer laptop to them soon for the same treatment, will be more expensive as the hard drive will need to be a couple of hundred quid on its own.

So, whatever route OP chooses, get one of then SSD fitted!

That’s W10 for you. I installed it on a Vaio P series, which is incredibly slow, and it runs pretty well. I installed it on a 7 year old Celeron machine and it’s pretty quick – probably a bit better than my i7 work machine on W7 in terms of booting up and so on.

I tell you it’s a struggle some days…

I do find this stuff fascinating though. Technology, for most people, has matured way beyond their needs. As evidenced on this thread, many of us are still only using our computers for word processing, email, spreadsheets, browsing and perhaps some light photo editing. This is stuff that – functionally – was nailed years ago. Now the tech companies are looking for those marginal gains, those minor improvements to usability that help people adopt feature/functionality.

Take this piddly little first world problem surrounding connecting to hotspots. The Android way is, in terms of button clicks, just as simple as the Mac way. However, what Apple have realised, is that the method of connecting the MacBook to an internet connection should be the same whether it’s a phone hotspot or a wifi router. If I’m in a hotel room and want to get my laptop online, surely I should do that the same way regardless of how that internet connection is being provided.

It’s tiny little “user experience” distinctions like this that can make the difference between new technology being adopted and new technology failing. I do geek out about stuff like this a bit, but there are some fascinating (to me) examples of how businesses spend huge amounts of money on consultancy to make sure their “user journey” results in people actually signing up and using their products and services. Some good examples in this book, for example.

Or this one 😉

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/20/ibm-macs-less-expensive-than-pcs/%5B/url%5D

though i don’t understand why people who just want to do spreadsheets and plug in a projector to look at pie charts in dull offices buy macs.

However, what Apple have realised, is that the method of connecting the MacBook to an internet connection should be the same whether it’s a phone hotspot or a wifi router. If I’m in a hotel room and want to get my laptop online, surely I should do that the same way regardless of how that internet connection is being provided.

It actually is – the hotspot is a standard Wifi access point – the PC doesn’t know if it’s a router or a phone. The user journey improvement is the fact you don’t have to turn on the hotspot manually for apple. You could just leave it on all the time – but that uses battery.

I used PCs for years. I then came into some money and bought a Mac laptop as a treat. It was a bit of a pain to use at first, but after I got used to it it was fine. Six years later I would never go back to a PC. Of course it all depends what software you have to use and what tasks you need to do, but I never had a computer I could actually say that ‘I loved’ until I got a Mac. It’s weird, I don’t have to ‘fanny around’ with a Mac half as much as I had to do on a PC, it’s like all the techy stuff that you don’t really need to use for 99% of the time is nicely hidden away on a Mac and is not always in your face like on a PC, which almost invites you to tweak and mess around with it to no real gain. I just turn it on and it works, no irritating pop ups or virus reminders or other crap to distract you. Just my 2p’s worth.

Six years later I would never go back to a PC

This argument would be very different six years ago, before W10 came out. It really is a big change to the PC world.

IBM believes over time a Mac costs $543 less than a PC

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/20/ibm-macs-less-expensive-than-pcs/

Doesn’t apply to home users though. Or W10, cos I happen to know that IBM don’t use W10 yet.

This argument would be very different six years ago, before W10 came out. It really is a big change to the PC world.

It always amuses* me when the Mac and Linux advocates hold up their platform of choice to a version of Windows in their memory having not touched a Wintel PC in donkey’s years. I think I’m going to start slagging off Macs based on my System 7 experience. And screw you Linux guys, POSIX was crap.

(* – chafes my arse, actually)

This argument would be very different six years ago, before W10 came out. It really is a big change to the PC world.

I use a OSX and W10. I like W10 but I like OSX more (no bias here as I have both and will have both for a while I expect (because I don’t want to pay Apple prices for a laptop which gets much less use that my desktop))

Think I might get one of these next…

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/razers-new-blade-pro-desktop-performance-in-0-9-inches-and-8-lbs/

craigxxl I can assure you I’m not making it up and, just to eliminate all doubt, I am posting this on my MacBook whilst connected to my iPhone hotspot, without having to go into my iPhone settings to enable the hotspot.

Had both iPhones, a 6 and 6s, down to the Apple store today turns out the last software upgrade to to OSX 10 hadn’t installed correctly on either. MacBooks now switch on the mobile hotspot.
Cheers, I wouldn’t have know there was an issue without knowing about this feature. Still a ball ache having to go into town to get them sorted.

@Cougar – what’s the going rate for a kidney?

@Cougar the problem is we were for for years, decades in fact that the “new” versions of Windows was great. Morenodfen than not 6 months later it was clear that the “new” version was rubbish but the “new new” version was going to be great. We’ve lost the faith, we assume that Windows is sh.te

Pah – I tried an Apple III once, it was rubbish, and don’t get me started on System V

don’t get me started on System V

Do you have two floppy drives? Otherwise started is about all you will get before you have to swap the damn disk!

Everything went downhill after System 4 anyway, all that multi tasking was confusing.

Just bought an XPS15. Great for video editing. I like a Matte screen.

Currys were doing 10% cashback off and up to £200 trade in on an old i7. Made a lot of sense for us.

I’m not going to enter into the technical merits of MS v Apple but thought I’d contribute by saying that as a windows user for years (home and work) picked up a MacBook Pro (with an integral DVD) a couple years ago in a Black Friday £100 off deal and I’ve never really gotten on with it. I know all I really need to do is work out how to use it properly (cut & paste wtf?). If anyone can point me to an idiots guide for how to move from from win to iOS I’d be grateful. Been an expensive DVD player thus far…

The MacBook was bought to replace a Viao (never liked it, stoopid ****-ing on/off you hit when picking it up) whose hard drive died after six months. Drive replaced under warranty and still working 5 years on though. Probably only used 5-10 hours a week on average, for photo processing at the most intensive and browsing/’box set’ viewing & word processing. Only fire up the mac for ‘secure’ internet use (I know it’s cleaner, hardly used!). Need to learn to use Lightroom though, that might help me…

TL;DR: if you use MS a lot all your shortcuts don’t translate and you’ll need to learn a new way of doing things.

TL;DR: if you use MS a lot all your shortcuts don’t translate and you’ll need to learn a new way of doing things.

They do translate just switch ctrl on Windows for the command key (one next to the space bar) on a Mac keyboard and away you go. You can remap some keyboard in the system prefs if you want to use an alternate key.

If you want something very portable then the windows netbook style laptops bought out to compete with chromebooks are actually very good for the money. £200 gets you something lightweight, quick booting and decent battery life. Its not mac quality but does the job for simple tasks

interested in looking at these then, i have a chromebook now but ive never got to grips with the ‘drive’ aspect of it and how to save sheets and docs in the right format, i prefer the good old drag and drop of windows.
are these netbook type things W10? and do you have to pay yearly or anything for the software? or can you just buy one and your good to go for a few years?

got a link to a decent one for chromebook money?

thanks

@metal just think of CMD key as Control and use the function keys F3 and F4 to switch between/find programs. Sorry don’t have a guide link