PC Laptop or Macbook Pro?

What are "general applications?" Be more specefic, then we can provide more help

Not much help between those to as I'm new to mac and just picked up my first macbook. if you are thinking about using it in class for notes and such, the 13.3" macbook is great. I owned the 15.4" HP zx5280us and I found it to be to big for taking places, get to warm and the battery kind of sucked. It made a great portable gaming machine when I knew I'd have a wall socket to plug it into. It was useless for taking to class though IMO.

So far the mac has been good. There are a few quirky things about it just because I'm not used to mac's yet, but overall I'm happy w/ the mac. Plus, you can always throw on windows and dual boot if you need to.

i have a mac, and im a CompInfo systems major.

its a little hard, because sometimes the stuff i do in xcode doesnt compile the same in MS VS

quite frankly....if you'll be using vista anyway. whats the point of paying for osx? also, the macs are good for video editing is sorta more of a myth now. back in the day the mac had a slight edge, but now (aka..post intel switch) a mac IS just another pc and has no performance advantages over any other pc in any department since its THE SAME FREAKEN HARDWARE. that said...a "pc" will also be cheaper than a similar spec mbp.

i mean, if you really want an mbp...go nuts. but first things first, look @ the asus lineup. the A8j is a great 14" machine.

Uh, Macs do have a pretty big edge in Video considering Final Cut Pro is becoming, more and more, an industry standard. Not to mention Motion and Shake.

Also, Avid runs on Macs, After Effects, and, after a several year absence, Adobe has finally brought Premiere back to the Mac.

Not to mention iMovie for the home user which is far more powerful than Windows Movie Maker.

It doesn't matter if there's a hardware advantage when there's a software one.

Definitely agree with Kakaze on that one. Plus when you are using general apps, the Mac will come bundled with all those apps anyway, and personally I really enjoy using Mail for all my email needs, since it is very straightforward. Internet... well firefox, safari, camino, opera and shiira (which I really like, haven't fully transitioned to it yet, but it is pretty nice) all run on the mac. Word on the mac is IMO better than Word 2k3 at least, but I can't speak to its comparison to Word 2k7 since I spend almost no time at all in Windows. The likelihood of you running XP on a new laptop (unless you wipe it and install that) and I only ran Vista for a while, but I have found that OS X multitask significantly better than on XP. The price difference may end up being significant, but honestly I really enjoy using XP on the macbook (for a laptop it may be the best way to run XP) since it gives me two finger scrolling. But like I said earlier I don't really use XP all that much.

thestu... just about every touchpad these days has scroll zones which are just as effective as 2-finger... so its at no significant advantage there.

and all the apps you mentioned run on windows just as well (firefox, thunderbird, gaim, openoffice)...

i am not promoting windows here in any way (i am a full time linux user), but you can't discredit an entire category of computers (hardware) based on the shortcomings of some piece of software

I personally hate every other touchpad these days and here is why. I may not be able to convince you of this, but I am going to try. For starters, the Macbook Trackpad is huge, roughly the exact same size as an ipod, and is significantly larger than most other touchpads out there right now. Furthermore, two finger scrolling lets me simply place a second finger onto the trackpad in order to scroll around the screen. With scroll zones, I have to move my finger to the specific side of the touchpad that has the zone, and only within that zone am I allowed to scroll. The freedom that two finger scrolling gives me is delicious. I only mentioned firefox actually out of those apps that you mentioned. I tend not to assume that a person either knows about or is willing to use OSS solutions to certain things since IMO (with the exception of Firefox) the OSS solution is sometimes fairly difficult for a person to just pick up and run with unless they force themselves to. On the other hand, Apple's applications are all built with ease-of-use (for everyone) in mind so that you can just start using them, and they only give you what you need. Lastly you say that I can't discredit an entire category of hardware because of the shortcomings of a piece of software. But when that piece of software is the OS, upon which all the other software runs, then yes I absolutely can. If I want to discredit every single Windows-based laptop out there because they run Windows, then that is my perogative. I am not doing that however. I am instead agreeing with Kakaze that OS X is a better platform for video editing due to the larger supply of Video Editing software available for it. Furthermore I am saying that i think that OS X is better than Windows for doing simple things like email, internet and word processing due to the software available. I never mentioned hardware at all... i was discrediting software due to its OS limitations. If the guy wants to buy the HP cuz it is cheaper, and then install OS X on it (I am not condoning this) then he will have all the software options available to OS X, regardless of the hardware.

If you are into video editing & media in general I would suggest sticking with a Mac...Their software suite is more user friendly & it quite frankly blows away the current PC offerings in the "media" realm...

If you need Windows that bad you can load it on the Mac... If you are into gaming the "pc" laptop will blow the Macs away. for some reason Apple refuses to drop a powerful video card into a laptop let alone their desktops...

..On an almost unrelated note I am just loving the Mac vs. PC commercials. I have to give them credit...It's comical...

If you are smart enough to work around the issues of not running windows, the Mac is the way to go. It is the best form factor, size, weight and looks of the 15" laptops. It is not 100% plastic. It is not running your father's operating system. Girls like it.

Quicksilver simply makes a Mac amazing.

hmm...My laptop is not 100% plastic... Considering half of it is magnesium...

You know, maybe it is just me and my friend, but neither of us really got into using quicksilver. I mean, I used it for a while, but I found that it just wasn't something that I wasn't hurting for. You know the phrase "if it aint broke, dont fix it"? Well it was one of those things. I didnt feel like I was wasting a whole lot of time without quicksilver... YMMV

I have to say, going from a scroll zone pad to a 2 finder touch pad, i will never go back. 2 finger is so much easier and more efficient. as for dual booting.. I found after several different attempts , with both XP and vista that it makes OSX slower and less stable. I cant say i know why, but i have tried repairing permissions and such, but nothing helps. Also after restoring the partition and the subsequent restart the system is instantly more stable and snappier.

*link removed*

WTF?

ban this fool!

Dude, you sure know a lot. Just by checking your whole 10 posts I'm nominating you for CR.

Nothing to see here, move along...

I already deleted one post from this guy but since y'all have responded to this one I'm going to keep it but edit out the link.

Please keep future replies in this thread about the original topic, however.