Windows Laptop v Mac...

Flash In The Pan

Flash In The Pan

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A bit of background first, I have an Acer Aspire 5810T (running Vista) which at about 6 months old is falling to bits, the screen has already been replaced (badly), several keys have just dropped off :shrug: and it locks up several times a day.

My question is, how reliable/robust are Mac laptops (or whatever they call them) and how difficult is it to switch from one operating system to the other?
 
I've had my MacBook for three years now and there's the odd little piece of cosmetic damage but nothing to prevent it from being used or terminal.

As for running different operating systems, you can actually buy a program (I forget what it's called now) that allows you to run Windows WITHIN OS X for any programs that you can't run on OS X in the first place.

I was a PC man before this, now I'd never go back tbh.
 
wheres the popcorn smiley..

to be honest id have a search on this topic, generally they decend into chaos and get locked quicker than the jonas brothers chastity belts.

the long and short of it is that neither OS is better than the other, they both do the same thing equally well, they both crash (despite what the Mac lot tell you). its just a differing layout which is personal preference. and the hardware is no more robust, we have a small pile of macbooks at work that are dead/dying/worn out.
 
neil_g said:
wheres the popcorn smiley..

to be honest id have a search on this topic, generally they decend into chaos and get locked quicker than the jonas brothers chastity belts.

the long and short of it is that neither OS is better than the other, they both do the same thing equally well, they both crash (despite what the Mac lot tell you). its just a differing layout which is personal preference. and the hardware is no more robust, we have a small pile of macbooks at work that are dead/dying/worn out.
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I appreciate that it's a Nikon v Canon sort of question, I'm looking more for feedback from those who have swapped systems before I throw the towel in with pc :bang:
 
For work I have a Dell which has been slung on my back for many a trip & works well except it run XP which takes ages to load. Equally my first MacBook was purchased last year (own not work) & has been again on many a trip especially photographic trips & has performed equally as well, however I am glad I made the swap to the Mac and wouldnt change back for personal use
 
I'm considering the move (at the end of the month) to a 13" mbp with an external display as a decent v portable editing solution so will follow this with interest ;)
 
fabs said:
Neil, every time someone starts one of these threads you come in with these posts. If anything, they're probably contributory to the eventual closure. So far, other replies have just stated their experiences and opinions, feel free to do so yourself but please leave the other things out of this thread.
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sorry :(
 
Flash In The Pan said:
A bit of background first, I have an Acer Aspire 5810T (running Vista) which at about 6 months old is falling to bits, the screen has already been replaced (badly), several keys have just dropped off :shrug: and it locks up several times a day.

My question is, how reliable/robust are Mac laptops (or whatever they call them) and how difficult is it to switch from one operating system to the other?
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5810T ( is it Timeline ? )
if it is Im sorry to hear it is falling to pieces...I have 3810T here and it is still in great working order.Not complaining to anything...
 
You may want to way up the cost of a new macbook compared to what you could get Windows Laptop wise. My acer was horrible for falling to pieces but a good quality laptop is just as robust as a mac equivelent. If it's the OS you're bothered about though then that's a different monster.

Either way, do consider budget on these sort of things (and don't let shoddy acer products put you off).
 
okay, stictly on topic :)

Flash In The Pan said:
A bit of background first, I have an Acer Aspire 5810T (running Vista) which at about 6 months old is falling to bits, the screen has already been replaced (badly), several keys have just dropped off :shrug: and it locks up several times a day.
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acer (in my opinion) arent the most robust of laptops, you want something with a metal chassis. mbp or dell latitude for example. you get what you pay for when it comes to laptops. the gf toshiba for example is slowly crumbling into a pile of snapped plastic parts.

if its locking up it sounds like you have a serious issue, without knowing more it could be failed hardware, dodgy drivers or overheating.

My question is, how reliable/robust are Mac laptops (or whatever they call them) and how difficult is it to switch from one operating system to the other?
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this is where i start treading carefully. we have a floor of macs (1 of 3) with a whole host of macs.. mac pros, macbook pros of differing generations. we even have an iMac somewhere (havent seen that for a while, i fear its been hijacked).

software reliability wise (operating system and apps) they are on equal footing to our XP boxes.

build quality wise, im only going to talk about laptops here (we cant compare a mac pro to a 400 dell desktop can we) again equal footing with the decent metal chassis latitudes we have. our reps can and do make short work of the PC laptops and our designers can and do make short work of the mac laptops. depends on how theyre treated.

i mentioned some faulty macbooks earlier, we had a batch of macbooks that had dodgy intermitant screen/graphics card issues that remain unresolved (intermitant issue, they always worked when they went away for fix).

however we have just taken delivery of some new 15" MBP and they are very nice indeed however (personally) i found the edges of the wrist rest a little sharp? also get the matte screen, the glossy is a right pain in the behind to work with (again personally).

also do you homework regarding snow leopard and the apps you want to use, we have actually had to downgrade a few boxes to leopard due to compatibility issues.

a more polite version of my original post would be:

go to an apple store and try out a macbook and OSX. then go to (as much as i loathe recommending this) somewhere like PC world and try out the PC laptops in the same price range with windows 7 64 bit.

whatever you prefer buy.

:)

(blimey that was very politically correct)

:D
 
If you are worried about the Mac being too different from you windows PC and having to relearn everything, forget it. Should take you 5 mins to suss it out.

As Neil says. Go to Apple shop , have a play. if you lke it then fine. if not look at a Dell or something else. ( Tip, don't take credit card to Apple store,).

Enjoy
 
Chappers said:
If you are worried about the Mac being too different from you windows PC and having to relearn everything, forget it. Should take you 5 mins to suss it out.
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As a recent swapper, I think it should take well under 5 Mins to suss it out :lol:

OK I have no idea about the laptops build quality from any company, but I would say just don't worry about the OS swap, there a few quirky keyboard combinations but that's about it.

OH and on my 27" iMac with wired keyboard the @ and " keys have exchanged place compared with my old windows keyboard. Now that did take a lot of getting use to. :bang:
 
neil_g said:
wheres the popcorn smiley..

to be honest id have a search on this topic, generally they decend into chaos and get locked quicker than the jonas brothers chastity belts.

the long and short of it is that neither OS is better than the other, they both do the same thing equally well, they both crash (despite what the Mac lot tell you). its just a differing layout which is personal preference. and the hardware is no more robust, we have a small pile of macbooks at work that are dead/dying/worn out.
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This:)

grey.squirrel said:
You may want to way up the cost of a new macbook compared to what you could get Windows Laptop wise. My acer was horrible for falling to pieces but a good quality laptop is just as robust as a mac equivelent. If it's the OS you're bothered about though then that's a different monster.

Either way, do consider budget on these sort of things (and don't let shoddy acer products put you off).
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And this.:)

You are really comparing Apples to Carrots... You can't really compare a £400 laptop to a £1000 laptop with similar internals. There is a reason one is more expensive than the other (and no it's not just "Apple Tax").

Before you decide fully to spend £1000 on a new macbook have a look at the £1000 windows alternatives (from the likes of Dell, Sony and HP) as they will all be pretty much as well built as each other. :)

What size screen are you thinking of getting? At the moment with the 13" laptops the macbook pro is pretty much on a par with the 13" competition from the decent brands and you can always format it and stick Windows on it if you want. Larger screens I don't know, but i would suggest similar.
 
whiteflyer said:
OH and on my 27" iMac with wired keyboard the @ and " keys have exchanged place compared with my old windows keyboard. Now that did take a lot of getting use to. :bang:
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That may very well be due to an American keyboard? Either that or European, cant remember which but I remember having that trouble when I was away somewhere. :lol:
 
bastic said:
5810T ( is it Timeline ? )
if it is Im sorry to hear it is falling to pieces...I have 3810T here and it is still in great working order.Not complaining to anything...
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That's the one, it was fine for a couple of months until the screen failed, sent it back to Acer for repair and it hasn't been the same since. Mind you the fact that they only seem to have put back one out of the four screws that hold the screen/lid hinge on might have something to do with it feeling like a pos...
 
acer is in a different league all together compared to a macbook pro... acer is the cheapest of the cheap hardware, macbook pro is second to top end... compared to a decent hp or dell or asus laptop, your acer will feel like a cheap pos and keep you firmly away from the fruit :P

second hand macbook pros aren't too bad on ebay though, have very nice matte screens and will run windows 7 very very sweetly ;)
 
I'd also recommend a look in an Apple store mate, I've had a macbook pro for around a year and a half, before that an intel imac for just over four years (which still is going strong). I have had to use Windows systems during this time and also used them solely before using Apple stuff.

Is a macbook pro or any other mac product invincible to issue? - Nope.

They do crash, lock and freezes, but in my experience significantly less than any windows based system that I've used in the last ten years.

However, my experience comes not from an IT view point but from the photo editing, music reproduction/recording and video editing.
For these purposes I'd always rely on a mac rather than a windows based system.

Honestly speaking, so far in the four plus years of my intel imacs life, it's crashed as many times as I have fingers on one hand.
Each time I was rendering immensely large video files in final cut pro. :bang:

In the 1.5 years I've had the MBP, it's locked up countless amounts of times warranting a hard reset. The performance when running say CS4, Lightroom, mail, safari, Transmit (FTP client), Tweetdeck & Skype altogether can be very poor.

One at a time it's not too bad but when meeting the usual requirements out and about I need them all running minus Tweetdeck of course :P

Sometimes I have to deal with PSD's that are around the 3GB region which exerts a fair strain on the 2.4GHz duo core and 4GB mem, if poss I'd go for a much more capable spec if your intending on putting it through it's paces.

For the above criteria, my experience and resulting opinion is that Windows based systems have a shorter life span and also are higher maintenance.

If your looking for something to manage and edit photo's, the usual clerical and net stuff then my moneys goes with Apple.
 
Hiya,

I am a recent convert to the Apple way. About a year ago I bought a Macbook laptop from the Apple Store online because I had just had enough of my HP Laptop with Vista. The hardware was ok, but omg the software was the biggest pile of poo ever. But, then I think that has been recognised by the masses. I use windows 7 for work and its a pretty good operating system, it has avoid all of the nasties Vista gave, so far.

But, for personal use, I will always now use a mac. Why, just ease of use, it does what I ask it to do, yes it has slowed a few times with this nice circular icon appearing, but it quickly sorts itself, so far, cross fingers its not crashed.

Apple is more expensive than a PC and you will certainly get more for your money in a PC, but, I my macbook as been worth every penny. I have had several debates with friends involved in IT and it is obvious the don't like apple. But, I have won out every time in these debates with one view. PC are probably very very good machines, all my IT friends tell me all these wonderful things that can do, and they probably can, in their trained hands. But, guess what, I know diddly squat about computers and programming and setting up this and configuring that, and you know what, I don't either.

I just want my computer to WORK, and that is what my apple does, it works, and it works very, very well. It is intuitive, well laid out, after the initial change over, where you do have to learn the changes in names of functions, it will become obvious how good a mac is.

But, it is all down to personal choice. I do know people who have gone the other way and say they won't return to mac's.

But, my personal choice is get a mac.

Matt
 
Just get a Dell XPS, can perform the same as a macbook pro for about £700.
 
I changed my laptop to mac Jan 09. I then changed my editing computer to mac, and was lucky enough to be offered a Macbook Pro as a work machine as well.

I love the way Mac works. I know they crash occasionally as do all, but I do not seem to need the same amount of technical knowledge to keep it running its best, which I feel I always needed to on a PC.

To me it just works, trite I know, but it doesn't need me to update antivirus, use c cleaner, run spyware, defrag etc. I just turn it on and go, which is why I like it so much.

As said before you often hear of people switching to Mac from PC, but there are fewer who make the switch the other way round, or even move back. This shows there is more to it all than the slick marketing of Apple.

Some people that argue PC is better have either never tried Mac, or are computer people, who have a good computer knowledge to keep a PC running smooth. As everything though, try for yourself and take opinions with a pinch of salt.
 
Well, I posted recently that I was thinking of swapping. I spent a long time in the apple store playing with the 27" imac and having a go on my dads powerbook. After racking up a few hours, I have decided to stick with PC's.

For many reasons, I find Windows 7 a much better OS, and plus there are many things I cannot do with a mac (and a few bits of software I use which have no mac alternative).

I have just bought a Dell Studio 17 with the latest i7 quad core, 8GB ram, 1TB drives and a 1GB Radeon HD5650.

After using this laptop with windows 7, it blows the performance of any mac laptop out of the window, and probably cost less than a top spec mac...

Just my 2 pence...
 
Having recently changed from PC to Imac/Macbook Pro I find then much easier to use now

its not as bad as people think and once you do it you wont want to change back.

I've had 2/3 windows laptops with no problems and a Macbook with no problems. I like the built or the Macbook more but that's down to personal preference
 
ding76uk said:
As said before you often hear of people switching to Mac from PC, but there are fewer who make the switch the other way round, or even move back. This shows there is more to it all than the slick marketing of Apple.
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to be honest im not sure i agree there.. i think people who switch to mac are more likely to shout about it and feel the need to convert others?

but then we could both equally be wrong, are there any offical (not from apple lol) figures on this?
 
neil_g said:
to be honest im not sure i agree there.. i think people who switch to mac are more likely to shout about it and feel the need to convert others?

but then we could both equally be wrong, are there any offical (not from apple lol) figures on this?
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I hate the word "convert" in these threads, it implies religion to me...

You also have to remember of course there will be more windows users converting to macs and not the other way round. That's a pretty standard one way movement for any sector when one has around 90% of the market and the other around 7%.
 
Flash In The Pan said:
My question is, how reliable/robust are Mac laptops (or whatever they call them) and how difficult is it to switch from one operating system to the other?
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I have one of the 'unibody' MacBook Pros, best build quality of any laptop I've ever seen (a little on the weighty side though.)
 
I've recently bought a very small netbook which has 11 hour battery life (reality is 8) to stick my pictures on, when i'm out and about. The netbook only cost £250 and is really good. It's not a beast in terms of photoshop but in terms of being able to do everything in a day to day cycle, it's pretty good.
 
Had my 13" MacBook Pro for about six months now. Lovely hardware, certainly nothing comes close in the PC world with the same balance size, build quality, performance and price. Sure you can get laptops that'll kick it's ass in benchmarks for a lot less money, but it won't be in a slick, super-portable aluminium body with all the little nice touches like the magnetic power cable, backlit keyboard, multi-touch pad etc.

OSX I tried for the first few months but gradually started using my Windows XP boot camp install more and more to get odd things done here and there......and eventually gave in and rebuilt the machine with a token OSX install and gave Windows 7 the rest of the HDD.

Couldn't really fault OSX over Windows, other than the *really* ugly font smoothing (surely that's not just me?)....I just have certain little apps I've become used to over the years on Windows that just don't exist for Mac, or have very poorly written equivalents. I know how to have Windows 'just so' and didn't really have the inclination to spend the time learning all the ins and outs of OSX just to get where I could be with just a quick install of Windows.

That said, I'm a tinkerer, if you just fire up your web browser, mail program, Office and Adobe apps, it won't make a blind bit of difference to you. W7 and OSX both work :)
 
I've had my 17" Acer Aspire 9300 roughly 3 years now, nothing has fallen off & everything works .

As with life in general, it's just luck of the draw :)
 
neil_g said:
to be honest im not sure i agree there.. i think people who switch to mac are more likely to shout about it and feel the need to convert others?

but then we could both equally be wrong, are there any offical (not from apple lol) figures on this?
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Not sure what you mean by this? I have never found the need to shout about it, as have many who switched. The only time you really find people on here saying about switching to Mac and finding it better is in threads like these when people ask.

Mac users are not a sect. Just we prefer osx to Windows. Don't hate us just because we are different:p
 
I changed from pc to mac around 6 months ago, I have found the mac just seems to run a bit better, I dont have the quickest processor around infact it is spec wise slower than the pc but things seem to run faster. I am still finding my way around and I do find it is very good at what it does. I would say that for what I do - a little processing, music and web browsing that although I feel it is better I haven't had a magical feel that it is the best switch ever but I am very happy with it and how it runs. ..... a very very laymans report :D
 
I've always used macs for work as there was no alternative for graphic use in the early 90's when I started in digital.
However for use at home I bought an HP laptop running Vista as it was less than half the price of the equivalent mac. It's OK, but the battery life is terrible, less than two hours even with the wi-fi off, so if you are going to use it outside I , would go with the mac which has a far superior battery life, even if they are sealed inside the new macs:)
 
timbo46 said:
I've always used macs for work as there was no alternative for graphic use in the early 90's when I started in digital.
However for use at home I bought an HP laptop running Vista as it was less than half the price of the equivalent mac. It's OK, but the battery life is terrible, less than two hours even with the wi-fi off, so if you are going to use it outside I , would go with the mac which has a far superior battery life, even if they are sealed inside the new macs:)
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if youre getting less than 2/3 hours these days then the manufacturer has skimped on the battery.

my dell gets about 3.5/4 hours. but then thats subjective to how much processor etc youre using.
 
Flash In The Pan said:
My question is, how reliable/robust are Mac laptops (or whatever they call them MacBooks) and how difficult is it to switch from one operating system to the other?
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In my experience, very reliable. My Dads white MacBook is about 4 years old, looks and feels just like my 10 month old version. My Dad also has a MacBook Air (18months old?), same story.
We do tend to treat our things with care, but the cat tripped me up on the stairs, I dropped mine but luckily stopped it sliding down to the bottom lol.

Took a couple of days to get used to the OS and that was it, it sort of clicks but I still find the odd neat trick every now and again.
 
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