Hey, all. I am interested in buying a fairly lightweight, but powerful laptop, sometime later this year... I'm a little fed up with windows, so I'm thinking I'll go for a 15" Macbook Pro. Cost is not a big problem, but the macbook pro is as far as I'll go. My sister has a Dell laptop, a big heavy one. I've heard that their laptops are pretty good, but hers has a bad DVD drive (can't burn CD's or watch movies), and their customer support is absolutely disgusting. Since about 16-19% (I think that was the estimate) of laptops have problems, I want to buy from a company with good customer support. So, Apple comes to mind. I'm a senior in high school, so I'll be using this laptop in college, along with my homemade desktop PC running MS XP. From different people I have heard mixed oppinions. Macs seem to be pretty good, overall. I can put all the software I can't use on the mac onto my PC, so I'm not worried about program compatability. Also, I've heard Mac's are better for video editing. I've got a senior project coming up, and I'm thinking of making a documentary type film on my school's robotics club and the competition we participate in (I'm a president of our club. Anybody heard of FIRST robotics, or participate in it? We're team 1294, a relative newcomer to the organization...). I would think that there is not much of a difference between the two platforms in video editing...

But I've heard that macs are just clean running machines, plain and simple, with lots of cool little features and great, easy to use design of the operating system and the system itself. Oppions? Please, no posts ranting about how terrible windows is, or how terrible Mac is. If you're somebody who has had experiences with mac or windows or both, I'd be very thankful if you could give me a short explaination of your experience using the machine, and what you liked or didn't like. Thanks a bunch.

Buy a Dell.

If you plan on using PC software, you're probably going to have to install Windows, and, unless you want to partition your laptop's HD and use Boot Camp, you're going to have to either use Mac's OS or Windows.

I'd go with a Toshiba. Better performance for a lower price.

Do you have anything more to say about why? I've heard the dell laptops are great... but, I'm not so sure that I want a dell, because my experiences with their customer support have been very annoying... And I am willing to try out the Mac operating system, because microsoft, frankly isn't impressing me. Even though I'm very familiar with all its tricks and little things you can use, I'm willing to learn something new.

Thanks wolfy, I've heard great stuff about toshiba. Although, I have a windows PC, so program compatability is unimportant to me.

Macs are over all very good. Although I have heard some rare cases where the help file corrupted, but that's about it.

Well even if youre going to be using a desktop PC, I wouldnt worry about bringing the files to the mac. I do that all the time and have had no problems with it.

I say go for a macbook, from what ive seen they're really nice.

Hmmm... Mac vs Windows Laptop debate...

Because i dispise macs [because MB is awesome deletedzored] because they hate my games...

I say windows

Please do me a favor and dont mention the "2 clicks" thing.

Why? That's a huge annoyance when you get a mac.

Dell's are cheap and when it comes to laptops you can get the best bang for your buck. All my dealings with there technical support has been fine, Apple's is much worse.

if you're too lazy to command+click you are too lazy to be alive.

Its not a huge annoyance if you go out and get a mouse on your own. Plus, they have the mouse that right clicks now. So if you only get the standard single button mouse, its your fault for being a moron.

AND

Its not supposed to be the same UI as windows, so not everything will be the same.

Also, Command Click does the same thing as right click if you didnt notice.

Windows= Good for fun [Most of the games are made for it]
Linux= Good for the leet
Mac/apple= Good for WORK [I mean actual WORK like making movies and stuff..]

My gut hurts so im gonna cut this post off right here.

Er... so get a mouse with two buttons... last I checked there were PLENTY.

Please do.

I'm not too lazy but honestly, how hard it would be to add a second mouse button?

And the laptop touchpads still only come with one mouse button.

Then add a USB mouse.

Command + Click prevents accidental right clicks.

Command + Click rather than 2 buttons also means the touchpad has less moving parts, which means its less likely to break :p

Command+Click also means you can use your touchpad as a mouse button.

I'm not convinced. I probably have the absolute worst coordination of anyone else on the forum, and even I don't accidentally right-click too often on a mouse.

(Touchpad on my laptop is a different issue, but in that regard we would be comparing apples and oranges)

I was referring to Tofus comment on how mac laptops ship with one button touchpads. In regards to functionality on a laptop, command + click would work better a right click with a touchpad.

I'm not a big fan of Dell Laptops. At all... Combined with their... customer "service" I would go Dell for desktops, but not laptops.

Toshiba make damn fine laptops. I'm on a toshiba now, my dad's been buying toshiba laptops for work since the begining of time, practically, and they're wonderful. If there's a problem, there is great customer service, and they're relatively cheap, and pretty powerful.

Or get a mac. I'm impartial to the OS, but if you go with Windows, go with Toshiba. Or at least don't go with Dell.

I just got my macbook pro, and it's AMAZING. The move was completely seemless, I moved all my firefox stuff, all my MP3s, all my thunderbird data, everything, completely seemlessly. As of right now, the boot camp video drivers arent THAT good, they're still enough to play most of the newer games, and any games that run natively on OSX run superbly. (I've been running WoW at full at 60FPS, for example).

Plus, it's lightweight, great battery life, etc, etc.

Get the mac.

I love my powerbook G4. Like fishi, my move was seamless - it's quick, it's light, it's stylish (the first time you boot it up the setup is beautiful and completely painless), it's shiney and if you desperatley need some win32 apps you can dual boot (Or when Leapord come out you can prossibly even run them natively from within OSX).

Toshiba do make cracking laptops, but I do have one gripe with them (They may have altered this since my experiences were a couple of years ago) - all the ones I've use have put the windows key at the top right of the keyboard:

Now when I was younger, playing JK and chasing after girls this was a godsend - it stopped me hamfistedly task switching out of certain games. Now it's a pain in the arse, because I use WIN+[whatever] keyboard shortcuts with gay abandon, and the bloody key's not where my fingers expect it to be!

Personally, I'm making the switch entirely: my primary machines will always be Macs. That's not to say I won't make my next one Intel based to have access to XP (As an engineer I have software that is Windows only) for when i need it.

I repair notebooks for a living. I would advise you to go with a MacBook or MacBook Pro. The quality and design are superior and the OS is actually fun to use.

Thanks guys. You've been a good help. I think I'll try for the Macbook Pro, and if I'm desperate for games on it or something, I'll get bootcamp (though i don't think I will, because I have my desktop with XP anyway). Just a question about the mac OS... How long does it usually take for somebody completely new to it to be able to take full advantage of its features and get used to how it works?

About half an hour to get up and running, about a few hours to feel comfortable, and about a week to feel 100% confident (or as close as).

First thing to learn: Go to Sys. Pref., go to expose, and configure it. Expose wins.

That is all.

Ive had a dell laptop for 3 years.

i purchased my macbook pro about 4 months ago.

the overall experience has been much nicer on the mac to be honest. i havent had any issues with anything on the mac and its a sexy machine.