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The thing that converted me after owning PCs for the last 14 years was the durability and AppleCare which I only paid ~£50 for (student discount is very generous here in the UK) so I have to agree with you there.

Same here. Got a boxed version on ebay for about $80. Just got a new trackpad, keyboard and screen with it. Didn't ask for half the stuff Apple fixed but oh well.

I think I use W7 about as much as I use OS X so the OS wasn't really an issue for me, I wanted something that wasn't going to fry in a year and I'd be left stranded.

Win7 ain't bad. It still looks like a Fisher-Price toy to me though.

15 year PC veteran myself. I went through laptops like cheap booze. Then I saw a friend's white macbook that was 5 years old with a lot of miles on it. Old tech to be sure but still very solid. I was sold on Apple's build quality then and there and never looked back.

I really don't care what stupid things Apple comes up with down the road. Just don't change their build standards or customer service.
 
Before I posted a reply to this with a link I can't upgrade those are the two I have to pick from and I will use if for word processing surfing the Internet and music downloads any maybe video editing but that would be random just for fun not intensive video editing (basically everything you use it for in college)
Here is the link again to the laptops
http://www.winona.edu/it/laptopmodels.asp

Before you start college, please learn how to use punctuation.
 
Same here. Got a boxed version on ebay for about $80. Just got a new trackpad, keyboard and screen with it. Didn't ask for half the stuff Apple fixed but oh well.



Win7 ain't bad. It still looks like a Fisher-Price toy to me though.

15 year PC veteran myself. I went through laptops like cheap booze. Then I saw a friend's white macbook that was 5 years old with a lot of miles on it. Old tech to be sure but still very solid. I was sold on Apple's build quality then and there and never looked back.

I really don't care what stupid things Apple comes up with down the road. Just don't change their build standards or customer service.

Wow, what an odd coincidence! My best friend had a 4 year old white MacBook (which he just sold for £500) which really impressed me, considering in that same 4 year period I'd gone through 3 laptops.

It's funny, OS X is meant to be the user friendly system and Windows complicated, yet with terminal you can do so much fun stuff that you couldn't do with Windows command prompt. I'm looking into playing around on it, learning how to SSH and stuff. Could you recommend any good sites?

To the OP, I'd go for the mac tbh
 
If money is no objection then go with the mac as it will have better quality.

HP can be junk (good printers though). Someone I knew bought a netbook and for some reason HP made 5 partitions on it. On a netbook 250GB hard drive, there were over 80 processes running as well-full of crap, especially when you consider this was a bare minimum computer.
 
Hi,
Thank you everyone I've decided to get the 13 inch Mbp it's good looking light thin and works very well I also like the track pad a lot better than any pc
 
I carry both an Elitebook and a Macbook Pro. Macbook Pro is way nicer.

Plus stuff like the thumbprint reader on the Elitebook is flakey and not currently functioning.
 
Hi,

Next year for college I have the choice between a 13 inch MacBook pro with an i5 processor and a 14 inch HP Elitebook 8460p with an i7 processor. They are both aluminum although the Mac has the unibody and better touchpad please look at them a little online and tell me which one is better. O and they will both cost the same so price doesn't matter

Don’t you think it’s a bit “tricky” to ask such question on an :apple:-fans forum? :D

But I must admit that Apple MBP is a damn good machine.
I’ve been using PC’s since 1997 but this year I’ve tried my luck and bought my first MAC computer – MBP 15 2.2 2011.
It’s a very nice and efficient machine in both – they way it looks/feel and the way it works.

I would definitely go with MBP in your case.

p.s. Sry for mistakes, I’m not a native EN speaker :p
 
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hp has better specs, but what people dont realize is how very well Mac hardware runs with OS X. so higher spec'd PCs wont even be that much faster. and lets be honest, OS X alone is a reason to pick the mbp
 
They are both aluminum although the Mac has the unibody and better touchpad please look at them a little online and tell me
AS for the unibody. It might look better, is a little lighter and slimmer but the Elitebook's case is the better case in respect to toughness.
 
hp has better specs, but what people dont realize is how very well Mac hardware runs with OS X. so higher spec'd PCs wont even be that much faster. and lets be honest, OS X alone is a reason to pick the mbp

This is just untrue. My PC laptops BLAST away the performance of the MBP portables in just about ANY category.

...except sleep and wakeup time. (Edit: AND battery life...) :)

R
 
This is just untrue. My PC laptops BLAST away the performance of the MBP portables in just about ANY category.

...except sleep and wakeup time. (Edit: AND battery life...) :)

R

I would say the only thing pc's can do better than the current crop of macbook pros is play games. You can definitely find better graphics cards in some windows laptops out there, but not all of them have them.

I'd like to know what other tasks you "BLAST" away macs in?
 
I would say the only thing pc's can do better than the current crop of macbook pros is play games. You can definitely find better graphics cards in some windows laptops out there, but not all of them have them.

I'd like to know what other tasks you "BLAST" away macs in?

I can't believe you are defending the well known "lameness" of Apple hardware. <sigh>

Ok, I use 3D CAD software to review 3D engineering models, and I use it to calculate 3D radiation dose using a collapsed cone convolution algorithm, and then view it in 3D on CT scan data.

In addition, I sometimes do monte carlo modeling in Excel.

After all that, I play Left 4 Dead. :)

ANYTHING that uses the CPU or GPU will go faster in a PC.

R

(p.s., I love my MBP...I am not an Apple hater)
 
If you are going to buy an EliteBook, it should be the 17", which has a 1920x1200 display, but it's expensive.
 
I would wait till the free iPod touch deal arrives again, around the end of May or first week or two of June.

You can still get the student discount straight through Apple, you don't have to purchase from your university

Also Apple offersna $100 rebate on printers if you buy at the same time as your Mac.

Personally, I would buy a brother B/W laser on sale for $50 at staples or office depot.

Also, when choosing Mac or PC, remember bootcamp.

My university sold students windows 7 ultimate edition (the top of the line) for $7

My brothers university sold him licenses for $25, still cheap since the non sale price is over $300.
 
I can't believe you are defending the well known "lameness" of Apple hardware. <sigh>

Ok, I use 3D CAD software to review 3D engineering models, and I use it to calculate 3D radiation dose using a collapsed cone convolution algorithm, and then view it in 3D on CT scan data.

In addition, I sometimes do monte carlo modeling in Excel.

After all that, I play Left 4 Dead. :)

ANYTHING that uses the CPU or GPU will go faster in a PC.

R

(p.s., I love my MBP...I am not an Apple hater)

cpu - no

gpu - yeah
 
Since Macs now can run Windows through Bootcamp, the Mac would give you the best of both worlds. ;)

Agreed.

And having used Boot Camp in the past, that doesn't cure Win7 of being Win7. NFTS fragmentation, the pukey registry, speed creep over time (boot times post-login getting worse), the inability of Windows to properly manage itself, Win7 SP1 not fixing the problems I've encountered... Microsoft continues to get worse (as if that were possible, but it is).
 
There is nothing lame about the hardware in the current MBP line.

Dollar for dollar, and in terms of availability, you bet there is.

What I mean by "availability" is that there is a much higher range of CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, hard drives, etc., that simply are not available on the Apple systems. When you do get options from Apple, they tend to be incredibly over priced.

I am not meaning for this to become a bashing thread, one way or the other, but Apple and mainstream PC/laptops fit specific niches. Haters and lovers just don't see that.

R
 
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