Laptop Advice Needed

[JBLoudG20]

I can get you an ibm employee discount on lenovo...

He sure can

[ojnihs]

Mac OS X pwns all

[grawk]

Mac OS X pwns all

Whenever you find you're agreeing with something I've said, however tangentially, please refrain from posting.

[grawk]

That pretty much sums up my general thoughts on Apple, paying a premium solely because they have enough rabid fans that don't mind forking out the extra cash. I mean I can't blame them for that they've done a wonderful job of building up a following, but other than the ipod I'd never buy anything Apple makes unless their pricing falls more in the line with the competition.

I paid right at $1000 each for 2 macbooks. Spent another $100 upgrading the memory on my own. No other first tier vendor could beat that price for a comparable laptop. Apple prices their top config high, but drop down a bit, and they're very competitive.

[philodox]

It is easy to make a sweet OS when you only have to support two or three hardware configurations.

[Dusty Chalk]

I would also haunt Digital Deals -- most of them are 15" right now, but I see one HP Pavilion 17"...if you're not in any rush, these change all the time.

[grawk]

It is easy to make a sweet OS when you only have to support two or three hardware configurations.

But apple supports 2 completely different architectures, with binary compatibility between them, and many generations of said hardware across those platforms. What they don't support is SHITTY hardware configurations.

[postjack]

i had an ibook two years ago, and the lobo went out a couple weeks after the 1 year warranty ended. Apple wanted $800 to fix it, blah. I bought a big ass HP 17" widescreen monitor after that. I gamed REAL heavy on it (this was when I discovered WoW), and after about 6 months started to get these wavy blue lines on my monitor. Turned out the graphics card had gotten so hot it had kind of melted itself. HP Customer Service was kick ass, real nice lady helped me all the way through. Boxed up, shipped out on Monday, had it back by Thursday. Next computer I bought was a desktop, Velocity Micro. Its the best computer I've ever bought.

I don't see myself ever going back to Mac because a) price and games. I'm not much of a gamer, really, but I at least want the option of hopefully finding an MMORPG that will grip me like WoW used to.

Nate, if I was you I'd go Dell and get the 3-4 year warranty.

[philodox]

They might not have any shitty configurations, but the inability to use what you want is a big handicap for some. The upper strata of technology is always denied to you until they decide you are ready... at which point it is time to buy a whole new damn computer.

Same argument as always, and a pointless one. My Wife loves her Mac, and I'll admit that it runs great and is very stylish. If we ever decide to upgrade her computer I will probably just relegate that one to another room as a backup or something.

Any Unix based OS can handle any architecture out there as well as nearly any piece of individual hardware. What I was trying to get at with my comment is that Windows is so bloated largely due to its supporting all the hardware out there [eventually anyways, Vista excepted for now]. Even if you count previous generations of apple computers, the amount that they have to support is pretty minimal, which is a huge advantage on their part.

Funny thing is, if you completely hack the shit out of XP and remove all the bloat, it actually runs well. Likewise if you get Linux running perfectly on a PC you are most of the way there to OSX, just missing the iLife suit.

[Salt Peanuts]

there was a class action regarding iBook mobos. that was indeed a fucked up thing.

Yep. I remember that.

I can't wait till I replace my iBook eventually - my iMac (previous gen) will have to tide me over till then.

[philodox]

Reks - Harddrive space taken up is hardly what I'm talking about.

Its not just the drivers themselves, but compatibility layers, and all the various services that you may or may not need that are loaded by default. When I went over my windows instal with nLite and got rid of all the garbage it made a huge difference. It boots faster than Linux now and the memory usage when idle is excellent.

I rarely boot into Windows unless it is to play a game or something like that, and even less now that I got the Wii, but it is nice to have it respond so well when I do use it.

Bloat aside, the fact that their hardware selection is so small is likely the main reason you never hear about Mac driver issues, which is the main complaint with Linux and Microsoft operating systems.

I'm also not trying to say in any way that XP is superior to OSX, because it is not. Linux is another matter entirely. As long as you have a bit of knowledge and are willing to spend a bit of time getting it working the way you want, I do find Linux superior to OSX. For a turnkey desktop solution, it is hard not to recommend a Mac... If only they weren't so goddamn expensive.

[JBLoudG20]

grawk go! attack!

[tkam]

Jacob I have to disagree a bit here, your running Vista Ultimate. The entire purpose of Ultimate is to have every single possible add-on/component/whatever of Vista installed. So by its sort of bloated by default. I've been running Vista Home Premium on my Core Duo laptop and it runs pretty fast.

[tkam]

add to the fact that PC hardware has been more or less standardized in the way it works for, oh, 20+ years, and there isn't a lot of compatibility requirements besides the drivers, most of which Windows adds as you install. Windows is bloated, even in bare bones corporate installs, because it's shitty. it more or less works, but it's third class at best.

Again I'll disagree, if MS like Apple sold Hardware (Full Systems) I guarantee there'd be less problems because they'd have much tighter control over the drivers. I'd say 80% of the problems Windows users have are in some way related to poorly written drivers. MS is attempting (well a half ass attempt I admit) to curb some of those problems with Vista-64bit by only allowing digitally signed drivers to be installed. Yes this can be bypassed, but you get the idea.

I'm not going to turn this into a windows vs macos argument cause we know where that will go and we know how pointless they are. Both have their strengths and weaknesses end of story.

[postjack]

I'm not going to turn this into a windows vs macos argument cause we know where that will go and we know how pointless they are. Both have their strengths and weaknesses end of story.

this is why I use IBM OS/2. still got that shit on 14 3.5 diskettes dog, damn. its the convenience of a Windows 3.11 gui combined with the strength of PC-DOS 6.0.

[tkam]

LOL

OS/2 really did own back in the day

[philodox]

clearly your ideas of bloat and my idea of bloat are very different. drivers, and unneeded software, blah blah blah, takes up hard drive space and slows your computer down (as any additional software would), but real bloat is caused by inefficient coding and poorly designed modules. cleaning up your install won't fix that. hell, my install of Vista Ultimate is as barebones as it gets, and the damn thing is 12+ GB and runs poorly on a Core2Duo system with 2 GB of RAM.

Wait, you're using Vista? I feel for you.

Though it can't fix poor coding, with nLite you can choose to REALLY only install the barebones. You can leave out IE for instance, or any services that you please. My install can't actually contact the outside world in any concievable way. It just has the patches I need, my video card drivers and sound card drivers... thats it. Just for games really. That is why it runs so fast.

and what do you mean by "compatibility layers?" there aren't any real hardware abstraction layers (NT's HAL hardly counts, since portability has been lost, though, it's my understanding, the code is still in the kernel), as the PC world hasn't ever had to deal with a 68K to PPC or PPC to x86 shift, and the compatibility modes that XP and Vista use are essentially just changes to memory addressing and adding an API, hardly hugely bloating, especially when it's turned off by default. add to the fact that PC hardware has been more or less standardized in the way it works for, oh, 20+ years, and there isn't a lot of compatibility requirements besides the drivers, most of which Windows adds as you install. Windows is bloated, even in bare bones corporate installs, because it's shitty. it more or less works, but it's third class at best.

Yeah, compatibility layers was perhaps poor wording. I guess I was just trying to give a nod to the horde of services that are running 'just in case'. If you don't need them, and disable them, XP becomes pretty spry.

Again I'll disagree, if MS like Apple sold Hardware (Full Systems) I guarantee there'd be less problems because they'd have much tighter control over the drivers. I'd say 80% of the problems Windows users have are in some way related to poorly written drivers.

This is exactly what I was trying to get at with my drivers comment. Thanks for wording it more eloquently Todd.

Postjack - OS/2 was great... BeOS was kinda cool too, except that it basically had no driver support.

[grawk]

grawk go! attack!

Naw, it's a thrash now, no point.

[mirumu]

Vista is what was available from my University for $5. the differences between Vista and Premium, as far as i can tell, however, are about 5 programs, so i don't think there are that much different between the two. still isn't an excuse, OS X is loaded with stuff, and it's fine, because it's, for the most part, efficiently programmed.

Mac OS X is also one of the few Operating Systems that seems to get faster with each release. Been playing with a Leopard build recently and programs start a lot quicker and Finder is noticeably speedier.

I'd second the comments on OS/2 and BeOS too. I'd also add Amiga Workbench to the list. Ah, pervasive multitasking and light weight multithreading...bliss!

[philodox]

Vista, as crap as it is, is still better than XP from a usability stand point, in my opinion.

How's that? To be honest I've only played with it a bit, and my negativity towards it is mainly due to all the problems I've heard friends and family having with it. I've also got a rule that I don't touch anything Microsoft until it is service pack 2... at least not on my computer.

Grawk - Whats a thrash?

[grawk]

How's that? To be honest I've only played with it a bit, and my negativity towards it is mainly due to all the problems I've heard friends and family having with it. I've also got a rule that I don't touch anything Microsoft until it is service pack 2... at least not on my computer.

Grawk - Whats a thrash?

endless argument about something that will never get resolved, but that keeps coming back.

[philodox]

endless argument about something that will never get resolved, but that keeps coming back.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Reks - Cool, both good things I guess. I've been very impressed with the way Linux gets updates, after being in Microsoft land for so long. I'm also loving the add/remove programs app in ubuntu.

[JBLoudG20]

add remove app? boo. thats what apt-get is for

[grawk]

$ apt-get microsoft\ office

What? Are you KIDDING ME? Buy a mac, cheapskate

$

[JBLoudG20]

you didnt run as root! you faked it!