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Need some advice

A

abeld61014

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 17, 2011
35
0
Hey guys, new to the forum and im sure you are absolutely sick of giving advice to people like me but its a lot of money to spend and im stuck as to what to do.

Ive finally decided to switch to apple and i dont know what notebook i should get, this is what it will be used primarily for.

Work - lightweight but being featherweight is not a necessity, ive llugged around a 5kg toshiba no problems for too long now though. The laptop will be used for linking up to a projector often to give presentations to clients and employees, must be good for word processing, graphs, pie charts, spreadsheets and the like.

Entertainment - i will NOT be using the mac to play games on, at all pretty much except perhaps randomly play football manager or some online game when i am bored, to reiterate things like elder scrolls, WOW, or other high end graphic games to do not interest me. I would like the laptop to be good for watching and sotring high definition movies however as i am often travelling in my work and my laptop is my source of tv shows, movies, and music.

In general i suppose i want the laptop to be speedy, in the sense that it wont move at a snails pace if im downloading something, on the internet and have some music playing.

Good battery life is essential, but compared to my maximum 2 hour current laptop im sure any mac will be a vast improvement.

Being from the UK the issue is i simply cant afford the higher end 15 and 17 inch modles, seeing as apple inflate their prices absolutely horrifically in the UK with no real justification, take for example the new iphone starting at the equivalent of 750 dollars compared to your 199.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated guys.

Dan
 
abeld61014 said:
Hey guys, new to the forum and im sure you are absolutely sick of giving advice to people like me but its a lot of money to spend and im stuck as to what to do.

Ive finally decided to switch to apple and i dont know what notebook i should get, this is what it will be used primarily for.

Work - lightweight but being featherweight is not a necessity, ive llugged around a 5kg toshiba no problems for too long now though. The laptop will be used for linking up to a projector often to give presentations to clients and employees, must be good for word processing, graphs, pie charts, spreadsheets and the like.

Entertainment - i will NOT be using the mac to play games on, at all pretty much except perhaps randomly play football manager or some online game when i am bored, to reiterate things like elder scrolls, WOW, or other high end graphic games to do not interest me. I would like the laptop to be good for watching and sotring high definition movies however as i am often travelling in my work and my laptop is my source of tv shows, movies, and music.

In general i suppose i want the laptop to be speedy, in the sense that it wont move at a snails pace if im downloading something, on the internet and have some music playing.

Good battery life is essential, but compared to my maximum 2 hour current laptop im sure any mac will be a vast improvement.

Being from the UK the issue is i simply cant afford the higher end 15 and 17 inch modles, seeing as apple inflate their prices absolutely horrifically in the UK with no real justification, take for example the new iphone starting at the equivalent of 750 dollars compared to your 199.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated guys.

Dan
Click to expand...


$199 for the iphone is the contract price, but wow just look at the UK store $2400 USD for the base 15", be cheaper to fly to new york and buy one

how do you connect to the projector, firstly you want to make sure the Mac has that same cable connection type
 
It sounds like the 13" or 15" MacBook Pro would be a good fit for what you need. Either one is capable of a VGA or HDMI connection to your projector, you just would need an adapter (~$30).
 
Not really helping you make a decision, but you may want to look into the Macbook Air as well. From what you wrote, you don't do anything that requires a lot of processing power.
 
Warvanov, thank you for that, its a weight off my mind to know it is capable of that.

Motoracer i thought about that but then people have told me it doesnt perform as well, but perhaps it might be the better fit, the problem is im often asking people who have a lot of money, not a lot of sense. So i thought i would post here to get some more intelligent input, heres hoping :D

Im not against the idea of getting the macbook air, ive just been advised that the macpro is an allround better system, and that the air is only good for its leightweight and design features.

Some people also advised me to wait until the ivybridge technology becomes available but i kind of need one before the end of the year.
 
abeld61014 said:
Being from the UK the issue is i simply cant afford the higher end 15 and 17 inch modles, seeing as apple inflate their prices absolutely horrifically in the UK with no real justification, take for example the new iphone starting at the equivalent of 750 dollars compared to your 199.
Click to expand...
Are phones subsidized over there? $199 isn't the actual cost of the iPhone. It's the subsidized cost. Actual cost is probably closer to ~$750.
 
takeshi74 said:
Are phones subsidized over there? $199 isn't the actual cost of the iPhone. It's the subsidized cost. Actual cost is probably closer to ~$750.
Click to expand...

Yes and depending on the plan, they get better subsidies than we do over here.

But over there you can buy a sim with a plan yourself, and his throw the SIM in there and you're good to go. Because of this, people who swap phones a lot buy and sell/swap phones more often.
 
The problem in the UK is that you have to enter a contract of say mimium 60 bucks a month to qualify to get the phone for free or at a reasonable cost, and then pay that over 24 months. Whereas am i correct in thinking in the states you could just purchase a verizon iphone, and then put your old verizon simcard in it which has a significantly lower cost plan ?

----------

Motoracer thank you very much for those links, i shall read through them when i can, but would you recommend waiting for the ivybridge technology to come about or will the new macbook which i believe is set to launch at the end of the year suffice !
 
abeld61014 said:
The problem in the UK is that you have to enter a contract of say mimium 60 bucks a month to qualify to get the phone for free or at a reasonable cost, and then pay that over 24 months. Whereas am i correct in thinking in the states you could just purchase a verizon iphone, and then put your old verizon simcard in it which has a significantly lower cost plan ?

----------

Motoracer thank you very much for those links, i shall read through them when i can, but would you recommend waiting for the ivybridge technology to come about or will the new macbook which i believe is set to launch at the end of the year suffice !
Click to expand...

While new technology is always nice to have, a person can always keep looking into the future and be envious to what will be coming out. For your needs, the current MBP will be more than sufficient. You will be happy either way. I love having the latest technology, but my 5 month old 13" MBP is really nice (especially with the SSD). I won't even be in the market for another laptop for at least a few years. At that point, Ivybridge will be old technology!
 
To be honest the majority of my tv shows, movies etc i keep on an external hard drive as i am too afraid of losing them from my laptop so anything over 300GB hard drive space is fine. I suppose what im looking for most is reliability, cool features and a speedy processor, im sure the updated macbook pro that is hopefully out by xmas will be the one for me, i suppose if i want to improve it with ssd or more ram i can do so myself at alater stage ?
 
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