Monday

My laptop - RIP

I think my beloved Dell laptop is ready to move on to its eternal reward.

On the suggestion of several folks, and out of curiosity, I am considering getting an Apple laptop this time. I've never had an Apple anything except an iPod, which I love.

So I'm looking for feedback on what model I should consider, as well as where to look for the best price on an Apple notebook.

Basically, my laptop is a glorified PDA. I do all my writing on it, which is its primary purpose, but I also store a lot of photos and music on it. I never watch streaming video, so that capability isn't important, and I don't do any games or anything like that on it. It needs to be sturdy, extremely portable, and good for working online wirelessly and storing a lot of words, photos and music. That's it. Not that complex.

So I welcome suggestions on where to shop and what to buy....
Posted by at

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So...microwaving didn't help? Huh.

Anyway...Mac vs. PC. Wow, that's the classic dilemma...the face that launched a thousand idiotic flame wars.

To me, the main argument against buying an iBook is just inertia. I got a PC laptop almost 3 years ago, after more or less exclusively using Macs for almost 15 years, and it took me a loooong time to finally shed the countless little ingrained habits that I had built up. I still use my Mac desktop, and I like OS X, but I've finally gotten really comfortable using Linux, and there's always a little grating sense of annoyance when I'm on the Mac. If you use Windows every day at work, personally, I'd say get a PC, but maybe you wouldn't be as bugged by mentally switching gears as much as I am. YMMV and such.

Actually, there's one other thing that would absolutely be a non-starter for me -- there's no second mouse button on the handrest. If you don't mind using an external mouse, you can plug in a two-button mouse and it will work fine, but if you prefer using the built-in buttons, you'll have to hit cntl-click instead of right-clicking. Again, ymmv, but this would completely drive me batshit.

If you can deal with that stuff, though, the 12'' iBook would suit your needs pretty well, and it's more or less comparably priced to similarly spec'd PCs (@ $1000-$1100 -- not much chance for deals, since you have a "choice" of buying from the Apple website, an Apple Store, or a dealer who can only sell it for the same price as Apple does. If you do get one, check out a non-Apple store or online retailer -- lots of times they'll throw in extra memory or offer something else free, since that's the only way they can compete with Apple). iPhoto and iTunes are both great, and while Microsoft has finally gotten around to dealing with security, OS X is still way less of a target to hax0r kiddies and other various creeps.

On the PC side, the best comparable laptop to the 12'' iBook is probably the Dell 700m. The graphics are kind of lame (even lamer than the iBook's graphics card, which is lame enough), but since you're not going to be playing HalfLife 80000 or whatever it is that those darn kids are playing today, it shouldn't be an issue for you. The really big selling point for the 700m is that it supposedly has an absolutely gorgeous screen, maybe the best one on any laptop available today, and it's a widescreen too, which is a really big advantage over the iBook. With the minimum specs, I priced it out today at @$1050 - that's with a free memory upgrade to 512M, a 25% off promo, XP Home, a CD-RW/DVD, 1 year warrenty, and a 802.11b wireless card. I'd recommend upgrading to the 802.11b/g card, and if you're going to be connecting to your work network, you'll probably need to upgrade to XP Pro. Both of those upgrades together will add about $100. Upgrade the warrenty, too. The promos end Wednesday, but Dell almost always runs some kind of promo, so keep checking (they had it for $750 off last November). Also, you can sometimes find online coupons at gotapex.com & bensbargains.net, although they have the world's most godawfully stupid website designs, so it's a big PITA to find anything there.

One other thing -- you'll need to have at least 512M of RAM at a bare minimum for either Windows or OS X. Don't get an upgrade from Apple or Dell. Instead, get the minimum RAM (256M), and get additional memory from crucial.com. Crucial sells it for about 1/2 of what you'd pay otherwise, and it's not hard to install yourself.

Bullet point summary:

pro iBook
---
* OS X is a really pleasant operating system. If I was able to choose just one OS to work in, OS X would be it, hands down -- there are a couple of truly great features that Windows is lacking, and it just feels more comfortable to me. But really, this is totally overrated. Windows is fine, I like it perfectly well, and the next release of XP is going to be really cool, if Microsoft gets around to finishing it in the next decade.
* iPhoto and iTunes are great, although I don't know much about the equivalent programs on Windows. I've only used Windows Media Player a bit, and it seemed plenty good, other than being completely butt ugly.
* For the time being, there's more or less no security issues at all. If you keep on top of things, Windows is secure too, but Mac security is much less bothersome.
* it's sort of fun to try something different, I guess.
* Dell's customer service sucks. God, it sucks. My video card died last year, and they jerked me around for two months before I finally got the part. I hate them.

pro 700m
----
* if you don't find playing around with a novel operating system amusing, and you are satisfied with Windows, there's no compelling reason to switch.
* the screen is awesome, or so people say.
* if you are willing to wait for bargains, you might get lucky and be able to get it for around $900.
* The iBook comes with a basic, semi-sucky word processor, but if you currently use Word and want to keep using it, you'll have to shell out $250.
* the iBook is probably going to feel a little bit slower -- all the fancy geegaws and gimcrackery in OS X require obnoxiously large amounts of processing power, and the graphics card & CPU aren't quite up to the task. And a new version of OS X is coming out sometime this year, which will pile even more geegaws and gimcrackery on top (some of them look like they're going to be pretty useful, though). If you can, try using one before buying to see if it is slow enough to be irritating.
* if it were me, I'd totally get this over the iBook.

I'll shut up now, but feel free to holler if you have any other questions.

Anonymously yours,
Steve K. (yeah, that one).

Wednesday, February 23, 2005 at 5:50:00 AM GMT
Anonymous said...

Are you serious about the microwave? I've never heard of such a thing? Microwave ovens heat up water quick, but they do the same for metal. Not to mention the effects microwaves could have on the sensitive electronic parts.

Thursday, February 24, 2005 at 8:45:00 PM GMT
Anonymous said...

Yeah, it's not a great idea to microwave your computer.

- Steve K.

Friday, February 25, 2005 at 11:23:00 PM GMT

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