Advice on Laptops

[I.P. Freley]

A vote for Compaq

The number of Compaq products available has been shrinking since the Compaq/HP merger, but my nearly 3-yr-old notebook is still running strong. If you can find one that suits your needs, it might even be available with a price break.

This thing was nearly two grand back in early 2000, but that was for a fairly high-end machine and it did include a three-year warranty... Which is nearly up, of course, and that is when this computer will die, naturally! At least on the basis of my experience, I can't hesitate to recommend Compaqs. This thing has travelled with me on every overnight, has been dropped, stepped on, kicked, bashed, fallen off of tables, left in hot car trunks, cold airplanes, etc. You name it, this machine has seen it all.

 

[bigD]

Shawn - I'm usually the last guy to defend Macs, but at school we have a lab of 75 G4's running X, and none of them seem to crash. The IT people love it. At least the OS, that is. Friggin Explorer likes to shut down from time to time. I don't know what you're doing wrong, but 99.9% of people out there don't seem to have any problems with X, so maybe you need to look at the hardware or something. This isn't to mean that X is crash proof, but I think your situation is very much the exception, instead of the rule. Like I said before, I've had my iBook for about a year, and have had to reboot X maybe twice in that time, both times involving Apple's DVD player. Dunno what the deal is. I run XP too. Both OS's have their pluses and minuses.

And since '97, the Mac's market share has increased every year (from Byte magazine). I don't know where you're getting your information from, but take another look. It'll always be a niche player, but I don't think it's going away anytime soon.

 

[ShawnC]

Well note sure about the hardware of the Mac, but from what I understand its a stock G4, I'm not involved beyond using it, so I can't tell you specifics.

As far as IT people loving it, doubtful, not if they have to get it to talk to PCs, considering the PC will do everything that the Macs can do and more. I also don't place high regards in what IT people at schools say, espically if it's those kids that they got running around, too many of those don't relize what the real world of IT is about. Dealing with students is alot diffrent than dealing with employees that have to have a working computer, also you can't just label a computer inop, you don't have the luxery of 74 spares lieing around.

And as far as market share, the Mac has increased it's consumer market share, but in the graphics design industry (it's main customers) it is seriously losing market share, why would one want to deal with two seperate systems, when one will work just fine and is just as reliable?

I have never had to deal with Macs in a IT enviroment since my specialty is SQL though, it might be ok, but they sure as heck aren't a PC where I can pick up the parts and such at Best Buy if push came to shove.

 

[bigD]

Well, I'll certainly agree that finding spares for a PC is a lot easier, and PC's can certainly do what any Mac can do. Honestly, the differences between the two platforms is pretty negligable - especially looking at XP and OS X. It's a personal preference for 99% of the people out there. Most users don't run SQL, or deal in the server space at all. And to be fair to our IT people - these guys are true geeks - this is a CS computer lab, and runs along side all the other UNIX labs (Sun and SGI, basically) for the department. The OS X boxes do the same things that the Sun and SGI boxes do - for what we're doing in CS, it's all the same code. We can't use XP.

Bottom line - I recommended the iBook because at this moment, there does not exist a $1200 PC laptop that mixes the performance and battery life that the iBook does. Judging by the original post, I thought battery life would be important. Intel is unwilling to do any R&D beyond stuffing more transistors into their processors. So for a Pentium to draw the kind of power conducive to good battery life, they have to labotomize the caches. My Dell has a kick asss processor in it, and it's fast as hell. But I'll be daamned if I'll ever be able to watch a full DVD with it, let alone two.

You gotta pick your tools, and no tool is great for every task. But to say that Macs have no use whatsoever is shortsighted, and just shows that you're unwilling to try and be objective. You remind me of the Mac zealots, only on the other side! And btw, every new Mac can connect to any Windows network out of the box. You don't need any extra software, and it's not at all hard to do - no harder than connecting to any other Mac anyway. From the Finder, select "Connect to Server" from the Go menu. It'll give you a list of everything it sees on the network. I'm doing it right now, and on my home network, I see my two Win 2K boxes, my roommate's Win ME box, my XP system, my SGI Octane, and my Sun Ultra. A double click, a username and password entry, another click, and voila! Their drives are on my desktop. It's not that hard to do - you just have to stop saying "Macs SUCK!" long enough to give it a try!

 

[ShawnC]

The biggest thing to remember is that Mac can't live on consumer purchase, businesses buy a majority of computers, and in most cases they do PC, the company is on it's last legs, it will be only a matter of time before they crumble. Do you really want to be stuck wonder what's next for your $2000 purchase (more for those that have the G4s)?

The thing about a PC is that I know that I will Microsoft, Unix, Linux, and many more companies here to provide me the software. Buying a Mac now is about the equivilant of buying a Loran-C, you only have a few years of support left.

Yeah I know that Macs will connect to servers, but peer to peer is needed also, and Mac doesn't support that unlike PCs, peer to peer is clumsy in a business enviroment but thats the best way to network in a home enviroment. Microsoft has a better handling of peer to peer networking, and has the normal server based networking too.

 

[njcapt]

I made myself promise that I wouldn't get involved in ShawnC's Mac vs. PC debate a couple of hours ago, but I can't resist. I don't know why you seem to have such a hard - on for Macs, but your 'Macs will be gone tomorrow' diatribe has fallen on jaded ears for fifteen years. So Photoshop has developed a DOS version - most graphics professionals wouldn't use that version unless forced to by the boss. Mac OS X is UNIX based, which has given me more than six months of crash free operation. This is not to say that some programs haven't frozen, but OS X lets me force quit out of those apps without going through a re - boot. Oh... by the way, I haven't been the victim of a virus in the twelve years I have been a Mac user. Don't let this fact pisz you off to the point that you write a new one just for me.

So you don't like Macs. You have convinced yourself they are inferior since the herd of sheep hasn't bucked the trend and given Apple 90% market share. Fine. This post was started by a pilot who is looking for advice on buying a new laptop. BigD made a balanced presentation that stated the iBook's strengths and weaknesses. You could have offered a contrast with Dell's strengths, but you could muster nothing more than the same old tired stereotypes about Macs.

 

[ShawnC]

Actually more and more graphics design companies that I know and deal with are going to PC over Apple. Now this is what I notice.

 

[bigD]

Shawn, as a game developer, I see what you're seeing. There has been a migration to the PC over the past 5 years or so - especially since the hardware has matured to the point where even the low end hardware can do pretty much anything that even a graphic designer could want. There's no longer the need to pay a premium to get the features you need.

Still, Apple is selling more machines than they ever have, and their overall market share is increasing. The iMac line is everything that hard core computer users hate in a system - yet more iMacs have been sold than any other single model of computer in the history of the industry. My point is that the power users aren't the guys deciding Apple's fate - it's John Q. Public. And really, I don't see Apple going away anytime soon.

Anyway, sorry this thread has been hijacked to this. I'll try and keep in on topin in the future!

 

[Sonic Cruzer]

Just bought (~4 hr ago) a refurbed HP ZT1180 directly from HP for $1199. It's a 1.2 Ghz PIII-M, with 512MB SDRAM, 40 GB HD, 15" SXGA screen and DVD/CD-RW.

For the same price, I could have bought the ZT1175 with a P4 and 256 MB DDRAM, but those P4's get way too hot (as in deg F) to be called a laptop. I've had a lot of computer geeks tell me the high end PIIIs are better performers than the lower end battery draining, flesh burning P4s.




HP Refurbished Notebooks Direct

 

[SPBRIAN]

Last year around this time I bought myself a sony VAIO laptop. At that point I was looking hard between Dell and sony. The same ammount of features on the dell would have cost me $500+ more. Now it's a year later and the roles have reversed, Dell is cheaper than sony this year. All in all I love my sony, big screen, lots of features for doing videos if you wish to, and i've had no problems with it.

Brian