MACBOOK Vs. Windows Laptop
 

I can purchase a windows laptop with higher specs for cheaper, than if I bought a Macbook. However, cheap is not always necessarily good.

Any experience with macbooks in comparison to windows laptop?

People that usually buy macbooks are:
1) trendy
2) love MacOS
3) pay for all their software
4) don't mind paying more for hardware/software
5) will jump at the first opportunity to give steve jobs a handjob

Is that you?

^ so true

hardware/software are expensive and barely any hacked software

I bought a magazine that put Windows based laptops vs Macbooks.

And in the end, Windows based laptops perform better overall. Macbooks performed better in video compression and some other things. I'll have to re-read them to give you the better facts.

But for the most part, Eclypz pretty much summed it up. LOL

LOL
OSX software is actually much easier to pirate, most of them don't even have serial or protection

Mac = you can easily use both OSX and windows with full function

PC notebook = you can only use windows and have a difficult time installing OSX

i like using OSX, especially for daily task like web, email, IM, office productivity

I bought an aluminum one and exchanged it 3 times then eventually refunded cause it had shit build quality. Read macrumors forum, I had everything from slanted keys, loose battery covers, and flickering screens.

Kinda glad I refunded it cause it felt like an impulse buy... I mean I could do everything the Mac could do on Windows and more. Any type of office productivity BLOWS on a Mac, I have no idea how you can like it. Word 08 sucks, Powerpoint is decent, Excel 08 has shit compatibility with Excel 07/03, Entourage sucks compared to Outlook, and Office on Mac doesn't even have OneNote or Access. It takes like more than twice as long to OPEN any of the MS office apps (compared to Windows) and even longer to SAVE (wtf?). Oh.. and forget using a Blackberry on a Mac as well (if you have one) cause there's basically zero compatibility. This is coming from a business student so if you don't need stuff like Outlook, Blackberries, and Access then I don't think a Mac will be that different.

and eclypz... you forgot dumb people haha. I can't count the number of times I walked into the Apple store downtown and find people booking 2 hr appointments at the "genius bar" to get taught how to bookmark sites and create new folders :lol

I Use Mac to surf porn......plus Mac has pretty decent first party written software. Like Final cut pro etc etc.

bwahahah
i laff at u for that list..its a list that comes from a pro windows user that think macs are horrible...
im on a mac..been using one for awhile now..
nothing beats having windows/osx run at the same time..infact..im on windows7 with my macbookpro right now and its fine..

The OSX platform is very user friendly..for the average consumer, the mac will do everything they need it to do. Its great for IM/Email/web...and theres MS Office for OSX that is pretty much identical to the windows version. For simple worries such as spam n crap, theres barely any out there, tho phishing and crap is still there.

its just that to this day, alot of work related files and tasks still need the windows platform..and depending on what faculty/program, it might not support the mac. Its VERY easy to boot up windows on a mac anyways

and yes..porn is awesome on mac..
Safari>Private Browsing...NOThING is saved..LOL

And i laugh at responses like yours....Only Mac fanbois get offended by my post.

Where did I ONCE say Mac was horrible? And as a Mac fanboi, can you honestly tell me you wouldn't jump at the first opportunity to give Steve Jobs a handjob?...be honest now....;)

PS: Are you serious?? Private browsing as a selling point for OSX??? lol....
[sarcasm] I wish my Windows PC can do that [/sarcasm]

As a heavy computer user, I much prefer the Mac OS to the Windows OS.

Simple things like built-in SSH via Terminal and a VNC viewer does it for me right there.

bwaha, im the least of this fanboy garbage
simply becuz i still use windows 60% of the time. I am offended becuz u jumped the gun on the first reply someone said a "pro" about the OSX and u went all ethug

i know someone that bought a mac just cuz he got a student discount only to run windows 100% of the time lol

e-thug??? lol

I think my list is pretty "pro" OSX:
1) trendy (being trendy is a bad thing?)
2) love MacOS (loving something different is bad?)
3) pay for all their software (paying for software is bad?)
4) don't mind paying more for hardware/software (this might be bad, but it's the truth)
5) will jump at the first opportunity to give steve jobs a handjob (wanting to give somebody a hand job is bad? But seriously...I don't know of a single Mac owner that doesn't love this guy...I mean he single-handedly saved Apple)

Like i said...only fanbois would get offended by what I said....and trust me...I deal with enough Mac users at work to know that my list is a pretty damn good description of a typical Mac user, and if you got offended by that, then I apologize for offending you....

The only time my Macbook gets used is when my GF comes over (she loves OS X for some reason and would readily give Steve Jobs a handjob, I'm sure), when I go to visit her (kill time on the ferry), or the odd time when I need to give a presentation ...

Otherwise, it sits collecting dust because it's useless compared to my Windows-based computers ...

I recently had a Macbook Pro for one week and used it extensively during that time. My PC laptop was experiencing hardware failure and I managed to get a killer deal on the Mac, so I made the switch.

Keep in mind that I wanted to like the Mac. I truly did. It was a beautiful piece of kit and OSX has it's benefits.

I returned it. Here was the deal breaker for me. I play lots of compressed video formats (avi, mkv, etc). These videos look blocky and pixelated on the Mac. It seems that the codecs for macs aren't as good as the ones for pc. mp4/h264 may be fine on the mac - I didn't test them - but many [most?] other common formats don't work well...to the extent that it repeatedly gave me a minor headache. This was not only evident on the laptop screen itself but also on an external monitor. I played the same videos on the same external monitor that looked fine on my pc - an inferior spec pc - it wasn't a hardware issue. I tried multiple players and posted on many forums trying to resolve the issue. It seems generally (but very reluctantly) accepted that this is simply the way it is.

Some lesser irks:

I use my laptop as a desktop replacement 95% of the time while hooked up to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. The other 5% makes it worthwhile for me to have a portable system. This leaves me with only one system to purchase and maintain and I like it that way. My windows pc always recognizes my external monitor and uses it by default when its connected. The mac doesn't. You need to close the lid (and reopen it if you don't want it to get too hot) to divert to the external monitor. You need to do this every time you boot up or take it out of sleep mode. Not a deal breaker but extremely annoying over time. Especially when your expectation is to have an "easy to use" system.

I've never heard anyone complain about this before so it might be just me; I find that the text in macs gives me eye strain. Text is jagged (for example, look at a "w" in the menu bar) and fuzzy and/or not crisp. While surfing the net with both safari and firefox I found text to be too small. I played with settings extensively to alleviate all these problems and never got text looking quite right. Maybe I could have, but I had already decided to return it.

Another frustration; for everything else I'm used to doing on the pc I found roughly equivalent mac programs. However, where there are a multitude of pc programs to choose from, sometimes I would only find one mac program to perform the same task. If I didn't like that particular program I just had to suck it up and use it. I ended up feeling a bit pigeon-holed.

There may be workarounds for some of these issues. If so, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing about them. I just decided to stop fighting it and returned the system while I could still get my money back.

The only quirk I've found is that after my MBA goes into standby for an extended period of time, say, overnight, and I flip it open, it will occasionally take a few moments before multi-touch starts working on the pad and I have to click using the button. And if I wasn't so lazy, I'd get the update that fixes that issue. Obviously, not that big of a deal.

I mean, everyone's experience is going to be different but I'm quite content with my mac notebook and my pc desktop. Each one does certain things slightly better than the other. I find that for casual everyday use, I prefer my Mac, but seriously, try out both in stores, and just simply pick whichever you prefer.

Mancini, I have the same issues with my Macbook for most of what you said. The external monitor and codec issues are extremely frustrating to me as I wanted to use it as a DVD player/media player for my bedroom when my GF isn't here.

Oh, one other thing, my Macbook just randomly stops recognizing my PCs, including the media PC that it's streaming video from, sometimes in the middle of a movie ! Grrr ...

I was so torn between buying a Macbook and just getting a new laptop.

This weekend I ended up buying a Dell Studio XPS 16. For the price, and the specs in compared to the regular Macbook I was looking at.... it was an easy decision.

For me, I wanted the Mac mostly for the iLife applications. But thinking realistically, I'd rarely ever really use them.

That's weird, for Mancini and Jmac. I always was able to just plug in a monitor and it would detect it automatically.

I definitely agree on the codecs issue though.

oh god, Safari, what a weakass browser

first off, if you have to ask whether to buy a Mac or PC, you don't know what you need, and generally aren't one of the few people that needs a Mac. So buy a PC, and go about your merry life.

i enjoy my mac, never had a problem, photoshop runs great for it, and it aesthetically it looks awesome.

if you don't know much about computers get a mac. you're much less likely to fuck it up, or get internet pr0n std's. it doesn't matter how fast your wind03z is if all it does it blue screen, or redirect you to pr0n sites when you're trying to do some real work.

vista is god awful, and vista is what you'll most likely be stuck with unless you know enough to downgrade to xp yourself, that is if you're laptop is capable of running XP or ubuntu without loosing wifi,sound, or external display capabilities.

few things make a macbook much better than the windows laptops, mag safe battery connector is awesome, backlit keyboard that you can see what you're doing in low light. much, much, much better power handling, and as a result much better battery life. try playing a 2 hour dvd/bluray movie on a windows laptop without dimming the screen to shit, and see how much battery life you have left. 0. as well as a very solid build, unlike creaky plastic windows notebooks.

1 thing tho, if you do get a macbook, never order one fully loaded, it's always cheaper to buy a bigger hardrive/ram/mouse from a supplier like netlink, and it's the same stuff apple would have sold you for much more. which you can say about the laptops as well, but the macbooks are more about the full package than just a .3 ghz upgrade or 1 extra gb here or there.

i hate elitist, spoonfed mac users, not macs, it's usually the opposite with windows..... usually.

all i know is.. Macs are a piece of shit.

which is exactly what i did! saved 2000 dollars including warranty. BUT i still do own a Macbook, my windows laptop is strictly for school. I love my macbook and if i had the flow i would easily choose the macbook pro over the windows laptop.

started using mac since my last job, now i use it more often, i have windows loaded on it, but dont use it as much.. for simple things mac is faster, batt lasts longer, doesnt get so hot. doesnt get viruses and crazy popups like most windows machines.
that being said, i am a sys admin, and administer windws network... kk