Poll: Finally geting a new laptop - Mac or PC?

[ReservoirAngel]

I just Amazoned (yes that's a word) Lenovo and stumbled upon the #1 best-selling laptop on there. And with a RAM upgrade I get presented with a £374.97 laptop with a 15.6" screen, 6GB of RAM (still not sure what RAM actually does, but more of it is surely always better), a 1 terrabyte HDD (more than 4 times what I've got currently) along with other stuff I don't make much sense of but that sounds impressive.

Compared to a MacBook Pro I was looking at that has less than those things and runs to damn near £900, that's a hell of a difference.

 

[RevRaptor]

Honestly to me it seems like a mac would be the better choice for you. They are good systems for people who don't want to have to learn the technical stuff. They are of course overpriced and you can get a lot more power for a lot less cash with a pc but the fact that macs tend to be hard to fuck up is a pretty compelling factor.

 

[Kotaro]

Windows PC, Windows PC, Windows PC, a million times Windows PC.
With a Mac, you are paying up to three times as much for a machine that's less hackable and may or may not even be built well.
I fix laptops (and game consoles) for a living, and I have personally found that the newest MacBooks are the most impossible-to-repair machines ever made. By which I mean they are literally impossible to fix when (not if, when) they break.
My recommendation would be a Toshiba machine. When it comes to laptops, Toshiba's are not quite the best out there, but they will give you the best quality for what you spend.
I can seriously not think of a single situation where I would recommend a Mac.

 

[Worgen]

Lenovo makes some quite good laptops at good prices.

If you want something bigger that can game then check out a y series
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/y-series/
I've got one of the y series myself and its got some good power to it.

If you want something that is really portible that still has a bit of power to it, then check out a yoga
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/yoga/
the yoga 2 pro is quite nice, its got a good touch screen and is nice and fast, I had to mess with one for a client.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

If you are in the UK, then SCAN is the place to go: their custom laptops have really good specs for their price, unlike most brand gaming laptops, which usually have a weaker gpu.

Here:

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/custom/professional-gaming-pc/laptop

From where I have looked around, they make the best value for money laptops available, also, they are giving away a set of headphones right now with every laptop.

In addition, when choosing the laptop, select windows 7 instead of windows 8 on the configuration screen(its just plain easier to use), unless you really, really need it, uncheck the antivirus, and select the 1TB 7200RPM Hard drive, which only costs £15 more(I think).

But yeah, it is an excellent site in terms of value for money.

 

[ReservoirAngel]

I said I can go up to £1000 but that's a generous estimate and I'd rather not venture too far into the upper reaches of that limit.

So far I'm liking the Lenovo G510.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HR6U0KK

One issue I'm worried about with laptops is ventilation. My current one is prone to overheating so I've had to get a big cooling pad underneath it, and I'd rather avoid any such irritating theatrics.

 

[Kathinka]

as many said before, oh god no for heavens sake, no macs. ever. for no reason.

Spoiler: get ready for some truth y'all!

now, obligatory master race castration aside, if you would want to do any kind of gaming with it, i would also strongly suggest a desktop, unless mobility is absolutely non-optional. but since you won't, go nuts. you don't even need to spend a thousand quid, if you don't game you can get something reeeeeaally nice and functional for a few hundred. save up the rest and get a new one when this one has done its duty.

 

[ReservoirAngel]

That picture raises an interesting point (as well as being helpful... even though I'm now shamed that if I'd not been told otherwise when I got any decent cash I'd have gone the Prebuilt and Terribly Informed route because I'm a simpleton...though I can now laugh at my friend because he did go that route for his gaming PC):

It'd be really damn handy to have a computer that can play Blu Rays. Because I'm slowly whittling down my DVD collection into a Blu Ray collection and sometimes I like to sit snug with headphones on just watching a film, and I can't do that at present with any film or show I have on Blu Ray.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Do you need any software that only Mac has? If the answer is no, get a PC. You'll save a lot of money. You can get a perfectly decent laptop for 400 bucks or even less or you can get a slightly better Mac that you'll be doing basically the same shit on for more than double the price AT LEAST.

 

[Blue_vision]

Macs are really good computers; I'd say the value you get from a Macbook Pro is comparable to what you'd get from a good PC of similar specs. However, if you don't need the power of a Macbook pro (gaming, video/audio editing, other computationally intensive tasks), don't get one! You could save $800 and get a laptop that's very well suited towards your needs.

If I had to make an out-of-the-box suggestion, it would be to get a chromebook. If you have any comfort with computers at all, you can pick up a chromebook for $300 and install ubuntu as detailed here [http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.ca/]. I bought a chromebook a while back to use as a more portable laptop to bring around for everyday use. It costed me $170, weighs about a kilo, and is able to handle youtube, music playing, word processing, and more. I got a not so top of the line Acer 720 model, but if you can pick up one with an SSD (which is basically every chromebook,) you'll get a machine that boots up in seconds, and has a battery life of 6 hours +. I mostly use it to bring to school; I can barely feel it in my bag, and I never have to worry about charging between lectures.

I think the point is figuring out what you need out of your computer. I have a second generation Macbook Pro with a 2.4 Ghz Intel Dual-Core Processor and 4 gigs of RAM. I do reasonably intense scientific computation and play FPSes on it, and I rarely experience any performance issues. If you're not planning on playing games (or at least not playing processor-intensive games), you really don't need anything more than that, which is around $400 in modern laptop terms. My chromebook has a 1.1 Ghz Dual-Core Intel Processor and 2 GB RAM, and I've never experienced any performance issues, even with a dozen internet tabs open while running a numerical analysis program.

 

[Frezzato]

I just Amazoned (yes that's a word) Lenovo and stumbled upon the #1 best-selling laptop on there. And with a RAM upgrade I get presented with a £374.97 laptop with a 15.6" screen, 6GB of RAM (still not sure what RAM actually does, but more of it is surely always better), a 1 terrabyte HDD (more than 4 times what I've got currently) along with other stuff I don't make much sense of but that sounds impressive.

Compared to a MacBook Pro I was looking at that has less than those things and runs to damn near £900, that's a hell of a difference.

I believe this [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-G500-15-6-inch-Laptop-Integrated/dp/B00HR6U4F6/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1396736521&sr=8-2-fkmr0&keywords=lenovo+laptop+%C2%A3374.97] is the laptop in question, correct? It comes with an Intel Core i3-3110 2.4GHz.

I only recently had the displeasure of using Windows 8 on a new Toshiba laptop using a trackpad, and frankly, I found it to be terrible. For some reason it was constantly kicking me back to the stupid tile menu.


Thankfully, reviews of Windows 8.1 (update) are pretty positive [http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2455821,00.asp], but I would still find a way to try before you buy.

 

[Stabinbac]

15.6" screen, 6GB of RAM (still not sure what RAM actually does, but more of it is surely always better), a 1 terrabyte HDD (more than 4 times what I've got currently) along with other stuff I don't make much sense of but that sounds impressive.

15.6" is a decent screen size, but not the most portable.

6GB is a perfectly fine amount. You'll never notice 8+ unless you're doing video editing, ridiculous 3D modeling, or running a pile of virtual machines. Less than 6 you might start running into slight slowdowns with multi-tasking.

If you don't inhabit a ton of hard drive space swapping the drive out for an SSD is highly recommended. Gone are the days of hitting power, and having time to grab a beverage before it loads.

1080 monitor, and perhaps touch screen are good options. If you don't have a mouse on hand being able to just poke what you want to select in nicer than traveling across the screen with the touch pad.

Read reviews! Most of them are written by morons, and every system has horror stories, but it'll give you an idea of some of the quirks the machine might have (like the ridiculous tiny star bit screws on my recent laptop purchase).

Get an external blu-ray drive if you need it. The internal ones are still expensive, and you may have to drop a hefty chunk of money on the software to play them. The biggest failure of BR is the cost and software options for PC.

 

[monkey_man]

Win 8.1 is pretty annoying at start, they pretty much tried to turn the pc into a smartphone, and for obvious reasons it doesn't work well. You can turn most of the gizmos off though, and it's a helluvalot faster than win 7. I'm content with using it now, and it's hardly an issue if you know how to use google.
I'm against mac's on principle, seeing as they are too overpriced. If price is your biggest concern, don't get a mac.

 

[Robert Marrs]

Honestly judging by what you have said I would say mac. Apple is extremely stable and user friendly when it comes to operating systems. It is overpriced and you are a bit more limited to the programs and games you can run but going by what you plan to use it for that does not really seem like an issue. I prefer pc personally but I need pc to do the things I do. For any average non-gaming user who doesn't mind paying a bit more I would recommend apple every time for laptops.

 

[Leonardo Huizar]

Not trying to derail this but im reminded of a similar situation with a costumer at work: Do you really need a laptop where as a computer at home is more practical?

If you need it for Work & Travel then sure and id recommend the cheapest laptop PC. As far as school, dragging it everywhere, and having to secure it so nobody would just walk away with it, dont do it.

I owned 2 laptops and both didnt last very long with the amount of movement & data i put into it. Ive been using this PC for the last 4-5 years and its still in working order.

But if the advice falls on deaf ears, then go PC since they tend to have a longer lifespan and not as short a turnover as Apple products.

 

[ReservoirAngel]

Really, my top priorities with this thing I end up getting are:

1) Portability
2) Fast operating speed
3) Space to dump a lot of stuff onto it (I seriously punish my current hardrive's capacity though I know I shouldn't)
4) Not overheating if I leave the cooling pad accidentally unplugged for a while
5) A halfway decent battery life (even brand new my current model could run for maybe 2 hours if I didn't try to do too much at once)
5) The ability to watch 720p or higher video without having the picture go mental if I dare to do anything else at the same time
6) A better and friendly operating system than the fussy mother that is Vista

Touch screen would be nice to have around, because despite having predominantly used a laptop for 5 years now touchpads can still royally piss me off.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Macs are a no-no unless you need some kind of Apple-exclusive software, or if you're planning to replace the OS (which is probably not you if you are a normal user).

My advice, shoot for a nice ~500 pound (I live in the colonies and my keyboard only has a '$' key, sorry) Lenovo. They don't screw around. The build quality is good and the hardware is pretty much the best you'd expect for what you'll end up paying. Those bad boys are usually in the quadruple digits but are frequently on ridiculous 40-50% off sales. If you don't mind waiting for such a sale to come along it's an ideal solution.

Since you've got the cash to spend on quality, you'd be looking for something in their Ideapad line. Y Series if you'd like to do gaming, go for something in the S or U series if you'd rather have portability.

I owned a Lenovo Thinkpad in college. The motherboard died on it about a month after the warranty expired. Turns out that at the time, the motherboard getting fried on a Lenovo wasn't an uncommon occurrence, but Lenovo just didn't bother actually fixing the issue. So in the end what I ended up getting was an overpriced, underpowered, ugly piece of junk that died on me. Got a decent Acer for $650 (huge sale, amazing deal) and 3 years later it's still going strong and still manages to play pretty much every game I've bought on medium to high settings (played Bioshock Infinite on high settings at 80 fps).

I don't know if Lenovo's build quality has improved since then, but I would never recommend one to anyone I know just because of my personal experience with their laptops, and their customer service.

 

[truckspond]

Really, my top priorities with this thing I end up getting are:

1) Portability
2) Fast operating speed
3) Space to dump a lot of stuff onto it (I seriously punish my current hardrive's capacity though I know I shouldn't)
4) Not overheating if I leave the cooling pad accidentally unplugged for a while
5) A halfway decent battery life (even brand new my current model could run for maybe 2 hours if I didn't try to do too much at once)
5) The ability to watch 720p or higher video without having the picture go mental if I dare to do anything else at the same time
6) A better and friendly operating system than the fussy mother that is Vista

Touch screen would be nice to have around, because despite having predominantly used a laptop for 5 years now touchpads can still royally piss me off.

Since your budget is 1,000 pounds there are a lot of options open on the PC side. As for Macbooks: The best you can get is the 13-inch MacBook Air with 128 GB of storage. However you can get a 15.6 inch Dell Inspiron 15R for 449 pounds with 1,000 GB of storage and plenty of power to do everything you need and then some.