Laptops

[Nick Brunelle]

Looking for recommendations on a new laptop purchase. Mostly for educational use.

Who/What?When/Where?

Nick at Nation

[Michael Brunelle]

We all have Macs at our house.
At Sweet Briar just under half of my students have Macs, but there is good Mac support on Campus because the IT people all prefer Macs.

[Beatriz]

I think that Macs are more intuitive and I am partial to Macs because that is what I use. But If it is for educational purposes I would check with the university where it is going to be used, if you know it. Some universities are very Mac friendly so they have good IT support.
A couple of things to keep in mind are

1) many of the external hardware (like overhead projectors) usually support PCs, which means that a Mac user has to pack an array of little adapters, cables, etc. to connect the laptop to that peripheral equipment. For example, if one needs to give presentations (like power points) in class.

2) If that is the case, and you need sound, most outfits have the adapter and the audio intake on one side, very convenient for a PC but the Macs (or at least most of the ones I have seen, mine included) have the adapter on the right side but the audio plug on the left side. Since the adapter and the audio plug for the overhead are often connected, the audio doesn't reach the left inlet. I have broken a couple of Mac adapters twisting the cable. The solution is easy, you buy and pack an audio cord extension, if you need to use sound.

On the other hand, there may be an advantage to using a Mac. My students tell me that they cannot write accents or foreign characters with a PC, which is not a problem with a Mac. An advantage if you are taking a foreign language course in college.

Good luck!

[Jone Brunelle]

I love my Mac! A lot of my friends here have or are starting to switch over to them as well.

[Nick Brunelle]

Hi Jone. Do you know what type of MAC you are using?

Nick

[Jordan Clifford]

Having used both macs and PCs over the years, I think the mac is the way to go. They are easy to use, compatible with alot of programs, and they look great.
For mac laptops, you have 2 options. You can go with either the macbook, or the macbook pro. The macbook is a great laptop for surfing the web, writing word documents, watching movies and listening to music, and chatting. It comes in 2 different flavors, the 2.0 gigahertz model with 160 gigabyte hard drive, which does not have a backlit keyboard, and the 2.4 ghz model, which has a backlit keyboard and a 250 gb hard drive. Their prices are 1249 and 1499, respectively.
The macbook pro, as its name entails, is oriented more towards professionals who need more ram, a faster processor, bigger hard drive, better graphics chip, and a bigger screen. There are 3 different flavors of macbook pro. The first 15 inch, at 2.4 ghz, comes with 250 gb hd and 2 gigs of ram. The second 15 inch clocks in at 2.66 ghz, with a 320 gb hd. Lastly, the 17 inch, which has the same specs as the more powerful 15 inch, but with a built in 8 hour battery. The price points for these machines are 1899, 2299 and 2599.
Unless you are planning on running games or other graphics and processor intensive programs, the macbook line should be just fine.
I would reccomend the 1499 model, as it gives you the most bang for your buck.
Also, if you need to run programs that are windows only, you can now install windows on to your mac! You can even buy programs that will run windows while you are running the mac operating system.
Hope this helps!

[Jeff Lafrenz]

Mac definitely, without a doubt! The one thing that I would chime in about is seriously considering a refurb unit. You can save quite a bit of money this way and the machines carry the same warranty (90 day phone support and 1 year hardware coverage) and are also eligible for AppleCare (extends the warranty to 3 years of both phone and hardware coverage).

There is also a lower end Macbook available in white plastic for $999. Still a very capable computer. My son has a white plastic Macbook 2.0 core 2 duo and it is a great little machine.

If you decide for AppleCare coverage, don't buy it from Apple. There is a store out of Los Angeles lacomputercompany.com that has substantial discounts on it. ($180 vs. $249) http://www.lacomputercompany.com/cgi-bin/rpcart/featured.cgi?group=...

If you have a need to connect to a projector or external monitor, all you need is one simple adaptor cable. For the metal Macbooks it is a Min iDisplayPort to VGA adaptor and for the plastic Macbooks it is a Mini DVI to VGA adaptor. Audio is supplied via a standard 3.5mm mini jack.

Another thing about all of the recent Macs... since they are all Intel based, you can run Windows on them if you absolutely have to. It can either be done with Boot Camp which allows you to boot into either OSX or Win. Or, you can get what is called a virtualization program (Parallels or WMWare Fusion) and run Win within a Window while booted in OSX. I am supporting 7 salespeople in the field running Parallels and it works pretty darn well.

One more thing.... You will want to put at least 4 gigs of RAM in the system. Again, do not order it from Apple (big $). I buy all of my RAM from Other World Computing (macsales.com) RAM is cheap these days and nothing is better for keeping your system speedy.

[Jeff Lafrenz]

I also might just be a little biased. ;)

[Lisa Johnston]

I've been a Mac person since they first hit the market...(yeah - that's a LOT of years!) Sam uses the MacBook Pro laptop for her studies at ASU. She said that ASU is using all Mac's in their campus classes and in their libraries. And last month she had to create an educational video for a class and their equipment honored both PC and Mac formats for uploads to the professor.

I'm most proud that about a year ago I finally succeeded in converting Tommy from PC's to Mac. He swore he'd never switch and now he wonders why he didn't switch years ago! Both Sara and Matt are using Mac laptops at college as well.

[Charles Hudson]

Hope i didn't weigh in to late. Here's my two cents. Let me try to bring some logic to this discussion.

MACs are a big fat waste of money. They use the same internal hardware components as equivalent PC laptops, aside from a fancy case, but cost far more.
I just purchased a shiny new HP factory refurb for $800. Direct from HP it would have been $1300. The nearest Mac equivalent would have been $2500! All you're getting for the extra money is a fancy looking case and some cachet. Is the popularity contest worth that?

You can pick up a very good, affordable Windows based laptop from Dell or HP for around $600 these days that will fulfill the needs of 90% of computer users.

As for Mac OS: it has a reputation of stability, but ease of use and intuitive-ness are all subjective. Most people who say that are long-time mac users who haven't sent time using Windows. Neither me nor Katie have had problems with Vista after using it full-time since 2007.

Despite the negative hype, Windows Vista is a very good operating systems and has very few problems after 3 years of fixes. Buying a new computer now with Vista will probably qualify you for a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it comes out later this year. Windows 7 is getting very positing reviews, even from Vista haters.

I am not a Windows zealot. I also use Linux. Buying a laptop from Dell or a couple other vendors with Ubuntu Linux will save you a few $ over the Windows version and with a fairly shallow learning curve, will do anything Mac or Windows will do.

Some refer to Mac as a walled garden, meaning that Apple controls everything that touches your computer. I think people who have been in the "garden" for too long lose perspective. My co-worker, a mac zealot, recently purchased a new Mac book and was raving about how great it was and how he could program his track pad so that touching the lower right corner gave him a "right-click" functionality. Remember that Macs dont' have a right click without also holding down a button on the keyboard. he said "It's so nice to have right click on my mouse!". I pointed out that my PC laptop has a dedicated button, as have all PC laptops for many, many years.

Don't go over to the dark side, there's so much fun stuff going on here you'll miss out on!
HP laptops $500-$800

Dell Laptops under $1000

Apple's cheapest laptops

[Beatriz]

Everything nowadays is about branding, cars, cell phones, sports gear (The North Face vs. Patagonia), bags, backpacks, colleges and universities, beverages (Coke vs. Pepsi), shoes (Nike vs. Adidas vs. Reebok), and computers are not exempt. Everybody buys what he buys for a reason and if the only difference is the "right click" option, who doesn't want to be in that 10% elite and buy what is cool! I would say shave off the difference on the shoes, buy something cheap at Wal Mart, after all your feet will be under the table at Starbucks and Panera and nobody will see them ☺

[Andy Brunelle]

I've had a Macbook for nearly a year, after having desktop models since 1985. Last month at the office I traded out my desktop Dell for a Lenovo (IBM) laptop. Now using both. There is little or no difference when surfing the internet or working in standard MS office applications. Connecting to wireless and printers is easier with the Mac, as is the start up, which goes quicker. Overall I've preferred the user interface of a Mac as far as keeping track of files, applications and utilities. The battery lasts longer and the iMac is also lighter. The keyboard is better too. But I think a comparison to a Lenovo is not fair because it's a pretty clunky machine and Windows freezes up more frequently. Maybe an HP or Dell would be a better option than Lenovo.

[Andy Brunelle]

Here's a useful article on this topic.

http://www.slate.com/id/2215267/