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mckeek

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 5, 2004
25
0
I happened to have my nice new 15" PB 1.33/60G/768M/combo at work yesterday when a guy comes in and asks me to install some software on his personal laptop. He hauls out this behemoth of a 17" HP he bought at Costco - says he paid $1600 for it. So I set it up next to mine and loaded the requested software on it, then fooled around with it for a while. His was a P4 2.66/40G/512M machine.

Overall: Similar features (HP has no FW800 but more USB ports, and of course a 17" screen - VGA but no DV output, etc.) Similar performance (the megahertz myth is true!) Apple far superior in hardware design than HP and in software design than MS.

System design: Not even in the same league as Apple. Ticky-tack design.
Build quality: About the same. The HP is built like a tank (must have weighed 11 pounds), but the fan(s) are kind of noisy. Nice keyboard feel, etc.
XP vs OSX: Functionally they're about the same, but OSX is much more elegantly implemented.
Performance: About the same. It's hard to compare apples and oranges since the software suite is so much different. For instance, launching IE is little bit faster on the PB but after the program is cached launching it again shows the windows machine to be significanlty faster. Web browsing is about the same. Opening up a similarly sized pdf file is much faster on the PB, due to the superior performance of Preview over Acrobat. He had iTunes installed - opens much faster on the PB. However, his speakers sounded a lot better than mine when actually playing a song.

End result: Glad I bought my PB! Maybe you should, too.
 

cr2sh

macrumors 68030
May 28, 2002
2,554
3
downtown
I've seen those monsters, and you're right.. they're quite hefty. I'd be interested to know battery life on one of those... didn't hapeen to ask, did ya?
 

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
cr2sh said:
I'd be interested to know battery life on one of those... didn't hapeen to ask, did ya?
Any P4 will not be good, Centrino is the way to go for x86 laptops, anyone who buys a P4 laptop these days is a fool IMO :D
 

wPod

macrumors 68000
Aug 19, 2003
1,654
0
Denver, CO
edesignuk said:
Any P4 will not be good, Centrino is the way to go for x86 laptops, anyone who buys a P4 laptop these days is a fool IMO :D

i dont think it makes much of a difference. . . my mom has a centrino and only gets about 30 min out of her battery. i always laugh at how 'portable' it is when she constantly complains about plugging it in. ive had my 12" pb for almost a year and still get a helthy 4 hours out of it!
 

dopefiend

macrumors 6502
May 6, 2004
425
0
edesignuk said:
Any P4 will not be good, Centrino is the way to go for x86 laptops, anyone who buys a P4 laptop these days is a fool IMO :D


Unless they are a power user and need the power.....
 

dopefiend

macrumors 6502
May 6, 2004
425
0
wPod said:
i dont think it makes much of a difference. . . my mom has a centrino and only gets about 30 min out of her battery. i always laugh at how 'portable' it is when she constantly complains about plugging it in. ive had my 12" pb for almost a year and still get a helthy 4 hours out of it!


ok...Im calling total b.s. on this post....

Only 30 minutes? there is something wrong with it then! Send it back.
 

mckeek

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 5, 2004
25
0
I asked the guy and he said his battery is good for about an hour and a half.
 

grapes911

Moderator emeritus
Jul 28, 2003
6,995
10
Citizens Bank Park
mckeek said:
Similar performance (the megahertz myth is true!) Apple far superior in hardware design than HP...

First, this is not myth. Its the processor design. CISC vs RISC. I'd go in to detail, but you can find articles about this all over the web. Second this speed difference is not apple vs hp, but motorola (I think thats what apple uses) vs intel.
 
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