laptop help!!

Hey, my old laptop has just died, Im shopping around for a new one and was wondering if anyone can recommend a good one?

Im kind of tempted by an apple macbook - anyone have one? Are they good?! 

Original Post by amethystgirl:

Don't buy the Macbook... yet... they are due to make an announcement this Tuesday about the updated version. Rumors are that it will be more agressive (read: lower) pricing, but regardless, you'll either want to get the latest generation, or get a refurb of the old generation for much cheaper,  not a new old generation.

Yeah. Definitely wait another day or two........

http://www.macrumors.com/

OK, so, decided to buy a Macbook, but left it till today to see what happened, and now its gone up in price by £20, but it does say its an 'updated' version;

Can anyone explain whats different/the reason for a price raise?!

Thanks!

The new one is not just updated it is a whole new beastie. It's well shiny. *wants*

Could someone who understands computers more than I answer a question?

The new macbooks just came out. It used to be that you could get 2.4 GHz intel core 2 duo, 2gb memory, 160gb hard drive for $1299.

Now, for the same price, it's 2.0 GHz intel core duo, 2gb memory, 160gb hard drive.

I don't know much, but 2.4>2.0... Why would an update (upgrade?) do that?

The new ones rather than having a moulded plastic case have a machined aluminium one. They are very much more "green" than the old ones and that always adds cost. 

Also it's using DDR3 RAM rather than the more common DDR2, which will also add significantly to the cost.

I'd expect the prices to drop over the next 6 months or so, TBH.

Man.. I would've waited 3 months had I known about this.

Well they have super cute Dell laptops that look like wanna-be Mac laptops. I'm sure other companys do this also. I want one for school too. I want to learn how to use a Mac though.

I prefer PC, myself.  I don't get the 'just work' thing mac advocates use.  Admitably, I'm pretty comfortable with computers, so the odd windows issue doesn't bother me, but I've crashed macs before (quite often in fact).  The G5 never did like the Airport we got it so we went back to a linksys for a quarter of the price. 

I just generally feel like Macs play the 'you don't need to know about this' game too much.  In other words, in Windows if I want to find a file, even if I have no business with it at all, I can find it.  You can do it with Macs too, but it's a much more convoluted process.

If you really want a laptop, you need to think about what you're going to use it for.  Generally think of laptops as dead once thier warrenty runs out, because it's generally going to be more expensive to fix one than to get a new one. 

It doesn't sound like you need too much.  My current laptop was about $500 and it runs high end 3D modeling programs, so probably just about any budget machine is going to do what you absolutely need it to do.

Macs tend to be more expensive than thier PC counterparts.  The parts are specific, with some exceptions.  This isn't too big a problem, because you're talking about a laptop and you're unlikely to try to fix anything on you're own.  They also tend to be slower and less powerful overall than PCs.  The software is also much more expensive generally, and you don't tend to get much of a choice.

Macs do do a good job with video though.

Of course everything I'm saying really is more of a comparison between an XP PC and a OSX Mac.  Vista sucks.  I haven't heard of anybody who has it who likes it.  That alone might be a good enough reason to go Mac; I don't worry about it because I'm familar with how to 'downgrade' to XP.

 You might want to try Best Buy, if you have them. They're PSP agreement is terrific.  Laptops may or may not last very long, but if your laptop last throughout a 3 year extended warrenty, it's probably long since out of date anyway.  There are points were even the hardiest machines become useless due to not being able to keep up.

Bought a MacBook today! loveit loveit loveit!!

Apple guys were really helpful; thankyou everyone who recommended it/gave me advice!

Original Post by cassie_bee:

Bought a MacBook today! loveit loveit loveit!!

Apple guys were really helpful; thankyou everyone who recommended it/gave me advice!

That's great news! So glad we could help.