What Computer? (1 Viewer)

[Ciansy]

I have: a maximum of €1000 to spend
I would like: a new computer. It can be a laptop, or a desktop if I'll be getting considerably more for my money. I'd like it to be able to run fairly up-to-date games and programs, but I'm not that bothered so long as I get value for money.
Ideally: I would only spend €750 and get a sexy laptop.
Please: help!

 

[nofriendo]

ibooks start at a 1000!

 

[shower another shower]

ibooks start at a 1000!

Mac book. I've an old Powerbook and have dropped off my desk to the floor at least 6 times, and its still going. Except the monitor.

 

[pete]

if he wanted a macbook he'd have posted in lifestyle

 

[flashback]

heh heh heh.

I would recommend an iBook too.
They spec out those machines well for the money. It's a good bit of hardware.

MacOSX... like, is certainly a lot better then Windows anyway, and for me this would be its strongest selling point.

 

[pete]

Cheapest Macbook is €1,049
13" screen / 2Ghz Core Duo / 1GB / 80GB Hard Drive

A Dell Inspiron 1501 for €937 gets you
15.4" screen / 1.8GHz Turion / 2GB / 160Gb Hard Drive

 

[flashback]

Cheapest Macbook is €1,049
13" screen / 2Ghz Core Duo / 1GB / 80GB Hard Drive

A Dell Inspiron 1501 for €937 gets you
15.4" screen / 1.8GHz Turion / 2GB / 160Gb Hard Drive

How much does that Inspiron weigh? I hate heavy laptops, they must weigh less than 5lbs before I would look at it.

If that's the prices, I would take the MacBook. (Well, I mean, I might take the Dell if it was light, only because I am going to clear the HD and install Linux anyway, but otherwise I would use MacOSX.)

2G of RAM is fucking loads. We run production servers with 2G of RAM. You only really need that much because Windows VISTA is unbelievably hungry. 1 gig would probably do you, and if it doesnt, you can just buy generic RAM online anyway.
And you get faster Core Duo chips with the Mac.

I would definitely say go for the Mac.

 

[Franco]

I don't want to get into the whole mac v pc debate,

but macs stink.

and charlie brooker agrees with me.

 

[Jill Hives]

Mac book. I've an old Powerbook and have dropped off my desk to the floor at least 6 times, and its still going. Except the monitor.

My old powerbook flew 5 feet in the air and fell on concrete and still worked. After 10 years, I just replaced it with a jacked up ibook. I have a friend who works at Dell (pretty high up who will only use macs) and point blank said Dell designs computers so they will break with in two years time. Not to mention, windows just blows.

 

[steve albino]

Cheapest Macbook is €1,049
13" screen / 2Ghz Core Duo / 1GB / 80GB Hard Drive

A Dell Inspiron 1501 for €937 gets you
15.4" screen / 1.8GHz Turion / 2GB / 160Gb Hard Drive

Cheapest Macbook is €1,049
13" screen / 2.16 Ghz Core Duo / 1GB / 120GB Hard Drive

 

[pete]

Cheapest Macbook is €1,049
13" screen / 2.16 Ghz Core Duo / 1GB / 120GB Hard Drive

not on apple.ie it's not

Price:
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VAT:Eur 182.06
Subtotal:Eur 1,049.00
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[FONT=Lucida Grande, Geneva, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Specifications[/FONT]

• 1GB 667 DDR2 - 2x512MB SO-DIMMs
• 80GB Serial ATA drive (5400rpm)
• Keyboard (English) & Mac OS (English)

• 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• Combo Drive
• AirPort Extreme Card & Bluetooth
• Power Adapter
• Battery

 

[steve albino]

ah. my bad, carry on

 

[pete]

How much does that Inspiron weigh? I hate heavy laptops, they must weigh less than 5lbs before I would look at it.

15.4" Inspiron is 7lbs. The 13" macbook is 5.2lbs.

No Macbook for you i guess.

If that's the prices, I would take the MacBook. (Well, I mean, I might take the Dell if it was light, only because I am going to clear the HD and install Linux anyway, but otherwise I would use MacOSX.)

You can get a Dell (or any other non-Mac) laptop for way under a grand that'll happily run Linux. I just grabbed that Dell model details for similar spec (well, better, actually) comparison purposes.

2G of RAM is fucking loads. We run production servers with 2G of RAM. You only really need that much because Windows VISTA is unbelievably hungry.

I'd say it's more "you only need that much depending on what you want to use it for". If it's just WP / web / email then sure 512mb would do, but if you're using Photoshop, say, then the more memory the better regardless of platform. Horses for courses, innit. This PC i'm at now (running Vista Ultimate) is on 2.5GB; my work desktop (running SLED 10.2) is 2Gb so i can have a couple of VMs running. Laptop is 1GB (Vista / SLED dual boot). Our servers all have between 4GB & 16GB, depending on what they're used for. There's no hard and fast rule.

1 gig would probably do you, and if it doesnt, you can just buy generic RAM online anyway.

Ah sure who'd need more than 640kb. Too bad you can't say the same for the pokey 13" display though...

And you get faster Core Duo chips with the Mac.

And you can get faster 64bit AMD or Intel chips for a linux / windows laptop, depending on the configuration & price you need / choose. Not so much in the choice department for Macbooks.

I would definitely say go for the Mac.

I would never have guessed

Actually I'd love a macbook, but i just couldn't justify spending that kind of money to get the configuration I'd want.

 

[flashback]

huh?
I am not having a go at anyone here. I have no affiliation with Apple, or anyone else. I dont even like the MacOSX GUI really, nor Windows. Well, I mean I think Windows is a load of shit. I dont really like Apple, or the tossery heads that flash Apple gear about, but at the base of it all MacOSX isn't a load of shit.


Obviously if you run stuff that needs loads of RAM, you need loads of RAM. For me, my laptop has 1/4 gig of RAM, runs full ubuntu linux, Gnome UI, apache, mysql, another weird database, emacs, a network analyser, SSH and a load of other crap I need to test my software I write. And it blazes along faster than dual core windows machines.

My point is, that unless you are going to run Windows, you will probably not need 2Gs, probably 1 would be OK. My point is, that unless you know what you are talking about, there is a tendency to see higher numbers and think you need those high numbers without thinking about why.

If you do run windows, that will piss away almost all your RAM anyway, so you are back in the position of the Mac, or probably worse.

Re the display... if I am on a budget, I will trade weight against monitor size no problems. I have a 30inch flat panel to program on. I have a laptop to carry around and fuck about with.

I was just trying to be helpful for your man. I have no biases, or fanboy issues about either machine or OS. The only OS that interests me is Linux and Solaris. I dont give a fuck about hardware other than the big 2U servers that I have to look after in work, or manufacturers.

I think for this guy, he would do well with the Apple box.

 

[shower another shower]

If ya buy a Mac, you won't have to worry about catching a virus, doing a defrag every other night or worry about not rebooting once a day. I've never caught a virus, never defragged my Mac and only reboot every month or so. Like I say, my monitor is fucked because I threw it off my desk when I was dancing around in a hysterical fit to DEVO, but I'm pugged into a VGA and life is good.

 

[pete]

huh?
I am not having a go at anyone here. I have no affiliation with Apple, or anyone else. I dont even like the MacOSX GUI really, nor Windows. Well, I mean I think Windows is a load of shit. I dont really like Apple, or the tossery heads that flash Apple gear about, but at the base of it all MacOSX isn't a load of shit.


Obviously if you run stuff that needs loads of RAM, you need loads of RAM. For me, my laptop has 1/4 gig of RAM, runs full ubuntu linux, Gnome UI, apache, mysql, another weird database, emacs, a network analyser, SSH and a load of other crap I need to test my software I write. And it blazes along faster than dual core windows machines.

My point is, that unless you are going to run Windows, you will probably not need 2Gs, probably 1 would be OK. My point is, that unless you know what you are talking about, there is a tendency to see higher numbers and think you need those high numbers without thinking about why.

If you do run windows, that will piss away almost all your RAM anyway, so you are back in the position of the Mac, or probably worse.

Re the display... if I am on a budget, I will trade weight against monitor size no problems. I have a 30inch flat panel to program on. I have a laptop to carry around and fuck about with.

I was just trying to be helpful for your man. I have no biases, or fanboy issues about either machine or OS. The only OS that interests me is Linux and Solaris. I dont give a fuck about hardware other than the big 2U servers that I have to look after in work, or manufacturers.

I think for this guy, he would do well with the Apple box.

i guess the orignal point i was trying to make wasn't that the specifications were better on a non-Mac laptop at the same pricepoint (even though they were) - it was that you can get a much better spec machine for less money as the bottom of the range Macbook that "only" costs €1,049

next time i'll just say "macs are a ripoff" and leave it at that maybe

 

[flashback]

well, like, you dont want to rest too hard on your laurels on the whole no virus thing. There are some proof of principle viruses knocking around I think. There was even reports of some wild at some point.

But, MacOSX is fundamentally more secure than Windows at a low level, and it's relatively (relative to Windows) much more easy to be reasonably secure when you are using MacOSX.
That doesn't mean that its bomb proof.

It is much safer though. And will continue to be I would be fairly sure.

You can make Windows sort of secure-ish if you know what you are doing. It's not easy though. And you do have to run software to make sure all is well all the time.

Re the win filesystem, NTFS is pretty shit. Apple have a far more enlightened attitude to file systems.


On linux you can choose whatever suits you best out of about 8.

 

[flashback]

i guess the orignal point i was trying to make wasn't that the specifications were better on a non-Mac laptop at the same pricepoint (even though they were) - it was that you can get a much better spec machine for less money as the bottom of the range Macbook that "only" costs €1,049

next time i'll just say "macs are a ripoff" and leave it at that maybe

Alright, I just dont really think that they are though.
I just walked through a spec out of the cheapest Dell laptop, and made it almost exactly the same as the cheapest Apple offering, there are a couple of bits that are different, 1 gig more RAM in the Inspiron, also a half an inch larger monitor. But, the Apple has a few things that the Dell doesnt.
The guts of the machines are almost the same though.


The Apple machine costs $1099; the Dell costs 1084. And that's without buying the recommended suite of security software for the Dell. If I was to buy that it would be 33 bucks more. Right, the screen is slightly bigger, and there is more RAM which is essential for the Win OS, but they are almost the same. And the Apple is almost 2lbs lighter.

Apple just doesn't offer the absolute bargain basement machine and they have a wankery reputation.
The absence of Windows seals the deal for me.

 

[pete]

the bargain basement laptop on dell.ie is only €499 - hike it up to dual core cpu, 1gb & a 15.4" display and it's still only €656.

 

[Ciansy]

Thanks for the help, y'all. What do yiz think of getting a fairly cheap Dell, hiking it up to dual core and a gig and then clearing it and installing Linux? I don't intend to get Vista yet, if at all, because there are compatibility issues with college PCs. Or something. I must check that out. I have to say I'm leaning towards the Mac, if what ye say about reliability is true.

I don't know much about computers, but Windows irritates the fuck outta me. Are there likely to be any compatibility problems if I have a Mac?

So: the cheapest Macbook with no extras, coming to just over €1000, or a Dell with a slightly bigger monitor and Linux coming to about €700? I really would like to ditch Windows either way.