Posted on 11/04/2009 7:32:27 AM PST by American_Centurion
My daughter a HS Junior is doing really well in school. I am planning to buy her a new laptop for school. She currently has a Dell 13" XPS that has been ok, but the battery has been replaced twice, the CD/DVD will currently only play CDs and it is getting slower to start up.
So I start looking and I know she wants a Mac because they are cool, I however am not a Mac fan. Not that there is anything wrong with Mac, I have a slowly dying PowerMac G5 Dual that has a nice monitor I use for Aperture, but it is on its last legs. I also look for Windows 7 PCs, I use Lenovo Thinkpads for work and know they are rock solid, sturdy, and long lasting. My old T40 is 5 years old and still runs like it did when I first got it. I now work on a T400 and it is a great machine.
Here is what I found:
She’s a good girl. She said Mac because I asked her what she wanted, she knows full well that I will make a decision that might be different. She’ll be happy with whatever I give her.
Why do you want the Windows ultimate? I thought that was only needed for developers.
Sorry if I’m being a pest.
OS X You overlook a world-class user-friendly
professional industrial-strength
Unix© Operating System.
Bitlocker. You aren't being a pest, I posted here to get ideas and discussion on this. Freepers help make sound decisions ; )
I’m not familiar with the Lenovo, I’m mostly used to Dells. Our Dells have been pretty reliable, but it’s the glitches that bug me. My husband’s and son are both IT guys, so I let them fix the problems, LOL, because they just frustrate me.
Next time we have to purchase a PC, guess we’ll have to look into Lenovo.
Uh huh. As I said, I have a PowerMac G5 Dual at home as well. It's not all that and a bag of chips. I would rate it as good as windows for most stuff, not as good as windows for some other stuff, and better than windows for the one thing I've used it for photo editing, but not $700 better. We aren't photo professionals.
I love the mac. I have 5 laptops, 2 mini’s, 1 G-5, and bought a I mac for my father in law w/21.5” display.
My husband brought is 15” laptop to a local restaurant. The waiter dropped an entire glass 16 oz water on it. OMG, we were scared to death. It STILL WORKS!
It was sleeping, when the water hit, my husband grabbed it and pulled out the battery. So far it is still working......
Consider a netbook for class and her old laptop could become a desktop (Maybe the DVD just needs updated drivers as a fix?). Asus is doing well with these EEE PCs - Win 7 may be available but here's a starting point: Asus EEE 1005
Oh and you can get a full-featured one for $500!
Its like 2 pounds says 10 hours battery life but careful they've got lots of models.
I got my other daughter an ASUS 1008 which is even smaller but the battery life isn't the 6 hours stated and even though I went out of my way to ensure it had a non-glare LED screen our order came with the glossy screen. Also some have Bluetooth some not - if you're interested I can add details but have to go now ... (No ASUS connections but we've got 3 of them now in the family) ;-)
I just bought 2 Dell 1545’s from their outlet store. With a 20% off coupon, I got them both for $788 and free shipping. Ordered on Monday, they were at my door Wednesday morning.
Bumped them both to Win7 Home Premium 64.. Nice machines for the money..
A MacBook (not pro) with 2.26 GHz, 4G RAM, 320 G 5400 rpm drive and AppleCare is $1398.00. Yeah, that’s still more than the Windows-based option you posted, but it’s less than the Pro.
I think one of the main things you need to think about is what software your daughter will need. If you already have what she needs in a Windows environment, then that’s going to save you a lot of $$$. If you don’t have any of what she needs in a Mac environment ... well, you’re going to have to shell out the bucks for that. So don’t just figure the cost of hardware ... think about the software too.
My experience with Lenovo has not been that good.. I do like my old T40, but the new Lenovo’s I bought don’t compare. I would not call them rock solid.
There’s a reason they’re losing market share.
If price is that important then you have no choice. But a student does not need a 15” screen. You can get the same MacBook Pro with a smaller screen for $1199 or a regular MacBook for $999.
Face it, she will be downloading music. And much of what appears to be music is viruses. With a Mac, no worry.
I would recommend once a month repair permissions with the Disk Utility. In addition repair the disk's inodes in a Doing those once a month will keep Unix© running smoothly.Do you do routine maintenance on the OS X ?
standalone environment with Disk Warrior.
Agreed. I am still using my dome based iMac I purchased in early 2003 and my son is still using his iBook that was purchased in 2001 just before he went to college. No problems yet (unfortunately I want a new 27’ iMac badly).
HS Junior?
Precisely, what processor intensive programs is she running?
Why not buy a Boxster too?
Be sensible my friend. Get a used XP machine for $150, max it out with ram and put UBUNTU on it for free. You can run anything you need, mail, web, video etc . . .
Don’t even need that much. Get a broken laptop from the garbage, burn KNOPPIX on a CD and use google docs for your needs.
Hardware is obsolete, the network IS the computer.
Why does a Mac require this? I thought they just worked? That's what I was told when I got it. No worries mate! Guess not. If it's so important why doesn't it schedule them? Windows schedules maintenance. I don't get that.
Lenovo sold by IBM, now owned by the Chinese
Toshiba was caught selling sub props/equipment to the Soviets
HP laptops get hot as a skillet
Apple is expensive
That is great as long as you HAVE the network.
I’m not a Linux kind of guy. I will consider following your suggestion for a project of my own. Her old Dell should work just fine for that once I replace it.
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