MOSX your attempt at convincing people you arn't a troll and don't spend hours on the forum has failed.
You still haven't shown me the laptop you would replace the macbook or macbook pro with.
If apple charges twice of what there laptop is actually worth, then you should sell your laptop as you'll get more than 50% of what you paid for it and then you would get a better laptop than you have now.
Do you have proof that I spend hours on this forum? Feel free to ask the admin how much time I spend here.
Your silly attempt at trying to paint me as someone who has nothing better to do than spend time here just makes you look like the classic internet troll that can't stand the fact that someone has a better argument than they do (nice reply to all of my counter-points) and you're trying the classic way of turning it around on the other person. But you're failing miserably.
I actually "replaced" my MacBook nearly a year ago. You see, its almost a year to the day that Apple replaced my first MacBook thanks to botched repairs. A few weeks later I received my HP dv6500t from HP. Nearly $500 less after taxes. Similar processor, twice the memory, bigger HDD, dedicated graphics that still play modern games, HDMI output, memory card reader, fingerprint reader, bigger screen, similar real world battery life, VGA, S-Video (no costly adapters for any external monitor), full size ExpressCard, TV tuner, etc.
You originally accused me of quoting very out of date sites and their polls. I actually quoted from March 2008.
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Featur...-vista.aspx/17
So your only proof is a link to an article written based on a poll taken by a 800 people? Really? Eight hundred people? That many, eh? A full 800 people.
Wow.
I never knew that 800 people could represent the nearly 200,000,000 people who have bought Vista so far.
I don't need to prove that they do use them - as I only said that they were there if you needed/wanted them. You on the other hand said that only 0.01% of people used them - you prove it.
Read this forum. Theres over 200,000 registered users here. You're bound to get more than 800 replies
Yet again - your opinion based only on your opinion and all of your friends.
Show me someone, besides you or other Apple supporters, who likes DVD menus.
Show me musicians that use Garageband seriously. Real musicians. Every hobbyist I know and even the indie bands I know will not only not touch Garageband (some laugh at it) but they don't use Macs either.
Show me how iWeb is useful without Mobile Me as well. With all of the hassle of going in and changing the coding and such to point to other servers and folders and such, you're better off with an easier to use 3rd party tool that is built with that in mind.
Windows versions of the software that you said were inferior and not worth talking about (you said that was why MS didn't advertise them). Now your talking about how great they are. On the Mac you don't need the extra software - but like Windows it is available (well except an equivalent to iWeb and Garageband).
They're inferior? Really? How? Windows Movie Maker was in the past. But now its every bit as easy to use as iMovie. And not nearly as limited as iMovie '08 either.
Actually a huge percentage of people do have video camera these days (almost all digitals come with one) not forgetting phone video as well. And a nice easy way to edit is iMovie. The new iMovie is very basic - but it is easy to use.
rofl, you're going to try to tell me that people edit the movies they take with their cellphone or digital cameras?
Have you ever watched youtube? Every edited movie on there is done by VirtualDub (freeware) and its almost always just text and music edited in.
I didn't mean those types of scripts but you have proved my point that Windows doesn't come with a complete set of iLife comparable apps (3 out of 5) but thats OK you say because no one uses the others - we are still waiting for you to prove this one.
Thats because iWeb and Garageband are utterly useless. If you want to record audio of any kind, Audacity is much better.
And you need a third party alternative to iWeb anyway.
"Its great that dvd's play "out of the box", but please remind people, particularly non-computer literate types, that Vista Home DOES NOT play DVD's "out of the box" - I quoted this from pcauthority. Is it true?
Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate ship with DVD decoders with full DXVA support out of the box.
Vista Home Basic, Business, and Enterprise do not.
However, the only way to really get any of those three is to buy a PC with those pre-installed.
And I have yet to see a PC ship with Vista Home Basic that does not include some sort of DVXA compatible DVD playing suite.
It is you who accuse Mac users a being elitist, foolish and thinking they are better than everyone else. Therefore you obviously feel people are looking down on you. In fact when someone approached you with your Mac - you seemed quite pleased with yourself.
I hadn't even owned it for a few weeks at that point. I hadn't yet experienced my first crash or the faulty DVD writer.
Funny thing, I was going to google seeing about wiping OS X off the drive entirely and installing Vista. When I went to type that into the search box in Safari, OS X crashed.
Anyway, I find it hilarious you think I feel people are looking down on me. You're free to think what you wish.
I quoted a source that explained a survey and the numbers of people who had downgraded, and you question if it's true or not and then say that more people are using Vista than Macs as some way of proving your point - it doesn't.
Of course you chose to disbelieve a PC sites survey results, to accept them would reveal your own blindness that you accuse others of.
I didn't have to work hard to find info on this - there are lots of sites regarding downgrading Vista to XP.
Just like your poll of 800 people?
Give me some real results and I'll believe it. So far there have been no real polls or any sort of real evidence regarding people downgrading to Vista.
But as I said before, at least you get the option with Windows to run the software you want. You buy a new HP or Dell and you can put Windows XP on it.
Good luck getting Tiger to run on a new Mac.
So although those computers they NEED to buy can come with Vista pre-installed at no extra cost - they chose to buy with XP pre-installed because its an easier option than Vista (and cheaper). You cannot be serious. I quoted you real users in a real survey and you come up with that!
What real survey? I have yet to see a real survey. A survey of 800 people, or even 20,000, does NOT represent 200,000,000 people.
If someone chooses to buy a computer with Windows XP, there are legitimate reasons. If they choose XP over Vista because "XP is faster" that shows they are just as ignorant as the average Mac user and have not used Vista and only choose to believe what they are spoon fed by Apple and the media.
Microsoft and manufacturers have been forced into still offering XP by disgruntled customers - see the survey that I quoted you or google downgrading Vista to XP, there are lots of sites on the matter. Not because they want you to have choice. Choice isn't given by a company that has been convicted of monopolistic practices unless it's forced too.
Really? I don't see any consumer systems offered by Dell or HP or Gateway or any manufacturer that still has XP.
In fact, the only way to get XP is to buy certain business models.
And you know why?
Because some businesses STILL NEED XP because of either IT policies or custom software.
When has Apple ever given customers the choice of what software to run?
All companies want you to do it their way (that's business and includes Apple) but please don't try to prove an argument with it. i.e that people are downgrading because MS offers that choice. Its laughable
Microsoft is offering the choice, as are the small number of companies (that you can count on one hand if you're missing fingers on the same hand) on a small number of machines.
Being an Apple fan, you seem to forget that the world outside of Apple is all about choice. With Apple its the iWay or the highway. With PCs, you can install whatever OS and software you choose mixed with whatever hardware you choose.
Saying having the choice to do what you want is laughable is laughable itself. People deserve to have choices. You have NO choice with Apple but EVERY choice with other PC manufacturers.
In fact that's why my brother-in-law downgraded to XP. And believe me - he didn't want to do it as he had just bought a new machine but after 3 months of use he upgraded as he put it (that was in April of this year). He says his machine is now mach faster.
Well thats funny because I had XP on my HP and I made the full move to Vista from XP from dual-booting both. Vista is much faster than XP. As I said, go to hardware enthusiast sites. Or follow the links I post. Theres mountains or reviews, benchmarks, and more people using Vista than there are Mac users total will tell you that Vista is faster than XP.
You didn't do much research did you? You've said in the past how happy you were with your Mac, how it would do everything Windows would do. Also a year and a half ago - you hated HP.
You obviously knew how much it cost at the time otherwise you wouldn't have bought it.
Yeah I was upset with HP because the motherboard had gone bad in my first HP. It was a bad ATI southbridge chip.
But in the end, my experience with HP ended up being MUCH better than with Apple.
Anyway, I did do a lot of research. The thing is, I had used Macs a lot in the Apple store, friends units, and previous experience. I didn't exactly HAVE one yet. I was buying into the Apple hype and trusting my own limited experience (though that limited experience put into hours would be at least 60 or more hours worth of use).
I presume you knew it didn't have a card reader too but now you're complaining about that. You say its because of the cost that you feel this need to tell the new truth. But you knew the cost when you bought it. Sorry it doesn't make sense. Mac has always been more expensive - maybe when you bought yours the gap was narrower than now - but they have always cost more. It's another illogical argument.
Its amusing seeing someone try to use my old arguments against me. Quite funny actually.
I already admitted that I was stupid for buying into the Apple hype and believing everything.
You see, like many others, I thought I could live without standard features because OS X was supposed to be so amazing and so well built.
When it turned out that OS X was not anything like that.... Well, thats when I realized I made a huge mistake in putting software first when I should have put hardware first.
My main argument with that is that OS X is not anywhere near what its cracked up to be and that they shouldn't be charging more for the software and they should be including standard features, like memory card readers.
And there is still the other reason that you left Windows behind originally - viruses, malware and trojans. It all still exists on Vista (much improved maybe - but still there) and all this still exists on the hardware that you said was crap and you were so pleased to see the back of in the first place (have HP suddenly improved in a year and a half?). I know you probably think it's only idiots and people who visit dodgy websites who have this problem but it doesn't alter the problem is there. I hope you've researched this. You seem to believe all the hype about Vista - and considering you've only just upgraded - you don't want to be disappointed again.
The whole viruses and such was me being an idiotic Apple fanboy. I have admitted that numerous times. In all of the years I've used Windows I have never had a virus, spyware, or malware of any type. I have only ever had one false positive returned on a java script from cnn.com. That was it.
To get a virus, spyware, or anything, requires the user to actively download, install, and run such software. That is how it is in the modern world.
HP improved significantly in the two years.
You see, unlike Apple, HP listens to their users and revises products based on their complaints. Considering my current system is 2 generations newer than the one I had originally, a lot had changed.
Secondly, I've had this HP since October of last year. It showed up about a month after my replacement MacBook.
I had been using another HP replacement before that. But I told them I wasn't happy with it compared to my previous system. My original HP, purchased in March of 2006, had a Turion64 ML-37, 1GB of RAM, 100GB HDD, ATI Xpress 200M (with 128MB of dedicated memory), TV tuner, etc. The replacement was a Core 2 Duo 1.73GHz, 160GB HDD, 1GB of RAM, Intel GMA 950, TV tuner, etc. I called them and told them I wasn't happy with it. So they offered to replace it with the system I have now. 2GHz Core 2 Duo (compared to the 2.16 in my MacBook), 2GB of RAM, GeForce 8400M GS, HDMI, fingerprint reader, etc.
I haven't "Recently upgraded" at all. I've been using this system for close to a year. And earlier this year it was my only system for about a month when Apple was botching the repairs on my MacBook then.
Before that I had used Vista's public betas and I actually installed XP then Vista on my original MacBook and used it for about 5 months before it went in for repairs.
I've been using Vista, overall, longer than I've been using Tiger or Leopard.
So your argument fails
Last year, you and a MacRumors member joked on these forums how you had bored all your friends and family with your talk of how great Macs were when you switched - and you've only just switched to Vista - now you're telling everyone how great HP and Vista are - does this sound familiar?
No it doesn't sound familiar at all because I've been using Vista since well before I started using OS X. My primary machine has had Vista (with an XP dual boot) for nearly a year now, and it has been Vista only for almost 7 months.
I've been "preaching" about the benefits of PCs and Windows since what? Right after my HP showed up nearly a year ago and I realized I had made a huge mistake putting my faith in a Mac?
There are plenty of dual platform users on these boards who give honest unbiased opinions and information regarding Windows - without the preaching.
I do give honest and unbiased opinions. I can't help the fact that you don't like what I have to say and that most of your arguments in this particular post were completely off
I was a "buy a Mac no matter what" kind of person (I've been using Macs in my family since 3 years old), and, as a 18-year-old college student, bought the best I could afford for my first Mac. I knew very little about PC's, but seeing as my friends had good, powerful machines for less than my Macbook, I saw no reason why an even more expensive $1300 Macbook shouldn't outperform them.
Exactly. Also, OS X is supposed to be this magical OS that is better than everything else, so you're supposed to be happy without those other features because it all "just works" and everything is great.
But it doesn't.
Its hilarious that OS X crashed on me when I was typing "erase OS X install Vista only" into google. It froze right after "erase OS X".
