Poll: My Computer is dying on me....

[Leon Pendragon]

Buy nearly any ASUS with a *edited* )I forgot Asus has shit support for the A6 line ATM) get an i5 and you'll be golden pay 1/2 the money of getting a mac, have 4 times the power, look like a pimp while doing it. http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/

 

[RevRaptor]

Yea Mac's are great, if you don't mind paying twice the price for half the tech.

Then there is the whole human right violations investigations going on in the factories where they are made.
I don't think I could happily own something that has caused so much human misery.

 

[ThePS1Fan]

Up to you really. Th OS works fine and certainly looks very nice. It has very little in the way of gaming and based on the hardware it's over priced. For most practical uses it's perfectly fine though.

 

[MetalMagpie]

I'm a student so this would be a big investment for me.

Then my advice would be to get something fairly cheap! At least in the UK, students suffer more thefts than almost any other portion of the population. I bought a £300 laptop for use when I was at university so that my life wouldn't end if I was mugged, or my house was burgled, or one of my housemates split beer on it, or...

Now that I have a job (and live in an area with far lower crime rates) I'm thinking about splashing out on something nice.

For now, a dual-core will give you more than enough power to run Windows 7 smoothly. If you're not going to game on it, don't worry too much about good graphics or lots of harddrive space. Look for one with a larger screen if you're more concerned about video-watching than portability (and vice versa).

 

[Vardermir]

I bought a macbook pro specifically to code iOS apps on, and honestly, I think its the best laptop I've ever used. Apple knows how to make reliable, aesthetically pleasing hardware, I've put my machine through hell and it still runs just fine. The price thing is kinda a pain, but if you time your purchase right, specifically right before or just after they release new models, they will give you a 25% discount. So I ended up paying only $1500 after all was said and done. Upgrading the RAM and Hard drive is easy if you want to do it, and those are basically the only things you can upgrade on a laptop anyways. Now that Steam is on OS X, you can actually get a pretty large selection of games for it if you ever decide that's what you want to do. Sure, the hardware isn't the fastest, but the Binding of Isaac doesn't really require top notch hardware in the first place .

 

[Substitute Troll]

Are you deadset on buying a laptop? Because if you can consider a desktop, and you have the technical knowhow or connections to assemble it yourself, then that will shave off a lot of money when you get the separate parts.

 

[Username Redacted]

Macs are best for graphics design and making movies - artsy stuff - while PCs have a better 'office' package.

I still don't know why, and that's coming from someone who does a course called Communication and Multimedia Design. There are only a few very high-end video-editing and design programs that are Mac exclusive, other than that I have no clue why Macs would be better. I have Illustrator CS5, they have Illustrator CS5, what's the difference?

As far as I know there isn't one. There probably used to be when the hardware differences between Macs and PCs where more pronounced and when there was Mac exclusive media software. Now, not so much. My experience with Apple products is not exactly positive as for the most part they're equivalent to Nike. Sure their products may be functional but they aren't orders of magnitude better than their competition that is reflected in their costs. It isn't even funny how much better performance-wise an equivalently costed laptop is going to be than a Macbook.

 

[Yopaz]

Ninja'd by TheBobmus...

It depends on what you plan on doing with it most of the time. If you plan on making videos for youtube, designing houses, putting together reports and charts. The MacBook is for you. If you want to play games, get a windows based laptop.

I'm not really into PC gaming. I use my current one more for writing, web browsing, movie watching, etc. I'm a student so this would be a big investment for me.

If you use it for those things I would really not recommend anything Apple. MicroSoft word costs more for Apple than for Windows. If you want an OS that is perfect for your needs, go Debian. It's simple, stable and without the bad viruses that haunts Windows and Apple. Yes, Apple users will tell you there are no viruses, but that's a lie.

Seriously though, Debian. http://www.debian.org/distrib/
You could install it on the laptop you have now and see if it works. You could also check out wubi if you don't feel like burning something to a disc http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installer but I would recommend Debian for its stability.

 

[latenightapplepie]

If you couldn't give a flying shit about messing around with the guts of your computer and just want the damn thing to work flawlessly and with minimal effort, definitely get a Mac.

I like you.

You have accurately summed up my position on Mac computers very well. I don't know or care about the internal bits of my computer. I will pay for the convenience of not having to care. Mmm, it feels good.

 

[Kriptonite]

I'm sure, by this time, your opinion is already made up and hell, you were probably leaning one way or another before coming here. No big deal, it's how people are.
However, if you're a student and don't have an extra superfluous thousand dollars to spend and want the same performance, I say go the PC route. I'm not here to shit on Macs or their users though I thoroughly dislike the former, but I honestly think that, on somewhat of a budget, a PC, at least right now, is the best option for you. Unless you really love the user-interface on Macs, there's no getting around that.