laptop recommendation

[kin]

Guys, my laptop Sony Vaio, is getting pretty slow, even after re-installing, well generally looking pretty tired all round.

Could anyone here recommend a decent laptop, I do quite fancy the Mac Book Pro though, purely because it looks nice and solid!!

But I still wanted a second opinion before committing myself.

 

[Catalan3200]

Move to Mac. They cost a bit more to buy, but I've NEVER had to do a re-install. Better than that, they have a resale value.

I sold a 5yo MacBook Pro for £450 together with a 20" Apple Cinema display for a further £220. That went towards my iMac 27" that I've had since 2009 still going strong. Just upgraded memory to 16GB as it was slowing down a bit.

If you MUST run Windows you can with Paralells. Allows you to switch between OSX & Windows seamlessly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[CatmanV2]

Move to Mac. They cost a bit more to buy, but I've NEVER had to do a re-install. Better than that, they have a resale value.

I sold a 5yo MacBook Pro for £450 together with a 20" Apple Cinema display for a further £220. That went towards my iMac 27" that I've had since 2009 still going strong. Just upgraded memory to 16GB as it was slowing down a bit.

If you MUST run Windows you can with Paralells. Allows you to switch between OSX & Windows seamlessly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is the right answer. I've had to use Windows for the last 3 months (on a corporate Dell) in in terms of both hardware and software it is light years behind my Mac. I spent three months creating the case of getting a corporate Mac. Approval took 45 seconds. The cost difference (at retail prices) was £200 in favour of the Dell comparing a *very* primitive HDD based *heavy* Dell vs a Mac Book Air, with the same software suite, and VMWare licence to run Visio.

Granted OSX is not everyone's cup of tea, but I've never had to re-install, could probably count the number of crashes on the finger of one hand.

Mrs Catman transitioned without major issue, and even MS Office works 'OK' Visio is a challenge, but users say that Omnigraffle is an acceptable alternative if the virtualisation route is not desirable.
C

 

[zagatoes30]

More of the same I'm afraid. Spent years working with PC based hardware moved to Mac 3 years ago and have never had to reinstall anything since.

Macbook Air is the way to go and OSX is easy when you start think simple.

As I keep telling people it just works.

 

[Team GCR]

Another vote for Mac, been an Apple user for years and on the rare occasions I am forced to use a PC I realise what hateful things they are by comparison!

 

[Contigo]

Unless you need a MAC don't waste your extra cash.

 

[Chrisbassett]

Unless you have the spare time, don't get a windows machine. Or if you don't value your time.
Windows is fine if you have an IT department to sort out all the **** for you and for restricting what you can break by locking it down, but most of us don't. That should have changed around Windows 7, but it's still an issue even with 8.

 

[highlander]

pick your poison dependent on what you want a machine for...................if just general surfing, then I would not get either platform in a laptop but just get a chrome/notebook instead and spend the cash saved on something sensible like wine. but if planning on doing any real work with it then both will do any job just as quick as one another, both have different downsides and both have fans and people who hate one platform or the other.

 

[mjheathcote]

What do you use the laptop for?
Consider a Chromebook.
I think they are great if mostly used for the web, cheap too!

 

[Chrisbassett]

pick your poison ... both have different downsides and both have fans and people who hate one platform or the other.

Oh, both have their upsides, but Microsoft make most of their money from corporate types who pay for MS Office and server (email, DB, collaboration) licenses so most of their upsides are aimed at those clients with less regard for the common joe and his problems.

Apple sell mostly to consumers so their priority is us.

Google sell advertising, so their priority is getting our data to their paying customers as efficiently as possible.

I use windows at my clients sites where it does exactly what it needs to do, but they have departments dedicated to keeping it doing what they need. I use mac for my own laptop and I've never needed any support.

 

[highlander]

agree with all you say chris but still think both platforms can do any job just as good as the other. I have a 27" mac with massive memory I use for photo developing/processing/storage, a chromebook for ease of surfing and until recently when I spilled wine on it, a pc laptop for download freedom........as I said, pick your poison to suit your needs.
all I can say is that for me, there is no one fix for all my needs although I could probably live without the chromebook if I purchase another laptop.....which I will have to if I'm going to use the software for an obd reader with the 3200

 

[kin]

Thank you guys, I don't use my laptop for anything serious, just surfing and streaming mainly, I like the chromebook, but they are a bit too small for me, I wanted a 15-16" screen.

I do have a 21" iMAC which I bought a few years ago for my daughter, never any issues, always start real quick, but being a bit of a computer illiterate, never quite used to the OSX though, guess I'll get the hang of it eventually??

 

[outrun]

I'm not a MAC fan at all. Tried it but it drove me mad. PC all the way but I am above average with them so do find it easy generally. I use an Acer Aspire S3 i7 running Windows 7 as 8 is utter gash. I use a 22" display and wireless keyboard/mouse in the office and the Aspire is a great size and weight for when i'm travelling.

 

[Contigo]

Mac is overkill for surfing IMO. Great for arty types but as a general simple web browser etc totally wasted. I have a nice Dell sashed laptop for work and there is nothing that a MAC cannot do really.

 

[Grinzzz]

Move to Mac. They cost a bit more to buy, but I've NEVER had to do a re-install. Better than that, they have a resale value.

I sold a 5yo MacBook Pro for £450 together with a 20" Apple Cinema display for a further £220. That went towards my iMac 27" that I've had since 2009 still going strong. Just upgraded memory to 16GB as it was slowing down a bit.

If you MUST run Windows you can with Paralells. Allows you to switch between OSX & Windows seamlessly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep thats what I do, probably because I'm a bit of a sucker for a nice bit of blingy hardware. Nice thing about them is unlike the high end viao's they actually appear to last (which is a bit of a bugger come upgrade time if wifelet gets interested in why your changing). Mac OS is ok, tend to use that for photo and movie stuff, browsing web and basic mail stuff. Parallels runs my office stuff and does it excellently. T'was a bit slowish on my old 2012 macair but now I've gone pro it's almost too fast (scrolling in excel down a list of data is a bit of a chore as it's too fast). Great thing about parallels is if you migrate to another machine it's just a few files to copy across and your back to your old config - starting to like this virtual machine malarky.

The wifelet likes her mac air too but can't handle OSX, so we've basically stripped it all out and it works just as a normal windows laptop now (bootcamp is the technical term for it), the OSX stuff doesn't take up much space. Boots straight into windows and apart from a couple of oddities in the keyboard layout (that you soon get used to) you'd never know it wasn't a normal laptop.

 

[Grinzzz]

Oh and with parallels it's pretty easy to rig up any exotic hardware that hasn't got mac software. Got some dodgy old hardware for my fish tank that only runs on windows - runs under parallels and interfaces just fine, same with my car stuff.

If you've got an iphone and are forced to use that ruddy iTunes rubbish it does run better (relatively) on a mac I find.

 

[Chrisbassett]

Parallels runs my office stuff and does it excellently.

I got a copy of office for Mac, and it's pretty good. Only need to use parallels for Visio, but I can't find anything as good as Visio on the mac...tried everything I can, but Visio seems to have no rivals.

 

[Grinzzz]

I got a copy of office for Mac, and it's pretty good. Only need to use parallels for Visio, but I can't find anything as good as Visio on the mac...tried everything I can, but Visio seems to have no rivals.

visio, project and even outlook - nothing on mac can touch them. No database half as good as access either. And excel is pretty cut down too - at least the last time i looked

 

[CatmanV2]

visio, project and even outlook - nothing on mac can touch them. No database half as good as access either. And excel is pretty cut down too - at least the last time i looked

Really depends on what you're doing. Last time I had an issue with the Mac version of office not being able to do what the Windows version could was before 2010.

C

 

[TridentTested]

No database half as good as access either.

I've never compared them feature for feature but there's not much FileMaker can't handle.



To the OP: Mac all the way. My seven year old 15" MacBook Pro is still working like a trojan, is running the latest OS, heavily used every day, and will probably be good for another good few years too; no immediate plans to change it. Nothing else returns this value for money.