A question about Macbooks.

carlcon

Why would you bother?

-

I was tempted to just leave it at "why would you bother?" and see how you guys responded, but I figured that'd be spam. So here's my point...

Literally everyone I know who enjoys computing, gaming, surfing the internet, and doing "computery" things has a laptop. Windows 7, usually an i-series processor for anything bought in the last year or 2, and whatever ram, hard-drive and graphics card they deem necessary. All for a certain price. We'll call that price "x".

Then you have "the Others". You know the type; Scarf in summer, a slightly too small fedora squeezed onto their head, carries their giant off-white macbook under their arm while they walk through Trinity College. The Others.

I take a look at their macbooks and look at the price. We'll call that price "x + 50%" (at least!). And then I look at the specs! 2.1 Ghz processor, 300andsomething GB hard drive, and a basic graphics card for about 50% more than a standard Lenovo with 2.53Ghz, 650GB, and a Nvidia card!

What am I missing here? Surely... SURELY... I'm out of the loop here, and the mac OS does your Arts degree for you? Or tells you what colour scarf suits you best on the (WAY overused - see "hilarious" distorted photos on Facebook) cam that comes with it?

What gives?

--

No, seriously... is an Apple processor much better than a standard laptop one? If it says 2.1Ghz, does that mean 3Ghz on my laptop? There has to be something more than "branding" that explains the price, right?

srsly78

Nop it uses the same parts as other laptops (intel chips and so on). Generally MBP will have top-spec parts tho, so it's not fair to compare price with a low-end windows laptop.

But yes it's a big ripoff and you pay for branding. Not much point in having nvidia card when you can't play many games on it Most mac users into gaming would dual-boot into windows for that (yes some games will run on mac these days, but not very many, and certainly not crysis etc).

Zonda999

I tend to agree, you really do pay pay for that oh so good apple marketing. To be fair as well though, macbooks do always seem to have great quality screens, and a great touch pad, IMO, of course. Also, i think its hard to fault that macbook unibody casing, and build quality.

I'm in college btw too and last year i was tempted by a macbook pro but in the end i got a samsung q330 for about 500€ In spec terms its very like a mbp, 13" screen, core i3 chip, 4gb/500gb, slim, light and a great battery. The mbp would have cost at least twice that, and at that price differential, its hard to justify.

Some people i know who have mbp's use their bootcamp windows installation more than they use osx, which is another reason why you'd question buying one..

bscm

I got my Macbook for about €850, I can safely say if you use it for a day, you realise how outdated Windows is.

They are worth the extra cash, OS upgrades are €30 as opposed to €200-€300, better built-in virus protection, better screen, better stereo, quieter, better looking etc etc. And they can MULTI-TASK, 7 large programs (including a 1.5GB game) without breaking a sweat is what I accidentally found out... something I have yet to see a Dell with any Windows OS do without any delays or freezing.

I'm a 'hybrid', 'conundrum', 'general weirdo' according to my friends. I do enjoy tackling Ulysses or reading Dante but I'm a Physics-freak and learnt CSS and DreamWeaver out of boredom one summer.

And if I do make it to Trinners, you can spot me waltzing through Hamilton with my fedora and Doc Martens, Macbook under my arm, whilst discussing the recent developments in finding the Higgs particle :P

Overheal

Apple does some interesting things. Garageband, iMovie and iPhoto are actually neat pieces of software. Then you have the hardware itself which is pretty decent. Then should you happen to own other Apple products (iPods, ATV, etc) they all work pretty damn well together. Whereas with PC you are dealing with multiple vendors and compatibility issues. OSX and iOS work together like butter and bread. With OSX Lion and iOS5 they'll be even smarter about staying synced up.

Of the few things you cant do with a Mac are serious gaming (which is steadily growing though) and do serious programming. Other than that they seem to do just fine. Your major problem is in program compatibility since you cant just grab software off the shelf and assume it to run. But you can always dualboot with Windows 7.