Mac or PC Laptop for presentations...

[Butla99]

I am debating whether or not to switch to Mac and buy a new Al Powerbook. I am a graduate student and will mostly be using it for assembling presentations (what is the Mac equivalent of Powerpoint?), word processing, internet surfing, music, and DVD's. Also, from anyone who has compared a new PB LCD to, say, a high-end Dell or other PC LCD with a higher resolution, which screen looks better? I know that the PB's don't necessarily have as many pixels (1440x900 for 17" vs. 15" Dell with 1920x1200), but do the PB Lcd's still look just about as crystal clear? Thanks for any advice.

 

[MillieWales]

I am IT manager for a company who only use PC's. I have got so fed up with PC's ( I have macs at home) that I have just ordered myself a 15" PB, which will run Virtual PC and basically run the office.

Apples version of Powerpoint is Keynote, and in my opinion is very good. I will be making all the companies presentations on it soon. Office comes with Powerpoint for the Mac too, and is still a very good piece of software. Also, Apple are currently offering a discount on keynote if you purchase a mac.


As for the displays, in my opinion they are very good. Have used a 12" iBook for extended periods of time and found it very easy on the eye. As far as comparing it to top end laptops, it is as good, if not better.

Hope that helps.

 

[yamabushi]

powerpoint on a Mac

Office:Mac for students is a good deal if you are used to Office on Windows. It will cost about $150US. It includes the same applications as the standard version of MSOffice for Mac. Keynote is also a good choice for presentations.

The widescreen format of the 15 and 17 inch powerbooks will be great for watching DVDs. Of course, you can also sometimes find widescreen displays on pc notebooks with similar quality and price. You will have plenty of power for the uses that you mentioned with a 1.25Ghz G4. I am also upgrading to the 15" powerbook and will use it for school. If I need to make a presentation to a large group I can always connect to a projector or external display.

 

[dongmin]

Re: Mac or PC Laptop for presentations...

Originally posted by Butla99
I am debating whether or not to switch to Mac and buy a new Al Powerbook. I am a graduate student and will mostly be using it for assembling presentations (what is the Mac equivalent of Powerpoint?), word processing, internet surfing, music, and DVD's. Also, from anyone who has compared a new PB LCD to, say, a high-end Dell or other PC LCD with a higher resolution, which screen looks better? I know that the PB's don't necessarily have as many pixels (1440x900 for 17" vs. 15" Dell with 1920x1200), but do the PB Lcd's still look just about as crystal clear? Thanks for any advice.

there shouldn't be much difference between top-of-the-line PC laptops and PowerBooks in terms of the LCD quality since they often use the same component LCDs.

The other thing to consider is that it's much easier to hook up your PB/iBook to an external projector than a PC. I've seen so many instances where people embarass themselves for 30 min - 1 hour trying to get their presentation to display properly on a projector. I've never had that problem with my iBook. If you plan on doing a lot of powerpoints (or keynote presentations), I'd seriously consider a Mac laptop.

 

[encro]

Kind of on-topic

If you have a Sony-Ericcson mobile phone then you could control the powerpoint/keynote presentation using Salling Clicker.

http://clicker.salling.com

 

[Counterfit]

Do not underestimate the power of Salling Clicker! Worth sooo much more that $10.

 

[riwanami]

My ThinkPad

I use a ThinkPad T40p, which has a 1400 x 1050 resolution on a 14.1 inch LCD. It may seem a little high for a 14 inch screen, but when surfing the web or using Excel it works very well. I do adjust the Windows icons and menu fonts to a larger size, but other than that it's actually hard to go back to a 1024 x 768 screen.

My sister uses the 15 inch TiBook. The 15 inch's screen is defintely brighter and is more clear than mine. It's also a widescreen which makes it more useful for DVD playback and video editing. However, I find that it's actually a little easier to do word processing and other office related tasks on my ThinkPad. When using MS Word on the TiBook, it seems as though I'm wasting half of the screen, where as with the ThinkPad, I can use the full screen and see more vertically without sacrificing font size.

However, the wide screen does allow me to use another program and see both programs opened at the same time, which make it much easier to drag and drop files into or from Word.

Finally, my sister's TiBook has Keynote installed. This is far more superior presentation program than PowerPoint. It offers better quality transitions unseen. I wish Apple would come out with one for PCs, but then I'm beginning to wonder why I haven't bought a Mac yet!

 

[crazzyeddie]

Just in case you didnt pick it up, there are Mac versions of PowerPoint Office Excel etc and they work better than the Windows versions IMO.

 

[lstappae]

Hard to choose?

Having the option to choose between my high spec Dell and my PB G4, it isn't a real option. I moved over to Mac 2 years ago still uncertain that time if my choice would be beneficial. After many (international) presentations I and my audience love my PB Keynote presentations. Powerpoint is boring. Why not make presentations in LiveStage Pro 4? Forget about Windows: I informed my nieces and neffews their uncle won't reformat and reinstall from scratch their terrible Windows machines. I have had enough. I can rely on my Powerbook and Mac OS X. Never scrambled a presentation thanks to Apple. My new Dell, mentioned to do my job, just good enough to play frisbee. Not a match with my Apples. Resolution is great!

 

[Counterfit]

Re: Hard to choose?

Originally posted by lstappae
My new Dell, mentioned to do my job, just good enough to play frisbee.

I couldn't imagine playing frisbee with a Dell, wouldn't it hurt if you missed a catch? Well, that's assuming you could manage to get it further that three feet due to it's weight.

 

[legion]

Best presentation laptop screen I've ever seen is the IBM A31p. They are EOL'ing that model as of Oct 15 '03, but hopefully they'll migrate the screen tech to a new model (there are rumours, but nothing confirmed.)

The tech to design that screen was only used on two models of laptops, the A31p from IBM and I believe a Toshiba or Fujitsu model (name doesn't come to mind.) It was/is very expensive to produce since it doesn't use the standard MVA/PVA LCD display tech but was specially built (I think Samsung was the manufacturer.) It is extremely bright, high contrast, 1600x1200 15", near 180degree horizontal and vertical viewing angles. If you get a look at one of these, it definitely is the best. Due to it's sheer brillance and colour reproduction capabailities, from its introduction, it was THE recommended laptop for use with most 3D modeling software and Avid digital video editing solutions.

Alas, I have never had the privilege to own this model but have seen it at professional conferences. Only desktop LCD I've seen measure up to the contrast/brightness and colours is the PremierePro 23" Sony (which is about $2.6K-- this includes a comparson against the Apple CD which really needs to be updated)