Advice for MacBook

[Bwilky]

Hey guys, my sister just purchased a Dell Inspiron 1525 and it arrived yesterday. Me personally, I have a Imac which I got a year ago and love it to pieces. I was configuring her laptop with her programs and its horrible. Problems everywhere. Heat sink is broken and we have to return it to dell, upgraded to 3 gb ram and still slow as hell. Now I think she should get a Mac Book and just return this piece of s***.

Is there a new Macbook on the horizon? And how are the current Macbooks? Are they fast, slow? Good for university student?

Any comments and advice would be wonderful.

Thanks,
Bryce

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

It really depends on what she needs to be doing with it in college. If she will be using it for advanced video editing it is not the best computer for her. On the other hand, if she is going to be checking email, typing word documents, etc the MacBook will work great for her. I bought one for my wife last year when she was finishing school and it has been great for her.

 

[redtiger]

From what I have heard, Apple didn't announce new Macbooks at WWDC this week. However, the Macbooks that are out now are great for someone in university, in my opinion. I've used mine for nearly all of grade 12 and I plan to use it in college next year. I'd say that you should try your best to convince your sister to buy a Macbook, she won't regret it... In fact, I love mine so much, I plan on buying an iMac this summer.

 

[Bwilky]

From what I have heard, Apple didn't announce new Macbooks at WWDC this week. However, the Macbooks that are out now are great for someone in university, in my opinion. I've used mine for nearly all of grade 12 and I plan to use it in college next year. I'd say that you should try your best to convince your sister to buy a Macbook, she won't regret it... In fact, I love mine so much, I plan on buying an iMac this summer.

You'll love the New Imac's their amazing!

Did you all purchase apple care? Its kinda expensive for a laptop.

 

[ki2594]

dude i love my penryn macbook. Best thing i've ever boughtt. And if you wanna use it as a desktop, you can! (i actually have it in desktop mode right now.

 

[CalmEnvy]

I purchased a Penryn MacBook in March. It was my first Mac and I'm loving it right now, so much better then a PC. I bought the low end MacBook and it's faster then my PC is, PC has a slower CPU (not by much) and 2GB of ram. Now, I don't think they will be updating the MacBook's soon because Montevina has been delayed till July 15th I believe. Right now though the MacBook is a great buy, I still gotta get AppleCare for mine but I have till March so that's all good.

 

[Bwilky]

I purchased a Penryn MacBook in March. It was my first Mac and I'm loving it right now, so much better then a PC. I bought the low end MacBook and it's faster then my PC is, PC has a slower CPU (not by much) and 2GB of ram. Now, I don't think they will be updating the MacBook's soon because Montevina has been delayed till July 15th I believe. Right now though the MacBook is a great buy, I still gotta get AppleCare for mine but I have till March so that's all good.

Wait whats Penryn Macbook and whats Montevina?

 

[mosx]

I purchased a Penryn MacBook in March. It was my first Mac and I'm loving it right now, so much better then a PC. I bought the low end MacBook and it's faster then my PC is, PC has a slower CPU (not by much) and 2GB of ram. Now, I don't think they will be updating the MacBook's soon because Montevina has been delayed till July 15th I believe. Right now though the MacBook is a great buy, I still gotta get AppleCare for mine but I have till March so that's all good.

If your Mac is faster than your PC then there is something wrong with your PC. Leopard is slow on 1GB of memory (I just upgraded to 2.5GB from 1, huge difference).

However I have a Mac and a PC. Mid-2007 MacBook w/SuperDrive and 2.5GB of RAM. HP with 2GB of RAM, 2GHz C2D (Santa Rosa), GeForce 8400M GS.

My HP is faster when it comes to CPU intensive tasks, it can play games, it can play high definition movies, it actually has a GPU that can be taken advantage of for video playback, HDMI output, TV tuner, etc.

All around, my PC is way better than my Mac.

You're just still in the honeymoon phase and you haven't seen what hardware you could have bought for the same price (think $2,500 MBP for around $1,000).

Anyway, to the OP, Vista is a little slow at first. But the more she uses it the faster it will get because it will cache data and such relevant to what she does. After a week or so her Vista machine will be faster than any equally spec'ed Mac. She probably spent half as much on that Dell as she would have on a MacBook too.

Don't expect the MacBooks to be problem free either. She'll still have to install Windows to get full functionality. She'll also have to worry about endless build quality issues too. Peeling, separation, cracking due to heat or otherwise, HEAT, discolortion (yes it still exists). The MacBook panels (look up the specs if you don't believe me) also have painfully slow response times of 24ms. You get ghosting just moving the cursor.

Shes much better off with the Dell and she'll save money in the process. Just uninstall the crapware (which she could have deselected when she was configuring the PC for purchase) and run ccleaner. It'll run just as good as a fresh install.

 

[Kirjava444]

She'll still have to install Windows to get full functionality.

Umm.. may I ask why? OS X is perfectly fine on its own. If she is having problems with her Dell and wants a Mac instead, I see no reason for her not to get a Mac.

 

[Jabberwocky246]

Ignore mosx, he's all over the forums flaming away at Macs.

Why are you even on the Apple forums if you hate Macs so much? Go back under the bridge.

Penryn and Montevina are the Intel chipsets that run the LOGIC boards. Penryn is the current one (it replaced the Santa Rosa chipset) while Montevina is the one that will be coming out soon. Generally, newer chipsets offer better performance and more features but you can't always wait for the latest and greatest or you'll be waiting forever. At some point you just have to buy and realize that people who wait longer will have a better computer than you.

Hope this helps.

 

[mosx]

Ignore mosx, he's all over the forums flaming away at Macs.

Why are you even on the Apple forums if you hate Macs so much? Go back under the bridge.

Penryn and Montevina are the Intel chipsets that run the LOGIC boards. Penryn is the current one (it replaced the Santa Rosa chipset) while Montevina is the one that will be coming out soon. Generally, newer chipsets offer better performance and more features but you can't always wait for the latest and greatest or you'll be waiting forever. At some point you just have to buy and realize that people who wait longer will have a better computer than you.

Hope this helps.

Pointing out legitimate problems is NOT trolling. Just because you don't like the truth doesn't mean it is "trolling". Please show me where I am trolling and not pointing out a fact.

I don't hate Macs. I'd like mine if it had a dedicated GPU!

Oh you're completely wrong with the chipsets and processors.

Penryn is the new version of the Core 2 Duo chip. Its running on the same Santa Rosa chipset that the previous Merom Core 2 Duo ran on. Montevina is the new chipset. It will be running the Penryn based Core 2 Duo.

Prior to Santa Rosa, Core 2 Duos ran on the Napa platform.

 

[mosx]

Umm.. may I ask why? OS X is perfectly fine on its own. If she is having problems with her Dell and wants a Mac instead, I see no reason for her not to get a Mac.

Well, if you want good DVD playback, software choices..

or you just don't want to spend twice as much for the same hardware....

 

[nick9191]

Yes the current macbook is Penryn processor on a Santa Rosa Logic board.
The previous (my one) is merom processor on a Santa Rosa Logic board.
The future one will be Penryn processor on a Montevina Logic Board.

 

[ziggyonice]

The current MacBooks are quite good for your typical university student. Say she's wanting to listen to music, organize and edit her photos, send email, get online, and type papers. That's the pretty basic needs of a college kid, and therefore it'd probably be fine for her.

Right now, the MacBooks are basically half-way through their product cycle, so getting them now wouldn't be a problem at all. Yes, there's rumors of a big redesign coming in either August or September, but if she's not a hardcore Apple fan, she won't even care as long as she gets something that works.

If she IS a big Apple fan on the other hand, maybe she'd like to wait it out. But having bought a Dell recently, I'd guess otherwise. Get her to get the MacBook as soon as possible, before she changes her mind. She won't regret it.

 

[Bwilky]

We've already made up our mind and were going with the macbook. I'm going to pick it up on Friday and get the student discount on the laptop and apple care. Also get the free ipod touch One of the biggest factors which made her want to switch over is that when you call apple care you get to speak to someone that is actually in your country. Dell just connects you to a sorting person who then sends you off to India. You have to ask them to repeat stuff like four times before you can understand what their talking about.

Btw, is the peeling problem occurring with the current mac books? and if they do peel will they replace it or fix it?

 

[ziggyonice]

Btw, is the peeling problem occurring with the current mac books? and if they do peel will they replace it or fix it?

I haven't noticed this being too large of an issue, however everything I've read has said that any topcase peeling/chipping and discoloration issues which are not due to accidental damage, are regularly repaired at no cost to the customer so long as the machine is otherwise covered by AppleCare.

But I really don't think you're likely to see it happen.
Btw, don't forget to get your free printer in addition to the iPod touch!

 

[Bwilky]

I haven't noticed this being too large of an issue, however everything I've read has said that any topcase peeling/chipping and discoloration issues which are not due to accidental damage, are regularly repaired at no cost to the customer so long as the machine is otherwise covered by AppleCare.

But I really don't think you're likely to see it happen.
Btw, don't forget to get your free printer in addition to the iPod touch!

Free printer eh? Is it that Canon Pixma piece of crap? When I got my Imac last fall I got a free Canon Pixma along with it. Only thing is, it's value wasn't worth the space it takes up in our house. Plus the ink is almost the same price as the printer. And yes, we will get apple care without a doubt. The piece of mind is worth it.