Should I buy a MacBook?

Red Crow

Ok so I'm in the market for a new laptop and I've managed to convince myself that I need to buy the MacBook. I'm easily sucked in buy the build quality, resale value and design.

I'm looking at a 2013 MacBook Air 13" 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for about €1,300 with a student discount. Am I mad with this outlay for a laptop that will simply be used for browsing, basic college work and research?

Any thoughts, feelings or abuse that you'd like to share? Would I be better off burning my money?

Torqay

If you have managed to convince yourself that you need to buy the MacBook, why do you even ask?

Plenty threads here already with raging battlles between reason and fanboyism.

Red Crow

Torqay wrote: »

If you have managed to convince yourself that you need to buy the MacBook, why do you even ask?

Plenty threads here already with raging battlles between reason and fanboyism.

Well I just want to see what the alternatives are. I understand them at there are fan boys but surely most on here wouldn't resort to that!

Frank Lee Midere

Red Crow wrote: »

Well I just want to see what the alternatives are. I understand them at there are fan boys but surely most on here wouldn't resort to that!

Ignore anybody who uses the term fanboyism. I would recommend a mac book as a windows desktop machine ( with paralleles) as most reports show its one of the fastest windows machines on the market. Add to that a rock solid UNIX os for those of us who prefer a richer and more complex operating system. Then there's the design, people pay for design in cars, radios, furniture and everywhere else.

The last thing is the price. The kind of guy who builds his own "cheaply" can be shut up by asking the resale value. The resale value is, for macs, very high and the real cost of an item is its depreciation. The resale value of Dells etc is close to zero after a normal two-three zero use.

So yeah. No brainer.

looking_around

here's a couple threads, read over them.
pros & cons, macbook discussion

Another, "Should I buy a mac"

mac or.

You do know there are other aluminium bodied computers? apples are not the only brand that do this build quailty, you could save yourself 300 quid choosing a different ultrabook.

However the macbook air, has amazing battery life. Than no other netbook has been able to match yet.

TheIrishGrover

Red Crow wrote: »

Ok so I'm in the market for a new laptop and I've managed to convince myself that I need to buy the MacBook. I'm easily sucked in buy the build quality, resale value and design.

I'm looking at a 2013 MacBook Air 13" 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for about €1,300 with a student discount. Am I mad with this outlay for a laptop that will simply be used for browsing, basic college work and research?

Any thoughts, feelings or abuse that you'd like to share? Would I be better off burning my money?

Now I will say right away that I don't like Apple products so if you want to take that as a bias or not in your case, that's up to yourself.

However if the laptop is simply for, as you say, browsing, research and basic college work: Writing thesis, spreadsheets etc, (You're not in publishing or graphic design or anything like that?) then a standard windows-based laptop will be cheaper to buy and maintain/buy peripherals for. The resale value may be better for the macbook but this would only be for a short period. In that a one year-old macbook would have a much higher resale value than a one yearold windows laptop but after two or three or four years the difference would be neglible.

Repair and maintanance and, as I said, peripherals (external monitors, keyboards, mice etc) on a non-apple laptop are MUCH cheaper as there is no proprietary hardware on windows laptops.

Software is also going to be cheaper (Openoffice is free for example) and easier to get

There is no doubt that you get a higher specced windows machine for the same price.

You would get something like [THIS] (Although a 17in isn't very portable. I've had one and preferred my later 15in)

Edit: Or if you want a slimmer body device like the macbook then there are many multrabook manufacturers:

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/xps-14-l421x/pd?oc=cnx1414&model_id=xps-14-l421x

Lenovo

HP Spectre: i5/8GB/1080p/500GB/32GB HDD/Bluetooth

Torqay

Frank Lee Midere wrote: »

The last thing is the price.

You conveniently forget to mention Apple's outrageous repair fees. They know no shame asking for 700 yoyos to replace a broken display of a MacBook Air.

Nonoperational

Red Crow wrote: »

Ok so I'm in the market for a new laptop and I've managed to convince myself that I need to buy the MacBook. I'm easily sucked in buy the build quality, resale value and design.

I'm looking at a 2013 MacBook Air 13" 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for about €1,300 with a student discount. Am I mad with this outlay for a laptop that will simply be used for browsing, basic college work and research?

Any thoughts, feelings or abuse that you'd like to share? Would I be better off burning my money?

I'm a big fan of MacBooks, but I would recommend the retina Macbook Pro with 8GB ram and the 256 SSD. I recently for it for €1393 with the 12% discount through campus.ie

It's an impressive machine.

floggg

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Now I will say right away that I don't like Apple products so if you want to take that as a bias or not in your case, that's up to yourself.

However if the laptop is simply for, as you say, browsing, research and basic college work: Writing thesis, spreadsheets etc, (You're not in publishing or graphic design or anything like that?) then a standard windows-based laptop will be cheaper to buy and maintain/buy peripherals for. The resale value may be better for the macbook but this would only be for a short period. In that a one year-old macbook would have a much higher resale value than a one yearold windows laptop but after two or three or four years the difference would be neglible.

Repair and maintanance and, as I said, peripherals (external monitors, keyboards, mice etc) on a non-apple laptop are MUCH cheaper as there is no proprietary hardware on windows laptops.

Software is also going to be cheaper (Openoffice is free for example) and easier to get

There is no doubt that you get a higher specced windows machine for the same price.

You would get something like [THIS] (Although a 17in isn't very portable. I've had one and preferred my later 15in)

Edit: Or if you want a slimmer body device like the macbook then there are many multrabook manufacturers:

http://www.dell.com/ie/p/xps-14-l421x/pd?oc=cnx1414&model_id=xps-14-l421x

Lenovo

HP Spectre: i5/8GB/1080p/500GB/32GB HDD/Bluetooth

Sorry, but you won't get a cheaper windows machine without trading battery life and weight - which are two important specs in my book.

Yes, you can get more powerful laptops for less but they will likely have half the battery life, and about a kg heavier.

Now, depending on how it's used that might not really make much difference - that's to be judged on a case by case basis.

But I don't think you can get a comparable windows laptop anywhere for much less. With a lower price laptop, you generally have to sacrifice something over the MacBook - be it processor, battery, weight and portability etc.

I searched high and low for a better value windows alternative to a MacBook Pro, but could generally only find heavier machines with half the battery in the cheaper price ranges. Comparable windows ultra books were just as expensive.

Now again, depending on how it's used that might not be an issue, so the cheaper windows laptop might be a better option.

But it's up to the purchaser to determine what value he puts on things like battery and portability.

You probably don't need a shiny lightweight laptop with long battery life (windows or apple) - for most people it's a luxury buy. But if you have the money and it's something you'd enjoy, then there's no reason not to.

As long as you don't bankrupt yourself you probably won't regret it - there beautiful machines and run great. Of course the same could likely also be said for a similar high end windows machine too.


If you can afford it OP, I'd go for the 256gb SSD 8GB Ram MacBook Pro over the air. It's heavier, but not by much and still has 9 hours battery (versus the Air's 13).

Red Crow

Yeah it works out at 1,393.86 for the MacBook Pro retina 13" 256SSD 8GB RAM with the discount so there is not a whole lot of difference. Thanks guys.