Budget of €2000 ish

Gorteen

My job is providing an educational fund for me to spend on myself, but if the money isn't spent, it has to be returned.

I'm torn between an Apple MacBook Pro or a high end (unspecified) laptop. What laptops should I consider? I'm after something for ordinary surfing, watching movies, word processing / powerpoint, etc... nothing high-tec.

Deviso

Macbook Pro.

I just bought one after switching from Windows. I'm never going back.

Gorteen

Deviso wrote: »

Macbook Pro.

I just bought one after switching from Windows. I'm never going back.

Really? I've always had windows (usually on cheap laptops). My familiarity with Apple stuff is limited to an iPod, but I like it's simplicity.

What's so good about the MacBook Pro?

Royale with Cheese

€2000 will only get you one of the lower end MacBook Pro's. I have one of the newer ones and am quite fond of it, but they are extortionately expensive.

Gorteen

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

€2000 will only get you one of the lower end MacBook Pro's. I have one of the newer ones and am quite fond of it, but they are extortionately expensive.

https://www.apple.com/ie/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro

Touch Bar and Touch ID
2.3GHz Quad-Core Processor
256GB Storage
€2099

Is this lower end?

Royale with Cheese

It has a year old i5 and 8gb of ram. You don't sound like you need a particularly powerful machine though, it's just a lot of money to pay for what would be a fairly mid spec laptop. And the 15" is even more expensive again.

The touchbar is a complete and utter waste of time by the way. I was going to tell you to go for the €1799 machine and spend the money bumping the ram up to 16gb, but that version appears to have an even older cpu and gpu. I bumped the hard drive on mine up to 512gb too, so I could install a copy of windows on it to run along with MacOS (you might get way with doing this on the 256gb hard drive though). It's very handy to have in case I ever need to run something on Windows (would happen with work related things sometimes).

fatbhoy

Gorteen wrote: »

https://www.apple.com/ie/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro

Touch Bar and Touch ID
2.3GHz Quad-Core Processor
256GB Storage
€2099

Is this lower end?

Yes it is, because it's a 13" (albeit a high-end 13") rather than the desirable 15".

fatbhoy

Gorteen wrote: »

My job is providing an educational fund for me to spend on myself, but if the money isn't spent, it has to be returned.

I'm torn between an Apple MacBook Pro or a high end (unspecified) laptop. What laptops should I consider? I'm after something for ordinary surfing, watching movies, word processing / powerpoint, etc... nothing high-tec.

Hi Gorteen. Why not just get a nice, powerful Windows PC laptop for about 1200, and return the money so that it could be used for another good cause?

If I were you, I'd be very tempted to get a nice MacBook Air (they're not far off 1200) which would kill two birds with one stone: it would be more than capable for doing what you say you'd be doing, plus you'd be able to refund about 800 to the education fund. MacBook Airs are thinner, lighter versions of MacBook Pros (minus maybe a couple of ports and computing/graphics capabilities).

https://www.apple.com/ie/macbook-air/

Plus, if you're a student or in education, you can get something like 10% off.

https://www.apple.com/ie/education/

https://www.apple.com/ie-edu/shop

Gorteen

Gorteen wrote: »

My job is providing an educational fund for me to spend on myself, but if the money isn't spent, it has to be returned.

I'm torn between an Apple MacBook Pro or a high end (unspecified) laptop. What laptops should I consider? I'm after something for ordinary surfing, watching movies, word processing / powerpoint, etc... nothing high-tec.

do you want a really light laptop with 13/14 inch display (1.1 to 1.4 kg) or a more powerful one with 15.6 display and a graphics card but that will be heavier (near 2kg)

that's the main choice to make.

light.
dell xps 13
https://www.dell.com/en-ie/shop/laptops/new-xps-13/spd/xps-13-9370-laptop/cnx37016

more powerful - 1.8kg
dell xps 15 16gb, nvidia graphics card. on offer for 1650 until 21.11
https://www.dell.com/en-ie/shop/laptops/new-xps-15/spd/xps-15-9570-laptop/cnx97009

5uspect

I like MacOS. It doesn’t get in the way and is a great workhorse OS. I’ve got all the UNIX stuff like a terminal as well as MS Office and Adobe tools. Unlike Windows it won’t slow down. If you’ve got an iPhone it’s even better with a lot of interoperability like AirDrop (peer to peer file sharing), Handoff (continue your work in an app at the tap of a button), shared clipboard, and continuity camera (instantly scan a document to your Mac from your phone).

The hardware, while not always the fastest, is well build and generally reliable. I expect to get six years from my Macs. Their SSDs and trackpads are light years ahead of the competition. The trackpads alone make the OS a joy to use.

However the new keyboards are not for everyone and they still appear to be suffering issues. Don’t buy a Mac to play games either.