Convince me not to get a Macbook Pro

[dclive]

What you'll be missing is all the notebook refreshes for Sandy Bridge. I'm not saying "don't get the Mac." I'm saying "unless you need it TODAY, you should WAIT to see all the new models."

Considering most laptop vendors' R&D department is 1/10th the size of Apple's, I'm not expecting a whole lot.

If you don't like the "Ugly, big and bulky, but cheap" market, Apple's got a lot to like about it.

 

[mnewsham]

Considering most laptop vendors' R&D department is 1/10th the size of Apple's, I'm not expecting a whole lot.

If you don't like the "Ugly, big and bulky, but cheap" market, Apple's got a lot to like about it.

Yea they dont just over price their hardware :awe: They do a lot of R&D too!

 

[dclive]

The info you posted is wildly out of date. Care to update it to late 2010 (or 2011; I'm not picky) and get back to us?

Some of the points have some good points, but ALL vendors overprice RAM, HDD, etc. - this is nothing new. Checked Dell's pages lately? Same thing - it's always more than it is at Newegg - you seem surprised by this for some odd reason.... ??

The CPUs are actually cheap. Price a Dell workstation (ie 2 i7-class Xeon Westmere CPUs) and get back to us. Your judgement call about whether someone would notice an extra 400 mhz is immaterial; Intel prices don't reflect your opinions.

*IF* you want what Apple is selling (2 sockets, if you need that) it's a great deal. If you don't need the extra socket, of course there are drastically cheaper options, including the iMac machines.

If your point is you want a one socket machine with expandability and a Mac logo on it, join the xMac club; lots of Mac people want the same. Until then, get an iMac or a mac mini.

 

[mnewsham]

APPLE: $6,897.95

Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” (12 cores)
6GB (6X1GB)
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive
Two ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
One 18x SuperDrive
Apple Magic Mouse
Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English) & User's Guide
Microsoft Office Mac 2011 - Home and Business Edition
AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro - Auto-enroll


DELL: $4,788.00


My System Details
BASE Dell Precision T7500 Workstation edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Professional, No Media, 64-bit, English edit
PROCESSORS Dual Six Core Intel® Xeon® Processor X5647, 2.93GHz,12M L3, 5.86GT/s edit
OFFICE SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office Home and Business 2010, English edit
SERVICES & WARRANTY 3 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 3 Year NBD On-Site Service edit
POWER SUPPLY Precision T7500 Power Supply edit
MEMORY 6GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1333MHz, ECC (6 DIMMS) edit
VIDEO CARD Dual 512MB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 580, QUAD MON, 4DP & 2DVI edit
RAID CONFIGURATION C1 All SATA or SSD drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive total configuration edit
SECURITY SOFTWARE Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security Services, 30-days edit
HARD DRIVE CONTROLLER (INTERNAL) Integrated LSI 1068e SAS/SATA 3.0Gb/s controller edit
HARD DRIVE 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s, 7200 RPM Hard Drive with 32MB DataBurst Cache™ edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16X DVD-ROM with Cyberlink Power DVD™ No Media edit
MONITOR No Monitor edit
FLOPPY & MEDIA READER No Floppy Drive and No Media Card Reader


Sorry for the copy paste crap, but they are the same basic system, 1TB HDD, two 6 core 2.93GHz XEON cpu's, 6Gb of ram. they aren't the exact same GPU's (dell has quadro's while apple only has 5770's). I dont see why the MAC has a $2,000 "fee"

 

[Emulex]

lol i paid $1900 a few months back for a dual quad core of the apple above. it runs great. the dell would be teh sux since you have to add an o/s. bad deal on dell.

 

[mnewsham]

lol i paid $1900 a few months back for a dual quad core of the apple above. it runs great. the dell would be teh sux since you have to add an o/s. bad deal on dell.

Show me an invoice and i'll believe it

 

[Emulex]

wasn't new it was used. love it. does make the lights dim when it powers up. had to get a big pure-sine wave ups since it rejected modified square wave (i knew this ahead of time).

it's interesting how they've used the x58 as a server motherboard. first time i've seen non server-grade chipsets with xeons/ecc. i wonder if it has any lower quality than the 5100/etc chipsets for end to end ecc.

 

[chewietobbacca]

^ If you're buying used, then you can't compare with new

But it's a thick and bulky monster of a laptop. Something tells me it doesn't have 7 hours of battery life either.

I suggest OP still focus on MBP and similar.

If that's what he's focused on first and foremost, then that's what he's going to get

If he looking for the most specs for the price, look elsewhere

 

[simonizor]

I just ordered the ASUS G53JW-XN1 for $1199.

The specs are:
Intel Core i7 740QM(1.73GHz) 15.6" 4GB Memory DDR3 1333 500GB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M

The 460M is the kicker. With that GPU, you won't have a problem running almost all games on high settings.

 

[Emulex]

you can apply applecare to a used unit. don't rule out refurb too. same as new warranty.

 

[alent1234]

priced out competing Dell and HP laptops once the new MBP's came out. XPS 15 came out to around $1500 and HP is a bit cheaper. personally after my Dell and HP experiences there is no way i'd give them more than $700 or so for a new laptop unless i bought it from costco.

my last $1500 HP laptop self destructed all by itself and the 3 year warranty was worthless. had a dell inspiron 6000 and bought a 3 year warranty for it. turned out it didn't include the battery. screw you dell/hp.

if you can live with a $700 or cheaper laptop buy anyone since they are all the same. anything over $1000 or so check out apple. if you need tech support the people speak clear english and there is no crapware preinstalled. when i had to get my iphone replaced it took all of 20 minutes including the waiting in line part

 

[alent1234]

Sager's NP8150 or NP8130 will get a lot of what you want too, it's in the 15.6" form factor

1920x1080 resolution (I heard the matte screen is incredible), the new Sandy Bridge processors, GTX 460M etc., - and it's cheaper by a good amount.

If you want the GTX 485M or 6970M too, they are available as options (the 6970M is coming later)

i get $1434 for an i7 configuration including Windows 7 Ultimate which is what OS X is. add another $120 for Adobe photoshop lite and premier lite since Mac's come with iLife and you're at $1550 or $250 or so away from a MBP which has other features not found on this model

 

[mnewsham]

i get $1434 for an i7 configuration including Windows 7 Ultimate which is what OS X is. add another $120 for Adobe photoshop lite and premier lite since Mac's come with iLife and you're at $1550 or $250 or so away from a MBP which has other features not found on this model

Like a less powerful GPU, an OS that doesn't play well with games, and a headache for all your friends trying to send you windows files? I love those "features"

 

[alent1234]

a lot of people don't play games. a lot of people want a laptop that works out of the box, no flashing pictures telling them to buy security software and good support. like you go to a store and speak to a human being in english who solves your problem. not sending a $1500 laptop and 2 weeks later being told that it's your fault and pay us $400 to fix it or $90 just to send it back to you

the apple premium right now is $300 or so. that's the lack of crapware, a simple restore disc with no hard drive partitions sucking up your storage space, the aluminum body, good support and the fact that apple wants decent profit margins on all their products.

specs aren't everything. i looked at the Atrix to see if it's worth it to upgrade from my HTC Inspire. and the Xoom as well. the guy at costco tried to sell it to me saying it's dual core and some other such nonsense. i want it to work, i like my big screen and after playing with the ipad, xoom and galaxy for 5 minutes each i'm buying the ipad 2. in fact after owning android for a week i'm buying an ipad 2

unless i buy one of these MBP's i'll get a cheap $600 laptop with intel graphics because i have an x-box and PS3 for most games

 

[mnewsham]

a lot of people don't play games. a lot of people want a laptop that works out of the box, no flashing pictures telling them to buy security software and good support. like you go to a store and speak to a human being in english who solves your problem. not sending a $1500 laptop and 2 weeks later being told that it's your fault and pay us $400 to fix it or $90 just to send it back to you

the apple premium right now is $300 or so. that's the lack of crapware, a simple restore disc with no hard drive partitions sucking up your storage space, the aluminum body, good support and the fact that apple wants decent profit margins on all their products.

specs aren't everything. i looked at the Atrix to see if it's worth it to upgrade from my HTC Inspire. and the Xoom as well. the guy at costco tried to sell it to me saying it's dual core and some other such nonsense. i want it to work, i like my big screen and after playing with the ipad, xoom and galaxy for 5 minutes each i'm buying the ipad 2. in fact after owning android for a week i'm buying an ipad 2

unless i buy one of these MBP's i'll get a cheap $600 laptop with intel graphics because i have an x-box and PS3 for most games

The motorola Xoom DOES have a Dual core CPU the Nvidia Tegra2 .... and android is better at multi-tasking and actual work while the Ipad is good at showing off. And the ipad 2 isnt even out yet... at least we know you are making an informed purchase

 

[alent1234]

ipad2 is being announced on the 2nd and what is there in the android market that is coded for a tegra 2? it will be like when i was the first to buy a voodoo2 back in 1997 or 1998. i was cool but there were no games for it for over a year

my old 3GS can play decent games and it's about to be sent to the scrap heap this summer when the iphone 5 comes out. by the time there are games for last year's mobile GPU's i'll be "buying" a phone with a tegra 2 or 3 free on contract

 

[mnewsham]

ipad2 is being announced on the 2nd and what is there in the android market that is coded for a tegra 2? it will be like when i was the first to buy a voodoo2 back in 1997 or 1998. i was cool but there were no games for it for over a year

The games use a single core of 1Ghz BUT the other core will handle everything else a phone needs email, txt, twitter, music, etc... as opposed to know where we have the game + all the apps music, twitter, txts, etc.. all on one core. And Tegra2 has a much better GPU so it helps current games too. Not to mention that there are already plenty of games that run well with tegra2 (they can run on older hardware too just slower)

 

[alent1234]

my ipod from 2003 could play music along with MP3 players from 2000 and the games run fine on current hardware. same with email, texts and whatever. this stuff has been around for years. i used to have an ipaq 10 years ago and it did more work than some of the apps i see now. before swype, Palm was king of turning crazy shapes into letters and that was 10 years ago. the moto atrix is faster than some of the old servers we have in our data center and they still do more work than the phone


i've never had any slowdowns on games on my 3GS. most of the games on iOS and android look like 80's arcade rejects anyway and don't require a lot of power

 

[mnewsham]

my ipod from 2003 could play music along with MP3 players from 2000 and the games run fine on current hardware. same with email, texts and whatever. this stuff has been around for years. i used to have an ipaq 10 years ago and it did more work than some of the apps i see now. before swype, Palm was king of turning crazy shapes into letters and that was 10 years ago. the moto atrix is faster than some of the old servers we have in our data center and they still do more work than the phone


i've never had any slowdowns on games on my 3GS. most of the games on iOS and android look like 80's arcade rejects anyway and don't require a lot of power

That's why we need dual core CPU's and higher clocked CPU's and more RAM so we can stop playing those types of games, android and apple have come to realize (android i think more then apple) that there is a large portion of their consumer's who want good looking games, not little things you play while waiting for a bus, actual GAMES that are in-depth and captivating to the player. You cant compare a 10 year old server to a phone. You just cant, their task's are not the same, you are not using a server to send messages to a lady friend while looking up a resturant to eat at with you wife for your anniversary next week....:whiste:..... A server is meant for work, VM's, data categorization, etc... Your phone is for entertainment and communication, a tablet like the ipad or Moto Xoom are extensions of mostly the entertainment aspect of phones, but also keep a part of their ability for communication but to a lesser extent.

 

[simonizor]

Hey, guys, this is about buying a laptop, not some other shit. Don't derail topics like this; it's ridiculous.

 

[Schadenfreude]

Lots of good suggestions on the thread so far!

I suppose I should expand on why I was looking at the Macbook Pro to begin with:

- I've been coveting Macs ever since the PowerPC days: truthfully I was swayed by the "hipster fashion accessory" aspect (and hearing over and over again that graphics designers use them over Windows OS's) but I never could get over the performance-to-value ratio that they offered vs. the Windows counterparts. (Plus I played hours upon hours of PC games. And then went back to put in some more hours.)

But looking at them now, I think while there is still a value-to-performance gap between PCs and Macs, it certainly has narrowed to the point where yes, I am paying for the brand, but at least it has some benefits (Mac OS, build quality, attractive design) - unlike buying something like, say the Sony VAIO line.

One could talk down about how Apple has a tight control over their products, but conversely to me, that means that it's a uniform (as much as PCs go) platform so if there's any problems that arise with the hardware there's a pretty good chance that it's being discussed and looked at somewhere.

As far as the Mac OS being superior - I don't care. I'm going to use bootcamp to install Win7 on it; I may poke around the Mac OS a bit, but the OS is not what concerns me, so the argument for/against it meaningless to me.

Having said that, yes I still want a Macbook Pro, but would I be just as happy with another brand that's well-designed and powerful? Of course! I'm just curious to see if all the hype is even remotely true, and what some of your user experiences are, outside of rampant fanboy-ism.

EDIT: Let me make one thing clear - I'd be happy with any well-designed laptop . . . as long as it isn't HP. I've had too many headaches with build quality on mine and my wife's as well. Ugh..

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Having said that, yes I still want a Macbook Pro, but would I be just as happy with another brand that's well-designed and powerful? Of course! I'm just curious to see if all the hype is even remotely true, and what some of your user experiences are, outside of rampant fanboy-ism.

The hype is about half true, and half tautology. Yes, Apple, your OS is a fancy UNIX-based tour de force. No, Apple, pretty much all laptops have batteries and webcams.

What qualifies as non-rampant-fanboyism?

If you don't care about the OS, and you can afford $2k for a laptop, there are a lot of premium machines out there that won't make you feel like you're tossing around a cheap piece of hollow plastic. Thinkpads still get rave reviews, even since the Lenovo sale. You mentioned Sony, they're good too. But they don't have 90% of the >$1000 PC market. Apple does.

Have you gone to a store to try one of them out? Hands-on experience tends to make or break the final sale.

Slightly OT, but I really would like to get my hands on whoever first looked at those 10" Atom netbooks and thought "Wow, if only I had a product that sucked that hard, but had a 15" or 17" panel! I'd sell a bajillion of them!" It was hard enough before the Netbook to convince people that newer didn't always mean better. Now the huddled masses are convinced that spending more than $500 on a laptop is a fool's errand. Goddamitsomuch.

 

[dclive]

Try the Apple MBP (or Air) trackpads.

Never look back at any other laptop.

 

[TheStu]

Like a less powerful GPU, an OS that doesn't play well with games, and a headache for all your friends trying to send you windows files? I love those "features"

Just curious, how does the 6490m in the MBP compare to the 460m in the Sager? I am behind the curve on mobile GPUs, heck my MBA has a 320m, and all I care about is that it is better than the GMA950 in my old MacBook, and of course the 5200 in my older PowerBook, for the light, older games that I would play on it, it is fine.

Arguing the cost to benefit equation between PCs and Macs, going spec list for spec list takes you nowhere. The people that like Macs will tell you that you don't get it, and the value of OS X over Windows is incredibly hard to quantify, especially when you factor in more tangible benefits like weight, battery life, the trackpad, the power adapter (small size and weight, plus the magsafe which is nice). The people on the other side will tell you that not getting the absolute best specs for your buck is pure fallacy, and damn all the rest of the equation.

Both sides are absolutely right.
Both sides are absolutely wrong.

In this case, the OP asked us to persuade him to not get a MacBook Pro. It can be said that he set you up for failure based on his requirement list, but good on you for trying.

 

[ncage]

If it were me id go with the MAC especially considering how important graphic design is for you. I don't have a mac myself but i can't because of my needs. I'm a developer and use microsoft tools and yes i could still use a mac but visual studio + SQL Server already tax my machine enough without having it virtualized.

If i wasn't a developer then i would either get a mac or be running a windows based notebook that had arch linux installed. MACs are beautifully built that is for sure. It just depends how important the games are for you. If they are realtively important than that would sway you towards the pc side.

If your going to get a pc i would probably recommend against the thinkpad. Yes thinkpads are built like bricks but here is some bad points to them. Their chasis are study but they are plastic and creek some. Also their screens (i have a 1600x****) and are not the best. Also they are quite heavy. I have a Thinkpad T61. But if your a graphics artist i would definitely be quality as far as the screen is conscerned. If you were going to go the windows route i'd probably get a Dell XPS w/ sandy bridge chip and high resolution display.