Apple vs. PC = HELP :) - Page 3

Dude,
I'm pretty sure that the X700 slaughters the 9800 to bits and portions no larger than bitesize reeses pieces (any flavor).

I use a Mac all of the time and I know they DON'T crash and lock up as easily as XP. You're kidding, right?

And funny, but every professional designer I know and/or work around uses a Mac. So.... ? Maybe we're speaking of two different fields?

Jeffrey: HAHAHAHAHA SGI Machines haven't been used for serious graphic design in a loooong time. SGI has repositioned themselves into servers and supercomputers and high end visualisation. Everything that was once done on SGI machines are now done on normal computers. A lot of special effects companies are using Maya on Macs to great effect.

Marek: As far as the 17 being big goes...A couple months after I got mine, I had a chance to compare it in person with a Dell Inspiron 8600. The PowerBook was slightly longer, but the Inspiron was deeper and twice as thick. And when I said I was getting the 17 inch people here called it "lapzilla".

At the time I got mine the 17 was only 100 bucks more expensive than the 15, and at the time neither of them came with the 128 Meg video standard. I would've gotten the 15, but shit, for 100 bucks or so more why not get the 17? I wonder why there's such a difference in price now compared to when I bought. I got an educational discount so I don't know if that's a factor.

name one mac that will out perform, out spec and looks better than this laptop for less

Asus Z70VA
2.0GHz PM 533FSB
2.0GB 533 Ram
x700 128MB ram
100GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache
DVDRW
ABG Wireless
Internal Bluetooth
WSXGA+ Screen (1650x1050)
4in1 Card reader
4x USB 2.0
5.5lbs
$2100 CANADIAN

No Apple laptops will outperform or out spec that, but that's not the point.

pr50 got a point kakaze.

if a pb will run you $2000-2500 USD and can't outperform a $1800 Z71v, forget outperforming, it won't come anywhere NEAR that performance.

In the bang-for-the-buck game, PCs have the upper hand (by a HUGE margin).

Design is also not important because Asus W2 looks better than a PB ever did

Software is no longer an issue, because there is Tiger x86, there are hundreds of x86 flavors of linux/unix/bsd, and there is always WinXP and Vista just around the corner

i think abf has it right on those points...

PC laptops will out perform Mac laptops, and?

An XPS 2 will outperform an I1200. Macs laptops aren't bought for performance, they're bought for OS X, style, productivity.

You complain people spend so much money on Macs, yet it's not uncommon for people here to spend upwards of 4-5000 dollars on laptops from places like Alienware and Voodoo, when they can get a similarly speced laptop for half the price from Dell. And lets not forget the people who pay extra for portability over performance.

There are more reasons to buy a Mac than pure performance.

Buying Mac for OS X, obviously, I agree.

Buying Mac for style, I suppose to a degree. This point is really up in the air, there is a TON of laptops that look way better then any powerbook or ibook.

Buying mac for productivity, I disagree. More performance and more programs available generally equals to more productivity. What's the productivity gain that a mac has over a pc? Less crashing? Puh-lease, now a days it isn't windows 95.

....the osx point is invalid, because there is tiger x86 and plenty other unix x86 distros

Why would it? The X700 is basically a 9800 on PCI-E, so there's no logical reason that it should outperform the MR9800. I don't know exactly what clock frequencies these cards use, but I think the MR9800 might even be a tiny bit faster.

Just take a look at any review featuring these cards and you'll see.

BTW, talking about WinXP crashing: I've had WinXP since it came out and it has never crashed on me, nor has it crashed on my brothers PC. I might also add that I've had exactly zero crashes on the companys three computers after approximately 20 000 hours of usage. I don't know what the hell you Mac people are doing to your computers, but you sure seem to have found ways of crashing your systems that I've yet to think of.

Ohh, and before you ask: Neither of these computers have ever had an antivirus program installed and I never scan them for spyware/adware since I don't get any (might be thanks to Firefox).

Now, I am truly interested in getting a Mac, but that would hardly be because I'm having any stability issues or virus issues or other strange crap going on. My computers work and they work damn well. I still think that I'd appreciate OSX for it's nice user interface, but that's probably about it. When it comes to design, I'm perfectly happy with what ASUS has done with the W3N, so not much to gain there.

It's still valid because the developer version of Tiger for x86 is not going to be supported after the switch and you know Apple's going to go to any lengths possible to stop people from running it on whitebox PCs.

Course you have to be willing to steal, and of course how can ABF live without VIDEO DRIVER support. I mean its retarded. Don't get a Mac - The Video Card is crap, instead get a PC, steal some software and have no video card support, of course - makes perfect sense dosen't it.

And OSX looks a hell of alot nicer than KDE or Gnome.

Name me one laptop that looks better (and woe betide you if you say the XPS2 or anything made by alienware), and one piece of software that you can get for windows that you can't get a functional equivilant for a Mac.

laptops that look hot:
Asus Z71v
Asus Z70Va Refresh
Asus W1N
Asus W2
Acer Ferarri 4005
MSI 1029
Sager 9880

....granted there are no ATi or nVidia drivers for Tiger x86 yet, they will come, just like there weren't any ATi or nVidia drivers for BSD and Linux, they eventually came (still waiting on ATi for BSD). As for Apple trying all they can to prevent use on regular PCs (like say dell), for every programmer apple can hire, there are a dozen hackers waiting for a challange, and eventually somebody will get it right and manage to get a fully functioning Tiger X86 install running on a Dell or a HP with video drivers and everything.

And for software, granted they are alternatives to everything (or almost everything) in the Apple world, sometimes alternatives aren't good enough. For exmaple, i am a huge fan of the program GAIM, i use it in windows and linux, i prefer it over any other IM client i ever tried. Sure, apple has AIM for Mac, iChat, and about a dozen others (so does linux and windows mind you), there is no GAIM for mac (although i am sure you can probably get the linux version to run with some effort)...but its not there natively. So basically, on a mac i am stuck using Fire, which good, better than iChat IMO, but it just does not match Gaim in all respects. My point is that its not about "there is an alternative", but "the specific title often makes a differance". Also, I will bring gaming into this and say HL2 and CS:S. I am a big CS:S fan and there is no HL2 mac ...so...no love there.

I'm gonna throw that one right back at you - OSX, sure there are alternatives out there... They just aren't good enough...


And of course games are a good point, and one that will be sorted in 8 months.

For DIVX encoding or rendering the CPU is the most important. The G4 is almost two generations behind now and won't come close the a PM or Turion CPU.

Macs have the advantage or having nice software to support for video and photo editing. But comes at a premium price. And for serious grafic's work no one is going to use a laptop. Screen is too small and CPU doesn't have the horse power. A G5 tower would be a better choice for serious work.

Also it's a myth that Apple PBs run longer on battery or that they don't heat up. On average they get 2-3 hours of batt life similar to the AMD Turion and behind the 3-4 of the PM.

Apple switching to Intel chips is pretty much proof that the Power Book line has reached their limit with the current technology. You should ask yourself why you want to spend money which is basically obsolete.

If looks are everything then the Power Book is a very nice looking machine. If you already have your heart set on it then nothing else will probably change your mind. But you're money would be better spent elswhere or waiting for the Intel Power Books to start comming out next year.

Apple switching to Intel is proof of nothing other than IBM's incompetence.

If IBM had done what they promised we'd have G5 PowerBooks by now and G5 desktop chips past 3 GHz.

dont blame IBM for apple's sh*tty management team (or jobs has pooped his pants...not that its anything new i suppose).


and Eskimo...yeah, there are better alternatives, quite frankly, using a mac in school right now every day for 100 minutes a day is too much for me, i could not imagine spending hours on one at home. Yeah you can argue "in school its not the same" ok, granted i dont have admin privilages, but for productivity work its all the same, i have access to the same progs in an almost unlimited (in that respect) environment. Quite frankly I feel more right at home using a debian based linux distro with Gnome. Hell, linux can play windows games better than mac can play games period.