Buying a new laptop. Suggestions?! - Page 2

Thanks everyone!

You all are making this much harder with all the anti and pro Apple posts! HA

kmpxx, I absolutely hate the loud fan on my current HP laptop. What is this Windows on Macbook business you speak of?

All Macbooks come with bootcamp which allows you to load a second operating system. The downside is that you can't use both at the same time and have to restart the laptop to switch operating systems. It's free though. OR you can use virtual machines. It's a program that allows you to use different operating systems simultaneously. I personally use Parallel and since you're a student you can buy it for really cheap at your school computer store. Another popular one is VMware. After that you can buy a full version of windows or pirate it. I pirated windows 7 but upgraded to a genuine Windows 8. I didn't want to pay couple hundred bucks on a full version and the upgrade only cost me $30. The whole process cost me around $40. I have to admit I totally reaped the benefits of being a student because Parallel retails for $80 alone. I also got the Windows 8 upgrade at student pricing as well. If you haven't already you should look through your school's computer store website. I got Microsoft Office Professional for $20.

Ironically, a mac is a great windows machine since Apple switched over to the Intel chips. Apple's OS could run on a non-Apple PC too but apple blocks that (unless you get a hackintosh).

Personally I think Apple would be good if you mostly run Apple products and occasionally use Windows, but if you really want Apple, get an Apple. I've been Anti-Apple since 1988 when my school had just bought a new Apple IIGs and a disk got stuck in the disk drive and the teacher blamed me for it. Ok, maybe that wasn't the reason why...the biggest reason is I was poor and liked DIY projects.

I just like the freedom that PC's have. When we moved out of my relative's house in the midwest on our own and had $50 in our pockets, I found a junked IBM XT in the dumpster of our apartment. It had 2 floppy drives and no hard drive so I borrowed a modem from work, ran DOS 5.0, and voila, I had a dumb terminal that I could use to connect to the old Bulletin Board Systems and send email on the internet. That was power. It connected me online which at the time didn't include the WWW.

My next computer was a 486 that some guy had built in his living room and was selling for $600. At the time, a store bought one would have been around $1500, but the guy was an IT guy and would keep old parts and make Frankenstein machines. Can't do that with Apple.

Later on, I got brave and would build my own - get a bucket of parts and put it together and somehow it would work. I understand that now days few people do that or care, which is kind of ironic since people think this generation is very computer literate when all they know is how to get on facebook, but my spirit will never be happy with Apple. I like the Windows desktop and google mobile environment.

For customization and choice (almost to a fault as some plausibly argue ); Ubuntu, Fedora, Gnome, Wayland and X, etc. - nothing matches Linux OS.

Windows is just the most popular and streamlined OS in the market, and as such enjoys considerable advantages. And to its credit, XP with service package 2 was as solid a system as it got.

I can understand your preferment for one OS over another - you've already acculturated to one; whatever is familiar is right, is a near truism of human nature.

However, in terms hardware price-to-performance estimates, especially proprietary Mac hardware, PC still remains the less ruinously expensive alternative.

Also, it helps to know what exactly you are purchasing and for what purpose.

I recently purchased a Lenovo (After owning a macbook air) and i was a bit skeptical about win 8 and so far so good took a min to get used to but the Lenovo has been a great purchased so far!

I am looking to get my wife a mothers day present
and found
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-V5...=gaming+laptop

I am trying to decide between that or a Macbook Air. I have never been a fan of Apple, but she likes it. We do play games together though, so I am not sure an Air could cut it for me.

I'm a Windows guy, as I'm used to dealing with Windows servers and PCs, even programmed in VB & VBScript once. Decent Windows laptops can be had for much cheaper than Macs, so you can spend the rest of the money on software. It's also the most versatile, as you can find pretty much any software for it.

That being said, I think I'm gonna pick up a Mac (in addition to my windows PC) because I'm thinking of writing iphone and web apps with Ruby on Rails.

For a college student with no specific need for a Mac, having one is more of a statement of style.

You don't need an Apple computer to program for iphone or web apps. That's why there is emulators and virtual OS.

I agree a windows laptop is much cheaper than a Mac but for college students who have to carry their laptops daily along with other necessities I don't think it'll last all four years. It may seem like a fashion statement but in the 4-5years of college I'm on my third laptop. The first two were windows and they weren't cheap. When the second PC developed the infamous fan noise I couldn't go to the library to study because the fan was on CONSTANTLY. I said to hell with it and in the end bought a Mac. I could've saved $1000+ by justing buying a Mac from the beginning.

Without revealing too much about what I do, my current laptop is a Lenovo Ideapad (average consumer brand) that I've owned for about 5 years. On days when I'm not out running around, it's on for 8 hours a day. On other days, it goes in a back of a van bouncing around from job to job some of which is full of drywall dust, sawdust, and paint fumes sitting on a bucket. On other nights, I am sitting at a Starbucks with it. I don't know what college kids are doing now days, but laptops are tougher than you realize.

Granted, my laptop is a heavy weird shaped one so if weight is an issue, the Macbook Air's are pretty nice, but I think some PC's have matched that design.