| LAPTOPZ YO | |
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Ventrel - Student  |
I thought i'd ask for the opinion of the resident techies..
Im going to be heading off to the uk to study in a month and ill need to buy a laptop. Ill need one that can act like a desktop (good for gaming, music, videos) but preferably convenient for traveling. (at least once every three months) I was thinking maybe a dell. yeah... so any advice would be nice |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student 
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Honestly, if it was an emulator I wouldn't really point to that as being the problem; I'm mild as far as techyness goes so I probably would not notice that. I always figured apple gave higher latency RAM or my model was a bit screwy. It's a 2.4ghz 17 inch, same with the falcon.
Between the two, I payed around 300 dollars more for the falcon. Although the warranty, paint job and case kinda makes up for it. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." This comment was edited by Augusta_Mintaka on Aug 13 2007 12:52pm. |
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planK - Jedi Council 
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Really? I guess I own one of those defective Macbook Pros, because I always find my Falcon to handle XP pro better than my mbp. Both are quite new and nearly equal in specs, go figure.
Those Falcons look extremely nice - I always appreciate good hardware design. Too bad it's quite a bit more expensive than the MBP.  What kind of Macbook Pro do you own? I'm pretty sure Bootcamp is not an emulation layer but simply a BIOS-compatibility enabler for EFI and a set of Apple specific drivers for Windows. Anyway, those were all very good alternatives!  Correct, Bootcamp is just a BIOS emulator kind of thing. |
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Kenyon - Lord of the Dance 
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Quote: Really? I guess I own one of those defective Macbook Pros, because I always find my Falcon to handle XP pro better than my mbp. Both are quite new and nearly equal in specs, go figure.
Those Falcons look extremely nice - I always appreciate good hardware design. Too bad it's quite a bit more expensive than the MBP. What kind of Macbook Pro do you own? I'm pretty sure Bootcamp is not an emulation layer but simply a BIOS-compatibility enabler for EFI and a set of Apple specific drivers for Windows. Anyway, those were all very good alternatives! |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student 
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If you plan to use Windows more then a mac will have variable performance in that area since it's not 100% direct.
Actually, it pretty much is. With the switch over to Intel chips, a Macbook (Pro) is just another laptop with style. Bootcamp is just a collection of drivers for the Apple specific hardware, and while it is still in beta, the full version will come out together with Leopard in October. The only difference is not a hardware but a firmware difference. Macs run EFI, a more modern standard, as opposed to good old BIOS, which dates back to the eighties but is still relied upon by Windows for backwards compatibility. The good news: EFI has 100% support for BIOS. You'll find a MBP runs Windows as good, and often better, than normal Windows-based laptops. Really? I guess I own one of those defective Macbook Pros, because I always find my Falcon to handle XP pro better than my mbp. Both are quite new and nearly equal in specs, go figure. Anyways, since you want to use Windows, I'll recommend some laptop companies from lower prices to higher. Dell: It's your initial choice, but it's always an obvious choice. They have laptops for every tier of usage and prices to go with it. Often named the "Best Laptop of The Year" with the xps models, but we all know reviews are 90% bias and 10% reality. Yet, I love their laptops and know that the quality will be as good as any other company without all the razzle dazzle. Vigor Gaming: This is the laptop company that seems to have more options over the rest. Many people praise the lighter versions of their laptops for good prices (with good discount options) and RAM that is actually affordable. I'm only going on peer reviews here so no personal experience here. http://www.vigorgaming.com Velocity Micro: My old dorm-mate went with this company for a laptop. Battery power seemed to last a while and she could play the recent games coupled with 250gbHD/2gbRAM. http://www.velocitymicro.com Alienware: We all know them and many wish they could buy one of their desktops. Yet, their laptops are very nicely priced and you can quite easily afford one. Top notch display, dual HDs (2x250gb)and pretty much top quality parts all around. Downside is their video card choice, but people usually don't complain about heating unless you try to...oh...run oblivion@max everything. www.alienware.com Falcon Northwest: To me, the FragBook TLX is something that you could only expect from Falcon. Firstly, Falcon is legendary with painting. Metallic paint is their "minimum standard" and my notebook (TLX) never seems to get any fingerprints or scratches. Now onto what actually matters; the TLX is made to be slim and light weight. An extra 4gb of RAM won't cost you an extra 1000 dollars, 200gb@7200rpm and your standard 2.0-2.4ghz selection and a good warranty to boot w/ free no dead pixel guarantee. You get a free metallic carrying case and all that comes with battery life that rivals a workstation laptop. Not exactly "cheap" but it's not crazy expensive. 4500 would be the cost to get it fully speced out. It generally runs to be 2500-4500 depending on the selection. To me, this laptop is superior (were not going into the OS here) to everything else out there. You really can't regret anything about this laptop other than the fact you might empty out your wallet to get everything you want in it. www.falcon-nw.com All in all, those are the companies I know are good (cept vigor, but the reviews have little to no complaints). If you compare OSX to XP, you really need to look at what YOU prefer and not what everybody else prefers. OSX, to me, is a good OS and has some advantages to XP. The advantages are fairly small, but I guess it matters to some people a lot. When you really get down to it, somebody used to OSX and somebody used to XP can do anything the other can with the right software (cept gaming). If I wanted 2 OS' then xp and linux would be my choice 
At any rate, Macbook pro or one of the reliable laptop companies. Truely, you're not getting a bigger advantage with either, but no real disadvantage. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." This comment was edited by Augusta_Mintaka on Aug 13 2007 06:37am. |
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Kenyon - Lord of the Dance
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Yeah, there's full compatibility - though I've heard people that have used OSX for a while and actually started to appreciate it a whole lot. This is Apple's strategy, I think - lure them in with full compatibility and then make them realise the Apple OS is actually quite good.
I'm getting a Macbook Pro next month for university as well - as with you, budget was really no issue for me. It's an expensive laptop, but you get a lot for it. There's technical bonuses, like the light sensor with keyboard backlighting so your keys light up in the darkness, or the sudden motion sensor where your hard drive locks down if your laptop is falling to avoid damage. There's the built in iSight (a one mega pixel camera, extremely small, very handy for video conferencing on the go). There's the MagSafe power chord, which easily snaps away if someone trips over the chord instead of yanking your laptop down with it. There's the LED-backlighting, infinitely superior to LCD because of increased brightness and sharpness, instant full brightness and longer battery life. Some reviewers have described it as a 'next gen screen'. And then there's the insides. Santa Rosa processors which are also good for battery life and pack a punch. They're Core2Duo, so fully 64-bit compatible. There's the two gigs of memory at high clock speeds. There's the Geforce 8600MGT card with GDDR3 memory - sweet man. Pretty much the best mobile cards you can get right now. The only thing that outstrips it is the Dell 7900s, but that's a desktop replacement, those things don't last longer than an hour without power and heat the laptop up so much you wish you'd had gloves. 8600s provide 90% of that power for only 20% of the heat and battery. Yay. Oh, and they're DirectX10 compatible, so future proof. The MBP also supports memory expansion up to 4GB. In Windows, this means to fully adress it you need to switch to 64bit (as with all PCs that want more than 3GB for their memory). Funky system. OSX just adds it without problems. And get this: Leopard will support 32- and 64bit *at the same time*, none of that version stuff, and will make optimal use of the new MBP technology. And finally, let's face it, the thing looks amazing and is one of the sexiest laptops on the market. These are the main reasons why I've decided on the MBP. |
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Ventrel - Student 
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Not much of a budget issue, ill be investing in it for 2-3 years. Preferences? I dunno im not into heavy editing and all that, but I regularly watch videos, listen to music, play games etc and some editing on the side. Im comfortable with windows but since its compatible with macs thats not a problem.
So ok, i would rather use windows than osx, its just the option of which model laptop to buy |
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Kenyon - Lord of the Dance
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Quote: If you plan to use Windows more then a mac will have variable performance in that area since it's not 100% direct.
Actually, it pretty much is. With the switch over to Intel chips, a Macbook (Pro) is just another laptop with style. Bootcamp is just a collection of drivers for the Apple specific hardware, and while it is still in beta, the full version will come out together with Leopard in October. The only difference is not a hardware but a firmware difference. Macs run EFI, a more modern standard, as opposed to good old BIOS, which dates back to the eighties but is still relied upon by Windows for backwards compatibility. The good news: EFI has 100% support for BIOS. You'll find a MBP runs Windows as good, and often better, than normal Windows-based laptops. |
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Soundwave - Student 
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a MacBook Pro is ideal if you want a stable, almost virus-free, eye-catching environment to work on.
You have an MS Office release for OSX, and OpenOffice as a free alternative. About BootCamp, it is still Beta, so it might contain a few problems (I've heard about a few, but nothing serious and never from the guy who actually had the problem... it's always a friend of a friend). Don't forget that the partition being used for MS-Windows will be exposed to spyware and viruses, just like any other PC running Windows, so be sure to install the proper protections. But you better check that the programs you will need to access OFTEN have a native OSX support, because it's useless to buy a MacBook Pro and just boot into Windows and work there
Good luck. |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student
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Budget? Preferances? Like I said, plenty of laptop companies out there that are well known for certain features. Macbook Pro is a good choice for video, picture and music editing because OSX is fairly simple and more focused at those tasks. If you plan to use Windows more then a mac will have variable performance in that area since it's not 100% direct.
If you want OSX, then a Macbook Pro is what you want. If Windows will be your primary OS, then you might want a Windows laptop. I personally prefer a windows laptop, but that has nothing to do with bias. I owned both and as far as games, graphical editing, music and such goes....I always bring my Falcon to college, travel and pretty much everywhere. Yet, thats from my experience, nothing else....hm maybe it can be considered bias...but I really like my Macbook Pro also...*inner conflict* At any rate, if you give an estimated budget and preferances (slim, battery life, performance) I can round up all the quality laptop companies I know. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." This comment was edited by Augusta_Mintaka on Aug 10 2007 03:16pm. |
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Kenyon - Lord of the Dance 
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Quote: Is it easy to install windows on a mac? Any known recurring problems etc
Yes, it is. The tool you use is called Bootcamp. Note that as of recently, a lot more games have been coming natively to OSX. JK3 is already available in an OSX version as well. Quote: At the moment a macbook pro looks promising
OSX is a superior operating system to Windows in many ways. iLife and iWork, the two major packages that include everything from video editing to word processing, have been updates a few days ago. However, it should be noted that the latest version of OSX, Leopard, is being released in October. You'll get it for free if you buy a new Mac. If you purchase your machine before this time, you'll have to buy it seperately. |
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Ventrel - Student 
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Is it easy to install windows on a mac? Any known recurring problems etc
At the moment a macbook pro looks promising |
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tarpman - The Tarped Avenger 
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Get a Mac. _______________ Saving the world, one kilobyte at a time. |
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planK - Jedi Council 
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Macbook Pro, install windows on it.  |
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Augusta_Mintaka - Student
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Budget?
Any other preferances? I've seen companies that can make really slim laptops with graphics and storage that rival the top of the line Dells and some companies that put an amazing amount of hardware into a laptop. _______________ "Deos fortioribus adesse." |
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