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New laptop suggestions
Awk
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Slipped on ice, broke my toe, shattered my laptop. 
Time for a new one ..
Im looking for a good deal, something affordable. Ill be using it for general web-browsing and photoshop/corel drawing.
Any suggestions? Leap to mac?
Time for a new one ..Im looking for a good deal, something affordable. Ill be using it for general web-browsing and photoshop/corel drawing.
Any suggestions? Leap to mac?
Awk on
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i'd recommend a 999 macbook. A laptop is a long term thing, so unless you're buying a netbook, it doesn't make sense to try and save 300 bucks for something like this.
also, get one of those laptop backpacks- if you have your laptop in a case, and then secured in a laptop compartment, with textbooks and other crap in the section in front, it's a lot more likely to survive falls.
When you say "photoshop/corel drawing," how heavy-duty are we talking?
The reason I chose the 15' MBP was for the second 'real' video card it has. Plus I really like the aluminum look and I think the screens on the 15' were better than those on the 13' at the time I bought (this was September 2009). All in all I fully recommend a Mac.
My other sister has a cheap Vaio (I assume its cheap, I dont know how much she paid for it, it feels cheap anyway) and I have to say its terrible in comparison. On top of feeling cheap it has a much shorter battery life (I use my laptop all day, screwing around on the internet and taking notes during class (typical day is 6+hours of usage before charging) and I usually have an hour or so before the battery dies). Its gotten to the point where I dont even take a charger because I dont want to carry it around. The controls on her computer seem super limited too. I think she has like 4 different brightness options, as compared to my sisters 3 year old MacBook which has 16 (my MBP does too).
I bought a Dell Inspiron in preparation for my freshman year of college and it didnt even make it the first year. Went the rest of undergrad without a laptop.
If you have the money for a Mac, get one. Best decision ever.
Edit: There are some downsides to getting a Mac though. I think they only come with glossy screens (if you order online you may be able to order it without gloss) which isnt great for doing shit with photoshop as the colors youre seeing wont be the same as the colors on other peoples. Also, theyre expensive? (I dont really think so, if youre going for the higher end MBPs then yeah, theyre overpriced, but the normal MacBook is pretty fairly priced for its build quality and the specs youre getting.)
"Thoughts are a persons imagination going rampid…" - ME
Those are some HUGE laptops. Are you a giant?
All joking aside, I've always loved my Macs. I'll third, fourth, or whatever the suggestion to get a MacBook (not a Pro though) for what you need.
I totaled it twice. Once I crushed the screen with far more books than my bag was meant to contain, another time the rain got it through my bag. Both times IBM had me a new laptop (with my old harddrive) within 48 hours.
Whatever you do, get accidental protection. An additional maybe $300 for three years of protection is essentially a guarantee that your laptop will still be working perfectly for three years -- all that's left for you to worry about is "don't lose it".
And I suggest a thinkpad. An X series if you don't need an optical drive (and, I suspect, most people do not); a T series if you do. I'm going to be replacing my ancient x40 with an x201s when it comes out in a month.
the 15" MBP is not teh hueg. mine fits well in every backpack i've owned, and I even have one of those generic Jansports.
Also: Order from Amazon. It's $50 cheaper than the Apple store, you'll save around $75 in sales tax and it'll ship for free.
...but you can install windows too. I mention this, because this was the safetynet I needed to switch to mac. I haven't booted up in windows for well over a year. Hmmm... *wanders off to reclaim some of his HD*
VMWare Fusion and Parallels are also great for running Windows inside Mac OS X without having to reboot, and depending on your machine can run most games as well. I've got a 3 year old MBP and I can run Torchlight at least (haven't tried pushing it harder, but apparently you can play L4D and similar games).
Look at your post. You described yourself as having a 15 FOOT MacBook.
There are netbooks, small and light models that are pretty powerful, and pimped to the nines desktop replacement computers to choose from. I just got my pimped to the nines laptop back from an RMA.
I spilled tea on it, after a year and a half of using the silly buggers out of it, and fried the motherboard. It had been overheating previously, so I sent it back, praying that they'd write the damage off as heat related. Well, not only did they completely replace the motherboard, they found a bad track on the harddrive and replaced it, as well as squirrel damage to they keyboard and damage on my part to the lcd. They even replaced the top shell of the laptop, where it was a bit dinged up due to normal use.
They sent a Fed Ex guy to pick up the computer from my house, and sent it overnight both ways, complimentary.
Oh yeah, they also re-imaged my harddrive so that it had all my old files, history, programs and even the firefox tabs open at the time of the incident. It's literally as good as new.
Total time out of my hands: 1 week
Total cost to me: $0
They cast a shadow like a sundial in the morning light. It was half past 10.
Macs(especially entry level) are way way way over priced. $999 is not an entry level price point for a laptop; you can get compatible hardware on a PC laptop for half the price, and desktop replacement stuff starts round $900. Consider that with the Mac your grand is only getting you a 13.3" screen, no HDMI port, only 2gb of memory, and a small HDD. Its more of a netbook, than a laptop.
I got This in Nov and am happy with it and for $475 its amazing. It runs HoN and Torchlight, I use photoshop on it no problem. My GF and 2 of my friends have had good experience with Asus stuff, if you decide to listen to Trillian. Also I've seen some <$700 deals on laptops with blu-ray drives if you don't have a player/PS3. Like This One If you have a HD TV with a HDMI port, its worth going to blu-ray.
In summary get a PC with better stuff, use half of $500 you save to buy the "I can chuck it in a pool and they'll replace it warranty". Then spend the remaining $250 on hookers.
PC: Bigger screen, colors other than white, cheaper, better specs, cheaper, HDMI, super warranty and sex.
Mac: Small, hip, expensive, no HDMI, stupid apple video port(aka not VGA or DVI for 2nd screen), no-sex.
Also also, upgrades to the Macbook Pro line are overdue, so if you decide you want to get one of those you should wait until the update hits. Even if you don't want the newer models, it'll knock a chunk off the price of the older ones.
ack, even though it wasn't me who made the first post I kick myself for missing the joke.
It was awesome in Spinal Tap.
these people are known as silly geese
No need to get all Obs about it.
Generally speaking, build quality on ThinkPads has really suffered over the past couple years. What were once solid machines are now no better than your average Dell or HP system.
I have a 4 year old ThinkPad whose monitor finally just died. I was going to replace it with a new ThinkPad, but as I read more about the build quality issues, I settled on an ASUS instead.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
oh shit, you're Canadian!
www.ncix.com
If you live in Vancouver, or the surrounds, they have a few brick and mortar stores in the area.
I HIGHLY recommend checking them out; it's always chaos in there on the weekends for a reason.
They cast a shadow like a sundial in the morning light. It was half past 10.