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Yet another laptop thread!

Folken FanelFolken Fanel anime afWhen's KoFRegistered User regular
edited December 2007 in Help / Advice Forum
So I'm in the market for a new laptop. I'll be using it primarily for school, mostly using office applications, mathematica, matlab, some coding and itunes. Real basic stuff mostly, probably won't use it for gaming. I'm concerned mostly with a good balance between portability and performance. I just started shopping online, and I've been wondering: which laptops have the least amount of shitty useless software already installed on it? I suppose I could always just wipe it clean and just reinstall whatever OS I get with it, but I'd rather not go through all that trouble.

Currently I've been looking at Lenovos, Dell's Vostro, and Macs (mostly b/c my friend wont shut up about them). The Mac is tempting, but I could probably get a machine just as powerful on a cheaper Windows machine. Also, is there anything that works on a Windows machine that doesnt on a Mac these days?

Someone give me some guidance please!

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Posts

  • Dark MoonDark Moon Registered User regular
    edited December 2007
    I'd go with a Macbook. They're not more expensive than the equivalent PC, and they're lovely little machines. Mathematica/Matlab is available for OS X, they come with very few useless applications, and you get a very dependable, fast and easy to use laptop. If you're using very processor intensive applications, you may want to consider either a higher end Macbook or a Macbook Pro. Don't add any extra RAM when buying the laptop initially - it's far cheaper to buy and install it yourself after the fact.

    Dark Moon on
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  • CorvusCorvus . VancouverRegistered User regular
    edited December 2007
    My Asus laptop came with very little bloatware. Acrobat, a Norton trial, and a few ASUS utilities, some of which are useful.

    Corvus on
    :so_raven:
  • FallingmanFallingman Registered User regular
    edited December 2007
    Switching to mac can be a little daunting... I did it recently, but I can honestly say that I havent looked back. The answer to "Is there anything I wont be able to do?" is "No". There are 2 reasons for this. 1) Bootcamp. I just had windows on my machine for such a situation... There is no difference between windows on a PC and windows on a mac. 2) I have genuinely never found that there was any app I couldn't get an equivalent for on the mac.

    I've actually only ever found it the other way round. Some things I did on my mac, others have asked "hey, can I do that?" and the answer, while rarely being "no" is often "well, not easily".

    I also think the hardware is worth the price in build quality, built in extras (iSight etc) - but if anyone had said that to me before I'd gotten my mac I wouldn't have cared... so...

    I removed all windows stuff after a while, but the reality is that you can either get a PC or a PC and a Mac.

    /fanboy rant

    Fallingman on
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