Macbook pro - stop me

[nick]

Phoned up apple about this:

17"" Hi Res Macbook pro
160GB 7200rpm HDD
2GB RAM
MS Office
Parallels
Airport extreme
3 yrs apple care

£1900

the nice (but pushy) salesman will call me back at 3pm to see if I want to proceed.

Sghould I do it or should I buy food for the children?
If I do it, any specs I ought to change?

 

[rocketman]

Save some money and dump Office, use ThinkFree or something instead.

 

[Crispy]

You'd be mental not to go to the 'refurbished macs' link on the apple store at http://www.apple.com/uk/thestore/ where an almost identical spec will cost you £1,389.

Oh wait, you're getting applecare. Hmmm, that's an extra £280.

 

[nick]

I was tempted to ignore the apple care - but I think (I will check with him, again) it was £55 for 3 years, which seemed reasonable.

From the educational site the machine itself is £1800
Hi res is an extra £60 and the faster HSS is an extra 100

so I am playing £1640 for brand new against £1389 for a refurb. Is the £251 saving worth it?.

Office is becasue that is what I need for work etc (and I need to run VBA in Excel) - I could get a snide copy off a mate, but the student version is £100 which seems a fair price for what, after all, is a piece of software with a lot of development time invested

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Do you really need that high powered a computer? Which part of the Human Genome are you trying to decode?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

You can't run VBA on Mac Office... http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/04/25.html

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Do you really need that high powered a computer?

*slap*

Snap out of it, man!

 

[The Groke]

Get the 15"! (well 15.4 to be precise)

I got mine on Sunday and I bloody loves it.



Unless you have desperate need for the boost in resolution that the 17" gives, the 15" is smaller, lighter, cheaper and more portable in exchange for a practically unnoticeable decrease in screen size over its big brother.
It also has the LED back light which gives you a brighter screen at less power consumption - good for your eyes and the battery.

Also; the keyboard looks stupid on the 17" all alone and adrift in that ocean of aluminium......

 

[Bob_the_lost]

*slap*

Snap out of it, man!

 

[nick]

I'm trying to convince myself that I am future proofing (for a few years anyway).

I would also like to emulate / boot to windows for running eg half life 2

 

[8ball]

Buy food for the kids and build a PC out of an old toaster and motorcycle parts like a real man!

 

[The Groke]

Kids can eat dirt - no problems there.

 

[nick]

I didn't know that about the Mac office - cheeky.

Ok - so now I need to run Windows office in parellels or boot camp

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Futureproofing laptops is utterly mindbogglingly pointless. In desktop land it's hard to justify but in laptops where the price / performance ratio is higher it's indefensible. The shorter lifespan is merely the icing on the cake.

Other than gaming is there anything you need the laptop to do that a PIII couldn't handle? The 15" Macbook Pro can run any games the 17" can, according to the site it's got EXACTLY the same graphics processor (on the more expensive 15" version at least, the cheaper one is a touch less impressive)

 

[Piers Gibbon]

slap

why do you need the Pro? refurb macbook AND food for children

(actually the only thing I really would've liked that you get on the pro is the backlit keyboard for typing in bed at night)

 

[sleaterkinney]

Why get the mac - you can get the same spec pc laptop for about £400?

 

[gabi]

Here we go again...

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Why get the mac - you can get the same spec pc laptop for about £400?

Not quite true, the GPU is rather powerful in the Pro lineup. Other than that there's negligable difference between them and a machine a fraction of the price.

 

[The Groke]

Just for the record like.

Get the 15"! (well 15.4 to be precise)

I got mine on Sunday and I bloody loves it.



Unless you have desperate need for the boost in resolution that the 17" gives, the 15" is smaller, lighter, cheaper and more portable in exchange for a practically unnoticeable decrease in screen size over its big brother.
It also has the LED back light which gives you a brighter screen at less power consumption - good for your eyes and the battery.

Also; the keyboard looks stupid on the 17" all alone and adrift in that ocean of aluminium......

 

[gabi]

I'm trying to convince myself that I am future proofing (for a few years anyway).

I would also like to emulate / boot to windows for running eg half life 2

If you're a gamer u should prolly go for winblows... emulating aint that great on a mac.

if however, you want to enjoy using your computer for everything else, go with your instinct and shell out for the mac.

 

[8ball]

Macs look prettier and if you wear silly glasses while using it in a coffee shop people will think you work in the meeja.

Worth £800 of anyone's money.

 

[The Groke]

Why get the mac - you can get the same spec pc laptop for about £400?

PC laptops are made from wrong though.





besides, if you want to run Mac OSX, a 400 laptop ain't gonna do the job.

 

[The Groke]

If you're a gamer u should prolly go for winblows... emulating aint that great on a mac.

if however, you want to enjoy using your computer for everything else, go with your instinct and shell out for the mac.

I got vista running under bootcamp on mine.

Is a very clean, minimal install just for playing games.

Works really well (well as well as Vista is able) gives the Macbook a "Vista performance rating" rolleyes: ) of 4.9 out of a max of 5.9 (pretty good for a desktop, let alone a laptop) and runs my games just fine! (3D gaming performance into the 5's)

When I want to do anything else worthwhile, I just let it boot up into OSX

 

[sleaterkinney]

Not quite true, the GPU is rather powerful in the Pro lineup. Other than that there's negligable difference between them and a machine a fraction of the price.

Exactly. Why are you paying that much extra for it?

 

[nick]

Mac because I want it. Got sick of windows grinding my current laptop to a halt. the rumoured vista problems were icing on the cake. Don't think I have enough time to invest in learning linux

If I went for the same spec 15" v 17" (Hi res), I would save £240 (£1802 v 1562).

How noticable is the extra 2" and hi res display? Similarly, how better on power, heat etc is the 15" backlit display.

You kind souls have alreasdy saved me £100 on Office - I'm not paying that for crippled software

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Exactly. Why are you paying that much extra for it?

Other than gaming is there anything you need the laptop to do that a PIII couldn't handle?

For £250 you can buy a 24" LCD and plug it in the back when you're at home. I've used 17" and 15" laptops, the difference isn't much.

Why oh why oh why do you want a 2.4Ghz CPU instead of a 2.2Ghz? It and 128mb of GDDR3 are not worth £200 imo.

 

[The Groke]

If I went for the same spec 15" v 17" (Hi res), I would save £240 (£1802 v 1562).

How noticable is the extra 2" and hi res display?

Like I said before; not very IMHO

Similarly, how better on power, heat etc is the 15" backlit display.

Dunno - not tested it in anger, but most pro reviews recommend the 15 over the 17 unless you have really gotta have that extra bump in rez/screen size

 

[Piers Gibbon]

never mind Mac/PC wars

can someone explain to me at what point you need a MacBookPRO over a normal macbook

I don't get it (genuine question btw, not point scoring)

 

[8ball]

Macs are:

prettier
they smell of cookies
have 'garageband' and a 3d calculator on it as standard
have less of those confusing mouse buttons
have less games to distract you from writing your book about yoghurt-knitting
have no blue screen of death
never ever ever crash*




* - 'freezing', 'locking up' and 'spontaneously restarting' are NOT the same as 'crashing'

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I have a 17" G4 and I find that the widescreen does make a difference; if you want to work with it for any length of time while you're out it does help. It feels much more comfortable to me. Particularly if you're doing graphics work. But I don't know, that's always going to be personal, and bear in mind that it's a bit of a monster to carry around - you can't just put it in a standard bag.

Incidentally, I've found the new iWork 08 to be very good as a basic office suite, and it's only 55 quid. Tracks changes properly between Word and Pages, which is the only reason I'd get MSOffice really.