Convince me not to get a Macbook Pro

[Schadenfreude]

Honestly, if you started out wanting a Macbook Pro you might be able to find cheaper or faster laptops but you're still going to wish you had got the Macbook Pro.

. . .

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.

Maaaybe I did, like I said, I do have a slight hard-on for Apple - if only because I never really got to tinker with one. But then again it's almost like owning a Porsche - it'd be nice, and I'm sure a lot of people would be jealous; but do I want to bother with the maintenance costs and specialized headaches when I could get a Japanese sportscar with 90% of the performance at 50% of the price?

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?

. . ..

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.

Rampant fanboy-ism is, well, arguing each points without necessarily conceding your own platform's weaknesses; like saying "it's a feature" - obviously both platforms are where they're at because they are good at something - why not focus on the positives of each platform without resorting to "mine's better than yours" - what are we, a bunch of 5-year olds and/or politicians?

I wish I had a friend who has a Macbook so I can sit down and tinker with it.

And also if you find that douche, kick him in the nads for me so he may never procreate for the sake of our future. I'm not so much bummed about the lack of specs or cheap hardware, but the absolute-good-for-shit quality displays on laptops (and the lack of good displays - even at an upgrade) under $1k are killing me.

Right on all counts again guys, y'all are giving me a lot to think about.

 

[ed21x]

well, in the 13" segment, the two brands you excluded both offer laptops that have far better specs in terms of decent GPU's.

Asus and Samsung both have excellent 13" laptops with awesome build quality (a la it does not overheat like a Macbook or dent when you look at it), and very sleek chasis, with specs only slightly higher than Mac's offerings.

The Dell Adamo line is suppose to be up there too, but they are clearly more expensive than any offerings listed in this post.

Fujitsu's are heavy and overengineered...

Panasonic Toughbooks are probably out of your pricerange if you're looking at the laptops above.

hmmm... I'd go with Asus for best quality overall.

 

[ed21x]

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.

c'mon, it would be asinine to deny the sheer amount of great designs out there. Google images for the Adamo, Asus U35, Acer 3820tg, HP Envy, Sony Vaio, or Samsung Q series. Every brand has beautifully crafted thin and light notebooks which Apple owners are never aware of because they're so fixated on their own brand.

 

[TheStu]

c'mon, it would be asinine to deny the sheer amount of great designs out there. Google images for the Adamo, Asus U35, Acer 3820tg, HP Envy, Sony Vaio, or Samsung Q series. Every brand has beautifully crafted thin and light notebooks which Apple owners are never aware of because they're so fixated on their own brand.

The Adamo is dead, and it was probably the one that came closest, though the not yet released Samsung Series 9 systems are pretty great looking, though the price may be wrong.

 

[alent1234]

c'mon, it would be asinine to deny the sheer amount of great designs out there. Google images for the Adamo, Asus U35, Acer 3820tg, HP Envy, Sony Vaio, or Samsung Q series. Every brand has beautifully crafted thin and light notebooks which Apple owners are never aware of because they're so fixated on their own brand.

those looked nice, but people want support. and with dell/hp burning so much people on crappy support in the last few years no one wants to buy expensive laptops from them anymore. most of the dollars of computers $1000 and over go to apple. and people don't want crap ware and most of the OEM crap that dell and HP put on their computers

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I wish I had a friend who has a Macbook so I can sit down and tinker with it.

No local Apple store? Their machines are basically open to mess with. I've just walked in and checked my email while waiting for "people" at the mall with nothing better to do.

Tell one of the usually-way-to-pretty-to-be-computer-geeks sales staff you're interested in buying and they'll give you the tour and let you tinker for a while.

 

[alent1234]

most best buy's also have an apple section with computers you can do whatever on

 

[dave_the_nerd]

most best buy's also have an apple section with computers you can do whatever on

True. But, at least at the one near my house, the display machines don't have internet access.

 

[alent1234]

never noticed that

last time i was at an apple store it was to play with the iPad. i have 3 laptops in the house and rarely use them. only thing i need a new computer for is to hold my iTunes library, photos and do some photo editing before sending the pictures to be printed online.

have some steam games but rarely play them. almost all gaming is on my x-box

 

[Schadenfreude]

I won't have time to swing by the Apple store until a few weeks later - my weekends are booked and I go to class right after work - how are the regular Apple displays? Outside of the display resolution, are they comparable or better than the Win7 laptops?

. . . Is there a comparison or a review which specifically mentions this?

 

[Emulex]

they are better than any display except dreamcolor2

 

[alent1234]

i believe iMac's use very expensive IPS monitors while the MBP's are about the same as dell and HP. when i see one in starbucks though it does look very nice and better than my lenovo

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I won't have time to swing by the Apple store until a few weeks later - my weekends are booked and I go to class right after work - how are the regular Apple displays? Outside of the display resolution, are they comparable or better than the Win7 laptops?

. . . Is there a comparison or a review which specifically mentions this?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3669/...o-more-battery-life-tests-display-evaluated/4

 

[MrX8503]

c'mon, it would be asinine to deny the sheer amount of great designs out there. Google images for the Adamo, Asus U35, Acer 3820tg, HP Envy, Sony Vaio, or Samsung Q series. Every brand has beautifully crafted thin and light notebooks which Apple owners are never aware of because they're so fixated on their own brand.

The only laptop out of that lot that has a high level attention to detail and construction is the Dell Adamo, the rest is garbage. The Adamo had squared cut grill exhaust, concave chiclet keys, modern type face on the keys; these are the kinds of details that makes a premium laptop untouchable in design.

Unfortunately the Dell Adamo has been axed and the original HP Envy line was a good start, but the new current ones are now fatter and uglier.

Everything on the MBP is ahead of everyone else in laptop design because like I said earlier, its all about detail. The exterior is perfectly cnc machined with accurate precision. Open up a MBP and you'll see that all the ribbons are custom length, the logic board custom cut to fit fans, even the battery has a beveled edge that mirrors the chassis.

You can't tell me that there's another laptop out there that comes close to this.

 

[biostud]

Personally I would wait for the SB refresh models, both Mac and PC. The HD3000 graphics should be able to handle some gaming

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4192/macbook-pro-2011-refresh-specs-and-details
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4190/hps-business-notebook-hat-trick

 

[Schadenfreude]

Personally I would wait for the SB refresh models, both Mac and PC. The HD3000 graphics should be able to handle some gaming

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4192/macbook-pro-2011-refresh-specs-and-details
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4190/hps-business-notebook-hat-trick

The Mac refreshes for the SB cores are already out, if I'm not mistaken.

Although I do have to admit, I am intrigued by the Bulldozer platform AMD's rolling out . . ..

 

[Maximilian]

Macbook pro is an overpriced POS, dont buy one, hope you are convinced :thumbsup:

 

[biostud]

The Mac refreshes for the SB cores are already out, if I'm not mistaken.

Although I do have to admit, I am intrigued by the Bulldozer platform AMD's rolling out . . ..

Then wait for the PC SB to compare, before you place your order.

 

[Schadenfreude]

Then wait for the PC SB to compare, before you place your order.

Duh.

 

[skace]

This thread is an absolute headache to read. I thought I'd be interested because my concerns seem to be similar to Schadenfreude. I suppose I'll back off and watch this thread and see how it pans out. My only concern about MBP w/ Bootcamp is that I haven't done my research on that at all - it seems like a possible support nightmare.

 

[alent1234]

one time a friend of mine found a lost Macbook from 2008 or so and asked me to help him with it. it had a bootcamp partition, which is just a HD partition with windows on it. the thing came with a SL disc so i installed SL for him and gave it back. very easy and i've never touched a Mac before

i might get a 13" MBP soon. i checked and the resale values are insane. around 80% of the original retail for last year's C2D model. i can buy it and sell it next year and get a 15" MBP. checked the price of a dell inspiron 14", and by the time you add in all the options and software that the 13" MBP has it's almost the same price

 

[dave_the_nerd]

First of all... "found?"

()

This thread is an absolute headache to read. I thought I'd be interested because my concerns seem to be similar to Schadenfreude. I suppose I'll back off and watch this thread and see how it pans out. My only concern about MBP w/ Bootcamp is that I haven't done my research on that at all - it seems like a possible support nightmare.

Not so much a support nightmare as a support-papercut-under-your-fingernail. It's manageable, but annoying.

I guess I just don't get the logic of buying a Mac just to run Windows. If nothing else, OS X gets you significantly better battery life, and there are enough more-specs-for-the-money high-end PCs to make it a hard sell from a price/performance standpoint.

 

[AsusReview]

The problem I've run into with many people (myself included) is that just not everything is available in OSX. Then your left with dual booting into windows just for 1 proprietary or work related program.

As far as core usability, web browsing and looking at regular documents goes...Ubuntu is also great, it's just that extra thing you sometimes run into that shuts down the whole deal and pulls you back to Windows.

 

[alent1234]

First of all... "found?"

()



Not so much a support nightmare as a support-papercut-under-your-fingernail. It's manageable, but annoying.

I guess I just don't get the logic of buying a Mac just to run Windows. If nothing else, OS X gets you significantly better battery life, and there are enough more-specs-for-the-money high-end PCs to make it a hard sell from a price/performance standpoint.

nyc cab driver, people are always leaving stuff and he's always trying to call them to get their stuff. this time no one claimed it after a month or two

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The problem I've run into with many people (myself included) is that just not everything is available in OSX. Then your left with dual booting into windows just for 1 proprietary or work related program.

Parallels or Fusion. Works 99% of the time, no need to reboot.