fatwombat wrote:

Tugboat wrote:Why you shouldn't get a Mac... http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=32383

That would be the weirdest thing I've seen - except for a guy who identifies himself with an image of Cadel Evans and a dog!!!

Says the man identifying himself with a marsupial bent over asking for it in the backdoor!

dicks-naughty-account wrote:coll thanks very much y'all.
agreed. the current communal Powell family laptop has AVG and chrome. seems to be the way to go. what is the real difference between a PC and a Mac? what makes them so radically different? never really had a go on one. will it really make me spontaneously homosexual? that's truly unbelievable.

basically i plan to use it for a lot of internets (whether it be 'researching', downloading shit or watching hour upon hour of top gear re-runs on youtube) but its basically to get me through the next three years of my engineering course. i think i'd survive without, but having one would be a good advantage i guess.

Difference between PC and Mac?

Well i have computers running PC, Mac and Linux. All good for different purposes. I resisted getting a mac for years because they seemed overpriced, but because of what i do, i eventually bought one. Its cliched but It. Just. Works. This one is now 4 years old, its still as fast as the day i bought it, the hardware is awesome. Apple do the user experience thing REALLY well.
To give you an idea the experience when i got the mac was:
Take out of the box
ooo and aaah a little bit at how nice the thing was
Turn on
Type in name
Choose network to connect to
Start surfing net/ emailing etc.

As opposed to the windows experience which is often along the lines of:
unbox
turn on
go through 20 steps registering things, shutting down, restarting etc
clean off bloatware from manufacturer
get rid of all the standard antivirus, web browser etc
put good ones on
restart
wait 10 minutes
windows updates
restart
start working
etc

The mac is much faster than even my current windows machine which is less than a year old, noticeably on startup and shutdown. My only issue with Mac? It is even more proprietary and closed than Windows, but for most people that isn't a problem as the software does what they want in the way they want. My pic right now would be a 13 inch MBP for surfing, general email etc. BUT if you need CAD, as someone else said you might be limited to a windows machine anyway!
The noticeable thing is a lot of people move from windows to mac, very few ever go back.

If you listen to the mac crowd whatever you do don't buy a plastic one, the build quality is terrible on the new models

As for those who are commenting about removing all the crap loaded onto windows machines, it would probably be faster to reformat straight off the bat under win7, providing they include the installation CD

Have you thought about building a decent desktop that will last out your degree? There are usually an ass ton of general computers at uni then more for each faculty loaded with the software you'll be using for whatever you are studying. Obtain said software for use at home and use a portable harddrive as the go between.

Finding out that your gear is too slow to pull off certain projects halfway through your study is a pain in the ass, especially as funds are hard to come by at that point

It depends entirely on what you are studying

Tugboat wrote:

fatwombat wrote:

Tugboat wrote:Why you shouldn't get a Mac... http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=32383

That would be the weirdest thing I've seen - except for a guy who identifies himself with an image of Cadel Evans and a dog!!!

Says the man identifying himself with a marsupial bent over asking for it in the backdoor!

Hmmmm . . . you could have a point there - that it's weird I mean, you're not getting any points near MY backdoor! My kids were Evans fans for 2 TdFs, then they got sick of his sulky whingeing. How bad does an aussie have to be that aussie kids would rather cheer for a geriatric septic? To understand the marsupial, you would have had to see the aussie coverage of the 2000 Olympics.

Get a Mac if you want to look cool with the rest of the sheep, baaaaa

Seriously apples for apples really, but one thing I would like to point out is get a business class laptop - they do cost a little bit more but are made a lot better and are generally a lot more rugged, good for lugging around and they dont come with those annoying shiny screens. If you went down this path you would need to pick one up from the manufacturers website online as you would be hard pressed to find business class laptops in a shop.

As for brands, I have had and worked with many.

I would go for a HP/Compaq or Lenovo, both these companies make very good laptops. As a 3rd choice I would choose Dell. I currently own a Dell E4300 and its a great solid laptop, I have a docking station for it, it is very fast, it looks smart, the build quality is very good and the battery lasts for 4 hours +. but it does have a tendency to get a little hot, and Dell are known for there more grunty laptops getting hot.

Brands I would stay clear from would be Toshiba - I just see so many of these break, businesses always seem to get these but they have high failure rates.

I havent used a Sony but I hear they are good, I have owned an Asus - this was a very boring laptop

oh and this link Lisa pointed out

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadge ... lity-study

is a stupid link saying that ASUS are on top, basically they are on top with little failures because they have such a small market share, most of their laptops they do are those Netbooks and there is not really much that can go wrong with them.

The other manufacturers at the other end have huge market share so of course they are going to record more failures. Though Acer and Gateway dont have huge market share so this tells us their laptops really are crap.

VERT wrote:Brands I would stay clear from would be Toshiba - I just see so many of these break, businesses always seem to get these but they have high failure rates. I havent used a Sony but I hear they are good, I have owned an Asus - this was a very boring laptop

I fix laptops as a hobby, 80% of what I fix is dell/hp. toshiba and asus are the ones I see least of. One of the reasons of the high attrition rates in business laptops is that they have a much harder life than your average personal laptop. We all have our own opinions.

VERT wrote:oh and this link Lisa pointed out is a stupid link saying that ASUS are on top, basically they are on top with little failures because they have such a small market share, most of their laptops they do are those Netbooks and there is not really much that can go wrong with them.
The other manufacturers at the other end have huge market share so of course they are going to record more failures. Though Acer and Gateway dont have huge market share so this tells us their laptops really are crap.

Have you got some proof of market shares? Did you read the information with that link? research based on 30,000 laptops. Yes I do know there are millions worldwide. And all manufacturer's have their netbooks as well.

Whatever you end up buying, avoid purchasing something that has on-board Intel graphics only. It affects a whole range of things (not just games) so make sure there is an discrete graphics processor in there (e.g. from NVidia).

In general if you want something that will last three years, don't buy around the $1000 mark. And while you can run Matlab on a Mac these days as someone else said many of the 3D modelling packages you can't. Engineering doesn't strike me as a good fit with a Mac.

Mac or PC, load as much memory as you can (afford) to into it, 4GB is pretty cheap these days.

Finally, to counter the mac fan boi crowd, my worst computing experience in the past 25 years was a Mac. Unstable, over priced, dodgy piece of shit.

It is kind of funny observing the Mac/PC argument, much like it is watching the *nix/MS debates.

I'm an IT guy that plays with all of these platforms and see good and bad in each of them. If I was going to buy a laptop today I would be following the advice already given - Buy a business class machine.

I personally would stay away from a Mac as I hate being tied down to a small number of suppliers or repair shops. Yes the new Intel based machines have a tad more support, but having seen an end user and being stuck with bugger all support I go for what will cause me the least aggrivation.

Graphics - Intel vs nVidia is a valid argument if you are a gamer. If you are running business apps there is not much difference.

Brands - I tend to go for HP/Compaq as they seem to be a bit easier to deal with when warranty issues arise. Dell make some good kit, but if you have an issue you have to wait for Dell support and that can be a painful wait. Toshiba used to be on the top of my list, but has slipped greatly due to some models being crash prone dogs. ASUS and a few others have good and bad models, but due to low unit numbers locally can be a pain if issues arise.

OS - Here I will go for Win7. It is everything Vista was supposed to be, and more. Second choice would be XP. I find *nix and Mac far too limiting with software compatibility unless running Windows in a Virtual PC situation. Oh - spend a few bucks more and get the business version of whatever OS you get as it has far better networking support.

AV - Nod32 seems to be consistantly at or near the top of the commercial list. Personally I run Avast or AntiVir and rarely have any issues.

On the subject of anti-virus, how much do we all spend on insurance? car, home, contents, life? What about the data on your computer. Those affected by a virus can attest to the total and complete stuffup of their computer and everything on it.

Is it really that bad to go and spend $100-$150 on trend, or norton 360 3.0? and then an annual sub? You get much better protection and usefull features. Recently I had a computer brought to me which wouldnt start etc, had to replace the hard drive. Their data was backed up with nortons secure online storage. Reinstall software and then download backups. A huge cockup averted.

Nothing wrong with going the free route, just think about paying for an antvirus as insurance for your data/computer.

RussS wrote:Graphics - Intel vs nVidia is a valid argument if you are a gamer. If you are running business apps there is not much difference.

Not true, the integrated chip sets are poo and can struggle with both high resolution 2D images and 3D content, both of which are possibly useful things for an engineering student to have the ability to work with over the next three years of study :-)

But if by 'business applications' you mean word and power point then sure.

chuckie34 wrote:On the subject of anti-virus, how much do we all spend on insurance? car, home, contents, life? What about the data on your computer. Those affected by a virus can attest to the total and complete stuffup of their computer and everything on it.

Is it really that bad to go and spend $100-$150 on trend, or norton 360 3.0? and then an annual sub? You get much better protection and usefull features. Recently I had a computer brought to me which wouldnt start etc, had to replace the hard drive. Their data was backed up with nortons secure online storage. Reinstall software and then download backups. A huge cockup averted.

Nothing wrong with going the free route, just think about paying for an antvirus as insurance for your data/computer.

That would be fine, IF the paid for versions were better than the free ones. In the past, they havent been. (actually, up until about a year ago, Norton especially caused your pc more problems than the viruses it was supposed to stop! Now, maybe. but look at the test results. They are all much of a muchness whether free or paid. SO therefore, free wins. Online storage is a different matter. There are lots of different solutions for this too.

benw wrote:Not true, the integrated chip sets are poo and can struggle with both high resolution 2D images and 3D content, both of which are possibly useful things for an engineering student to have the ability to work with over the next three years of study :-)

But if by 'business applications' you mean word and power point then sure.

Well,Apple thinks the intel chip is crap, but many of the laptop manufacturers use it on their high end business machines because they think it performs admirably. True, the early ones were crap - but that was several years ago and not the latest offerings. I have a couple clients that are engineering students and they don't report any issues.

thelivo wrote:That would be fine, IF the paid for versions were better than the free ones. In the past, they havent been. (actually, up until about a year ago, Norton especially caused your pc more problems than the viruses it was supposed to stop! Now, maybe. but look at the test results. They are all much of a muchness whether free or paid. SO therefore, free wins. Online storage is a different matter. There are lots of different solutions for this too.

So where would we find these results?