Laptops for college

I completely disagree with this statement. I use my laptop every single day. Its a must for studying, working and study groups (so studying, which hopefully you will do a lot of?)~

Well yea laptops get expensive quickly, but it's foolish really.
For $1800 you can get a really sweet laptop that can handle anything school you throw its way for the entire time you're at college for $600-$700. Then, if you need to do any kind of crazy shit (video, modeling, rendering, whatever), you can get a money desktop with the remainder cash that has waaaaaaaaayyy more in practical hardware. My girlfriend got a crisp laptop for ~$600. Hell, looking anywhere you get dual-core or more, 250mb+ easy hard drive, and 2+ gigs of ram for ~$600 for a laptop. I built up a desktop with quad core, added 5 gigs of ram for 8 total, 500mb hd for just under ~$800. Why spend $1800 on something that is going to be surpassed in capabilities within a few years for less, when you can get something totally practical for far less? I don't know, just my opinion.

Macs are nice and shit (I use them a bit at school and they're chill with me), but the amount that you pay for the gay ass white/name shit is such a waste. Most options that you have (by the sounds of it) should suffice. Save the cash.

dell xps m1530, i better not get any haterade for this

holy beast desktop, what do you use it for if you spent so much on ram and processor and not on a video card~

i didnt use my computer at all to study... i used a notebook that i took notes in and the text book.

Exactly my thinking...8gb of ram with a quad core is a lot of power to not have a video card.

And grant (thats your name right skierboy?) i think you meant gb instead of mb when talking about the HD. 250mb wont get you far ;)

Ya seriously...first of all, there is no way I believe you got that all under 800. What OS are you running? You definitely need a 64 bit OS to use 8 gb of ram, it won't be used at all on anything less. And quad cores? There isn't even a true quad core on the market right now, they are just double duo cores. Do you have a video card at all? Cause a video card to run with those specs would cost another $500 or so, but if you did get all that you might be able to play Crysis or something.


On another note, to whomever said that PCs are still used for businesses but they won't be for long is somewhat incorrect. You also said that if businesses/people will use Firefox/IE then they should have no problem using Safari. This is partially correct. Most businesses won't use Firefox at all, at least not big companies. The reason is because Firefox is open-source and has no real technical support. Most companies will use IE even thought it is an inferior product because it has tech support. You will also never really see anyone move away from a PC in the office of a large company unless they really need a Mac for graphic design or something. PCs are more secure, and they also have the ability to run a MUCH MUCH more secure VPN (virtual private network) and Intranet that Mac's can't do nearly as well. You can't run a large company without either of these two tools because you need the stringent security.


Anyway, that was long haha, but it kinda proves my next point. If you are going to be doing anykind of business or engineering work, I would go with a PC just so you don't lose familiarity with it. Otherwise, if it doesn't matter, a Mac is a great option. One thing to remember is that "Windows 7" the new OS is coming out in 2009 or 2010 and hopefully it will be alot better than vista. Personally, I spent about $1800 bought a Toshiba laptop, 2 GB Ram, 2.87 GHz Duo Core processor, 256 ATI Radeon X1550 graphics card and a few other upgrades. This was about 2 years ago and was a "top of the line" customization but it still can outperform many many computers on the market. Don't go cheap, you'll regret it later.

What is an exacto knife?

get an alienware.

Alienware is like Apple, way over priced. Great machines but overpriced.

this is a really sketch one.

haha you cant just suggest mac cause you think its the best in the world.. depending on what hes going for it could be a terrible purchase.

dude isnt that a scalpel?

That's an exacto:

nah it's an exacto. a fucking hood one. we use em in art...

I see a lot of ppl in this thread saying they spent 1800 on a laptop, and in the next breath say that macbooks cost too much. If you are going to spend 1800 get a sick macbook pro....only thing i wish i had instead of my macbook.

Agreed.  I've been comparing PCs (HP in particular) and Macs and I gotta say you definitely get a lot more from a PC for the money than a mac.  So next year I'm definitely considering an HP.

scalpel:
exacto:

the middle macbook with the education discount is $1200 and i comes with a free $100 printer.. the macbook pro would be pointless for me because it just has better graphics stuff and i dont need that. i like pc's but im deffinately staying away from vista.. and xp is pretty much outdated now... so i think im stuck with the macbook for now..

do you like yours?

That is aweful logic.

Just got a macbook pro and I love it. It's fast, light, battery life is good, and overall very intuitive. Much easier to use than the Windows OS, in my opinion. Maybe it's because my old laptop gateway was a POS, but I'm really enjoying Mac... It's not magic and won't make your computer problems disappear completely, but so far, I'm happy with my choice.

I also do a lot of photo/video/audio stuff too, so that might have something to do with it. But I must say, touchpad gestures are dope. Magsafe cord-- ingenius.

why? vista sucks and xp is kinda old

Vista sucks on weak machines. Thats not Vista's fault, thats the fault of Microsofts marketing team who hyped it up to be good on weak machines. Vista runs great if you have a fast computer (read: LOTS of ram).


As for XP, it still can handle all todays new files types and programs so why not still run it. Its 'old' but it still work beauty. Would you throw out a working toaster because it doesnt have a 'pop tart" setting? No...so why would you do the same with OS's? If it gets the job done it gets the job done.


His logic made it sound like Mac was the only opition for him, which is total bullshit and weak. I was just pointing that out.

haha good metaphor.. another bonus apple has out there right now is a free 8 gb itouch or for $100 you can get teh 16gb version... i think im sold.

bump.

buy a mac for college get a free ipod touch. Check it on the apple site.

I've been an apple boy all my life. Born and raised on the mac. So I'm gonna say go with the mid range macbook. I use it, my friends use, its an awesome laptop. Plus nothing beats the os. But I do wish the days of 10.2 were around again, I loved it then.

wtf are you talking about? he doesnt NEED a 500 video card to run that computer, he could of spent like 100-200 on a decent one or not have one at all. 800 dollars for a system like that is believable if you look around the internet. i could probably build something like that for that much but thats probably because i get work at a computer store and get my stuff at cost. you're right about the quad cores though.

for the people who already have macs.. did you get iworks and can you open a windows word file with that? and what if you send an iworks file to a pc can they open it?

Why would you buy a 100-200 dollar video card for a system like that? That's like me buying a porsche and running it with a honda civic transmission. If you are going to get the best parts of everything else you might as well get a video card to go with it so you can at least use those capabilities.

Bottleneck.

Nuff saud.

You can open word files with pages, and export pages files to pdf or word document, no problem. I haven't opened up any excel stuff into numbers, because excel is still way better.

if you want to play games on it, go with alienware

*If you wanna blow money on it, go alienware.