Would you swap a Macbook for a MS Surface RT

Prodgey

At the moment I have a Macbook Mid 2010 white model, 4gb ram and 500gb hdd.

Starting college and was looking at tablets, when Surface caught my eye. The attachable keyboard/tablet combination is brilliant IMO. The OS is annoying, but AFAIK I can acquire most programs I need on it.

My question is, if you had the Macbook, would you consider selling it to buy a surface RT?

drunkmonkey

Not a hope, you've a good laptop just up the ram a little bit.

ted1

For everyday work and use I would never ever use a tablet. Laptop all the way. There some stats out there about the use tablets ever get. Something like 90% are used for kids to look at you tube

Overheal

Contrast to the RT, the Macbook is heavier and has a fraction of the battery life. The RT will chug for 8-10 hours happily and is a little lighter than a MBair. I find the RT makes a great web browser and movie watcher. The keyboard makes it viable as a portable typing machine.

The real question - would I sell a macbook to buy an RT... I really dont like selling technology. You will never get the money its really worth, because of how the tech market operates. a 1 year old laptop that cost $1200 will be lucky to resell for half that because something already faster and better is out and who wants to take the chance on secondhand products. I have a laptop kicking around from 2012 that has a 2nd gen i5 and it just feels meh when you compare it to comparable new laptops, which now have 4th gen core cpus and Touch. Not that its a bad unit, but trying to convince someone to buy it off you is another matter. Im a big fan of hanging on to hardware I have. In my unique case I win a lot of free new gadgets from work though. I won an RT, a newer ultrabook than the 2012 one I had, and I bought the Surface Pro. Rather than make a few hundred bucks on my Slate PC and my 2012 ultrabook I gave the Slate (which is also a 2nd gen intel and not a 1080p screen) to my brother to use and my laptop I plan to surprise my sister with; seems like a more fulfilling use of the hardware than reclaiming less than half of what both units originally cost on paper.

Torqay

Prodgey wrote: »

My question is, if you had the Macbook, would you consider selling it to buy a surface RT?

In a word, no.

For 500 yoyos you'll get something much more suitable for college work (if your Macbook doesn't cut it anymore).

Prodgey

Torqay wrote: »

In a word, no.

For 500 yoyos you'll get something much more suitable for college work (if your Macbook doesn't cut it anymore).

I was think more ~€300 second hand. The touch screen convertibles would be my preference, but the Windows RT is the main drawback. Most alternatives I've looked at have all the ports on the keyboard part, not the tablet, which is annoying.

Torqay

You're coing to college, what do you think you'll get done on such a 10" gimmick? Certainly no good for some serious work. What's wrong with your Macbook?

Prodgey

Torqay wrote: »

You're coing to college, what do you think you'll get done on such a 10" gimmick? Certainly no good for some serious work. What's wrong with your Macbook?

When you've the keyboard with it isn't it as good as a laptop?
Macbook has a broken trackpad, which will cost €120 to have replaced, or at least €60 to buy and replace myself.

Overheal

Just thinking about the performance characteristics, aside from the weight and battery life your MBP is going to be zippier and more responsive. Web pages will load several times faster on the MBP for example, because of how much more quickly the i5 will render. The Tegra 3 in the RT doesn't really shine a candle to it. Its designed for efficiency.

frankly 60 for a trackpad isn't a bad option. You could otherwise buy a really decent mouse for the same price but the mac pad is kind of the functional center of Mac OSX in the same way a touchscreen is the center of Windows 8's UI. Not that anybody complains that "Mac is designed for trackpad"

Prodgey

Overheal wrote: »

Just thinking about the performance characteristics, aside from the weight and battery life your MBP is going to be zippier and more responsive. Web pages will load several times faster on the MBP for example, because of how much more quickly the i5 will render. The Tegra 3 in the RT doesn't really shine a candle to it. Its designed for efficiency.

My macbook is a mid 2010 model, on a core 2 duo processor. Would it still be superior?

Overheal

a higher end Core 2 Duo probably.

I mean given its a mac, you can probably get it sold. You'd be selling it to someone who a) hates windows b) is not computer-oriented and c) has an unusual fear of viruses. As for the asking price, post it in the How Much is My computer worth thread (sticky) and go from there.

fleet

Doesn't do Java applets.

My course has an online component that requires them and so won't work. Android neither.

If it were a full Win 8 tablet then maybe...