Thread: Looking for laptop

I think that Macbook Pro is the gold standard, but I've heard good things about the regular Macbook and the IBM Thinkpads too. Just for gods sake don't get an Acer or Dell machine.

Dear lord, not a Dell...

Macbook was a good idea.
Samsung makes good laptops for relatively cheap prices...

If you're willing to pay, Alienware...

Your probably looking for a macbook, thats if price doesnt matter (cuz they never go on sale around here). I got an HP Pavilion Media laptop, its good, just sucks because of Vista, but overall very little problems.

Wait for iLife '09 to come out though, I just saw the keynote, that stuff looks so cool.

And I think all laptops play DVDs. That's pretty standard equipment now-a-days. I'm surprised computers haven't added blu-ray players yet.

Ehhhh....I was kind of trying to stay away from Mac related things...

I want to get a Windows thing as I would like to get Visual Novels. I could use my laptop for stuff like photoshop and watching DVDs and playing Visual Novels, while I use my desktop for gaming and such.

do you mean like a netbook, or like a full on 20" mutha?

Originally Posted by slayer

Ehhhh....I was kind of trying to stay away from Mac related things...

I want to get a Windows thing as I would like to get Visual Novels. I could use my laptop for stuff like photoshop and watching DVDs and playing Visual Novels, while I use my desktop for gaming and such.

According to PC World, the best laptop to run Vista on is the Macbook

oh my god i hate macs, and dont go for dell either. any can you really use vista on a mac? i though the only OS you could run on a mac was one specificly made for one.

if you really dont care about money go for alienware, they are pretty much the best, you could probably get a 4GHz quad core processor and something like 4 - 5 GB RAM, and i heard you can get 8 now i think. my friend is saving up for a £3000 alienware laptop, thats nowadays about $4000 or a bit above.

if you do care about price you could get a reasonably priced laptop with about 3GHz processor, which will run very fast for what you want, and a fair amount of RAM. probably best of with something like a sony or somehting. and now you could maybe get that for about £350 - £400, so around $500 - $600.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

According to PC World, the best laptop to run Vista on is the Macbook

Ok, but if I get a mac thing, I'm buying a right-clicking mouse.

Also, can it really run Vista? I don't have to worry about having those Mac Apple background things? I could get a Windows thing on Mac? Like full blown Windows?

Yep, you can do that now... They just don't always work great...

Macs run Vista better than any other PCs. Macs essentially are PCs. They have all of the hardware that a PC has, the only thing that makes them different is some embedded OpenGL stuff and some other stuff that makes MacOS faster, Windows just doesn't use the specialized hardware. You're thinking the other way around. MacOSX can't run on PCs because they require that extra hardware, Vista, Xp, Ubuntu, Solaris all run perfectly on the Mac.

Ahem, the mighty mouse has 4 buttons. Apple hasn't released a single button mouse in a decade. Except for the laptops which don't have any buttons.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

Macs run Vista better than any other PCs. Macs essentially are PCs. They have all of the hardware that a PC has, the only thing that makes them different is some embedded OpenGL stuff and some other stuff that makes MacOS faster, Windows just doesn't use the specialized hardware. You're thinking the other way around. MacOSX can't run on PCs because they require that extra hardware, Vista, Xp, Ubuntu, Solaris all run perfectly on the Mac.

Ahem, the mighty mouse has 4 buttons. Apple hasn't released a single button mouse in a decade. Except for the laptops which don't have any buttons.

I'll stick with a two mouse button with a mouse wheel

Also, what kind of prices are we talking about with these Macbook things?

Since Mac went x86, you could run Windows 95 on there if you really wanted to. It's about the processor architecture, and then it's about compatible hardware.

OS X can run on a non-mac, it just takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and the end result isn't as good as a real Mac. The main problem with Mac is lack of the amount of software availible for Windows, but I've used Linux before which has even fewer software choices and you realize that, as long as you can find something that does what you want, it really doesn't matter.

Dual-booting is probably your best option, but it can get pricey because you have to buy a copy of Vista in addition to the Macbook and if you're going to get Vista, you might as well get the good versions like Home Premium or Ultimate. Believe me, don't cheap out and get something like Home Basic, because you'll regret it later on when you want to do advanced stuff with your computer.

I figured I'd have to buy Vista sepretely...I'd have to look at the two and decide with that. But right now I just want to look at macbooks.

Also, is there any specific kind of macbook I should be looking for according to my specifics?

you didn't post much about what you need it for other than video/photos and that you want it to run fast. All macbooks have 2 cores so they'll run fast and they all have two graphics chipsets as well. They also come with iPhoto and iMovie, which the windows equivalents can't compare too.

The only downside is Photoshop. For some reason adobe chose to make it 32-bits But if you get Vista 64, you can use the Windows version.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

you didn't post much about what you need it for other than video/photos and that you want it to run fast. All macbooks have 2 cores so they'll run fast and they all have two graphics chipsets as well. They also come with iPhoto and iMovie, which the windows equivalents can't compare too.

I find iMovie a LOT harder to work with than Windows Movie Maker...

Also, what would you recommend?

Edit: Also, isn't it possible to force something to work in 32-bit mode?

Oh wait, you mean I can just use the Windows Vista version if I get that and install it on the macbook?

No, you have to install Vista first OSX will run both 32 and 64 programs fine, doesn't have to force anything, it was designed that way. What version of iMovie are you using that it's harder than windows movie maker? Window movie maker doesn't even encode things in h.264.

I'm not sure what iMovie it is, but it's probably an old one...I'll probably just upgrade to like Sony Vegas anyway XD

Edit: I found it difficult to edit movies in iMovie and stuff...

But back on topic to the laptop, what kind of macbook should I be looking for? And where is a great place to buy from where I can get cheap prices?

As for specs, whatever you buy should probably have a 2+ GHz dual-core processor and 2-4 GB of RAM. The Lenovo Thinkpad (other than the SL series) is probably the best quality consumer laptop on the market. I'm planning to get a T400 in the next few months. The older (white and black models) Apple MacBook wasn't well-built, but the new aluminum ones are supposed to be very nice. So if you want to use Mac OS X (either as the sole OS or as part of a dual-boot setup), that's probably your best option. I don't recommend the MacBook Pro or the MacBook Air (both seem considerably overpriced for what you get) and any portability gain the brand new 17" MacBook Pro has to offer is offset by its huge screen size, making it more of a desktop replacement than anything else.

Originally Posted by slash112

oh my god i hate macs.

I can't stand it when people make outrageously strong claims like hating a product (or in this case, a family of products), especially...

Originally Posted by slash112

can you really use vista on a mac? i though the only OS you could run on a mac was one specificly made for one.

when they don't even know anything about the said product. Please provide constructive reasons why you prefer product X to Y (assuming you've actually used both X and Y) rather than saying "I hate Y." FYI, Apple is a company that assembles computers (called Macintosh computers or simply Macs) just like Dell or IBM, but they also market their own OS called Mac OS X, which is designed to run specifically on Macintosh hardware. Since all Apple computers have x86 CPUs now (it's been like that since 2006), there's no reason you can't run Windows Vista on them. It just doesn't come preinstalled. I myself have a first-generation MacBook, and I haven't been running Mac OS X for six months now (I use Arch Linux). Proponents of Mac OS X generally cite the aesthetics, the included software, and its UNIX underpinnings. They often criticize Windows for its poor security and its vulnerability to viruses and similar attacks. Windows proponents generally cite the larger selection of available software (or at least non-UNIX based software) due to the fact that Windows has more users and developers than Mac OS X does. Specifically, certain games don't run on Mac OS X without the help of auxilliary programs like Wine or CrossOver. I personally prefer Mac OS X to Windows, but I prefer GNU/Linux and the BSDs to Mac OS X.

Originally Posted by slash112

dont go for dell either.

What specifically do you dislike about Dell?

Originally Posted by slash112

if you really dont care about money go for alienware

Just FYI, Alienware computers have been made by Dell for the past two years.

i dont like macs probably mostly because im so used to a pc, but also, say i wanted to buy a game, i would have to hunt around for one which runs on a mac, that would be annoying. i also dont like the user interface, agin because im used to windows, but then again, as you said, you can get windows anyway so thats not much of a big deal. their mouse doesnt have a right button, (at least the ones ive used, dont know about the newer ones)

i dont like dell because its a pain to fix, if you want to replace the stuff inside, you need to get the stuff which dell sells (this is just from what ive heard, it may not be true) and ive just not got on very well with any dells, they tend to not work very well, run slowly etc. even though they are reasonably high spec.

i didnt know alienware were made by dell, but the things i dont like about dell dont really apply to such an immensly high spec computor, and anyway, i would settle for a dell anyway, im not too bothered unless im spending a lot of money.

I just don't like Macs interface and some of their programs (it may just be old programs on some old macs though).

I also hate the Apple button thing...so that's why I prefer to get a Windows based computer with the Shift, Ctrl, and Alt keys because I use photoshop a lot on my home computer.

Originally Posted by slayer

I'm not sure what iMovie it is, but it's probably an old one...I'll probably just upgrade to like Sony Vegas anyway XD

Edit: I found it difficult to edit movies in iMovie and stuff...

But back on topic to the laptop, what kind of macbook should I be looking for? And where is a great place to buy from where I can get cheap prices?

Well, Apple only has so many laptops. They aren't like the other compnies who have a 1100, 1100L, 1200.... They have 12, 15, and 17" Macbooks and Macbook Pros and that's it. There are slight differences in the sizes, but mostly it's just the size. 12" is low res, 15 inch i think is HD and 17" is above HD. The bigger ones also get better battery life. The 17" gets 8 hours on a charge, I think the 12 inch ones only get like 4

You probably just want the regular Macbook unless you plan on really using it as a workhorse. I'm pretty sure that both come with 2 graphics sets, but the Macbook might just come with the 8 core nVidia 9600M

You can but browse for Macs at Bestbuy or an Apple store, but your best bet is to do it online. Apple has a 10% discount for college students, and that's easiest to do online.

Again, wait for iLife 09, it should be out at the end of january.

Originally Posted by slayer

I'll stick with a two mouse button with a mouse wheel

Also, what kind of prices are we talking about with these Macbook things?

the mouse has two buttons, and a wheel... and if you hate the bundeled mouse you can get a logitech bluetooth mouse, which is esentially the same as a pc mouce.

and a new macbook is like the sameas the bottom line imac. so, for the stuff you want if you were looking at a mac you should probably go for the old white one they still sell.

Remember though a bottom end iMac is the equivalent of a high end PC. And the mightymouse has the left and right buttons, the clickable 4 way wheel and the pinch buttons on the sides.

The regular Macbook starts around 1300, same as a regular high end laptop.