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Old December 11th, 2006, 09:32 PM
x.l.r.8 x.l.r.8 is offline
Learning fast
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 320
If space is a consideration look at the minimac, it's loaded and it's tiny, you get to keep your monitor, mouse and keyboard. Office works well on the mac except the initial start time seems to take forever. However I have an old Prismo Powerbook and keep thinking about the new I book, it's $1500 what ever way you look at it, however I used to hate anything mac untill I got one, after about 3 months I realised I had no pop-ups, no virus warnings, and I didn't ever have to restart it. It was fast and reliable. My old PC was an overclocked 850 athlon to 1 Gig, I had extended daughterboards to carry extra ram and it lived in a freezer and I still managed to burn the board occasionally, bit by bit I started selling off my PC parts and worringly I rely heavily on my powerbook, 5 years later I'm still using it with minor upgrades (ram maxed out, Combo drive where the DVD rom was and an external firewire hard-drive) and the airport works better than most of the new wireless stuff. I have to use an external bluetooth dongle but now I no longer use the PCMCIA card reader I may well just get one to go in there. I recommend macs to anyone who is willing to take the plunge, if you have reservations stick with the PC, it will be more troublesome, but it's trouble others will be able to help you with. Safari wipes the floor with IE, and most of the software is easy to interface with and usually free to upgrade. I found OS 9 to be everthing Windows 98 wasn't, then XP was very similar to OS 9.2.2 platform, then mac went the next step with OS 10.4.7 (fine tuned version of the original OS 10) I haven't played with the newest version of OS as my computer is a) pretty much running at it's fullest capacity, and b) it does everything I ever wanted it to do. In 5 years I have spent probably $300 extra on the computer, in the same time you will probably look to change a PC 3 times and spent a lot more on upgrades. You cannot argue that wintell has made significant inprovements to there operating system, but they have a long way to go to be as fluid as the mac's. This is all just my opinion, I have been playing with computers since the ZX81, and the best selling point I have seen for a PC is the warranty, and for that I have known 2 people with Sony's and when they went wrong, they were replaced with newer models and the difference (technology always gets cheaper) was also refunded, they also salvaged what they could from one of the hard-drives and put the information onto a memory pen, I like that kind of service. Also for a laptop play with the keyboard, find one that feels right, your not going to be able to change it like you would a desktop so you better be comfortable with it (mac's have excellent keyboards ) ideally it will have side ports for USB/firewire ect. rather than at the back, if possible find the cost of a replacement battery as you will possibly need one, it's also good to have for long trips watching DVD's. Built in Bluetooth should be a requirement and wifi would be nice, especially they way printers and camera's are being made now to that standard. A high powered graphic card while desirable will suck the juice out of a battery as will wireless internet. A wireless mouse makes the laptop expierinence more enjoyable, there's nothing worse than sitting down and having 6 wires laying everywhere, thats not the reason for a laptop in the first place, ideally you will have a power cable, posibly an external mouse and you will have everything else inside the laptop rather than attached as a periphial on the outside. Also look to see if there are generic power leads as you may find excessive use will damage the plug connection and if others are not available (like for the old macs :sad: ) you may have to do a lot of hunting. You really can't go that wrong with main brands as the reliability of components is much better than 5 years ago. Also the Beta-VHS arguement, the Beta was always a better system but the industry supported VHS, just like it supported Windows for home use, however now people demand more, and Apple is still able to shine despite being hated for so many for so long. Is it worth the extra, initally no, but 3 years down the line, every single cent, YES!.
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