XPS 16 or MBP 15"

[Slyphee]

Hey everyone, I've been a longtime browser of the forum and finally decided to take the plunge to try and get some help to make a decision on buying a new laptop seeing as my sony vaio decided to pack up on me and leave.

First off I'd like to say that the main programs I use are Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Illustrator along with Netbeans, Eclipse at times, jedit, and a few others I forget. That's in addition to the general use of my computer for browsing, light gaming (WoW), and listening to music.

So I guess to my main dilemma... I was wondering, as a web developer always looking to learn new skills, would the MBP with a dual boot of Windows give me the best of both worlds being able to utilize the underlying *nix in OS X along with the applications (like Visual Studio) available in Windows. The reason I'm asking is because I've come at a cross road on whether I should buy OS X or to just stick with Windows and dual boot to Linux when I need to try out LAMP (I know windows has WAMP but windows doesn't check for upper and lower case). Maybe I could even triple boot with the MBP even if OS X doesn't provide the functionality to take Linux out of the equation.

Also I'm wondering, aside from the applications available for OS X, what underlying features are great for web development and server maintenance? I've been reading around and there have been a few references to SSH and the built in Apache while using the terminal, are these really that great features to have native to the system?

Lastly, I would in the future have the option of developing iPod/iPhone apps and not just web apps for those products. I guess thats another justification, to me at least, of why getting a MBP would be a good buy to me.

I just need a little clarification and help on understanding the underlying *nix even a little. Thanks for reading.

 

[thegoldenmackid]

You aren't going to get a sense of unbiasedness on here, however, it seems to me that the XPS would do everything you'd want to do, minus the iPhone apps?

 

[Slyphee]

You aren't going to get a sense of unbiasedness on here, however, it seems to me that the XPS would do everything you'd want to do, minus the iPhone apps?

Yeah I've been leaning more towards the XPS but just wanted some more information on the OS X side of development. I suppose if I ever do have an urge to do some development with OS X I could opt for a Mac Mini but then thats just an add-on price I could have avoided.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[Abstract]

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In terms of hardware, both will do what you want, although the current 15" MBP is quite overpriced with its specs.

However, if you wanted to run OS X in the future, you wouldn't need 2 machines.

 

[chrono1081]

I wouldn't buy a Dell if you paid me. They are simply not well built products. We got a horde of them at work, XPS included and you wouldn't believe the amount we have fail all the time.

 

[Slyphee]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

In terms of hardware, both will do what you want, although the current 15" MBP is quite overpriced with its specs.

However, if you wanted to run OS X in the future, you wouldn't need 2 machines.

Yeah I can't buy anything now anyway so I'd most likely wait until the Jan/Feb? update of the MBP is released. Hopefully they update the specs to somewhat match what the XPS 16 is offering although from what I've been reading on the forums they may not.

I wouldn't buy a Dell if you paid me. They are simply not well built products. We got a horde of them at work, XPS included and you wouldn't believe the amount we have fail all the time.

Really? I've read about a few problems with the XPS 16 over on notebookreview but I thought they were in the minority. How do you find Dells customer service or do you not have to deal with that at work?

 

[entatlrg]

I wouldn't buy a Dell if you paid me. They are simply not well built products. We got a horde of them at work, XPS included and you wouldn't believe the amount we have fail all the time.

Couldn't of said it any better myself. We used to buy only Dell, back in the day they where great. The quality has gone down drastically since then, from Latitude's to the XPS machines we've had them and nothing but problems....

Do what we did, buy MacBook Pro's, run OSX and Windows when need be and never look back

 

[bcgflow]

I consider myself a PC person and only bought a Mac to do iPhone dev. However, I now find myself using my Mac as mymain machine. The startup times are faster and everything just seems to run zippier. It just seems easier to jump in/jump out (I have a PC with similar specs).

I run VMWare Fusion on my Mac which allows me to go between Windows and Mac OS/X pretty easy. I agree with the other posters.. Dell has gone downhill