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need advice: dell or apple?

post #1 of 8
Thread Starter 
Hi,
I'm looking for a laptop , and after loads of searching it came down do:
Apple MacBook Pro: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory , 200GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256 MB
Dell XPS M1330: Core2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz, 3GB memory , 250GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS 128 MB
Thank you!
post #2 of 8
Might help if you said what you were looking to do with said laptop.

Seablade
post #3 of 8
Thread Starter 
well i'm gonna use it for document editing, dreamweaver, flash, photoshop, internet, games
post #4 of 8
What games? How heavy are you on gaming? Do you plan on using Windows on the Mac, or do you have Mac licenses for the software you list(As most, with the exception of the games possibly, will run native on a mac)?

The mac will run your games better most likely, though depending on how heavy you are on Photoshop, you may want to up the ram. Don't buy ram from Apple as it tends to be very overpriced, getting it elsewhere can mean much lower prices and money saved. I run a very similar setup to what you listed myself and do my work in Gimp, video and audio editing, some video game development, and so forth. The only time I really find myself wishing for some extra speed is when doing something like programming DSPs while a crew is waiting on me, or acoustic simulations in 3D, through Windows in VMware Fusion Virtual Machines. Everything else I find the performance much more than adaquete, but as I said, if you are REALLY heavy into Photoshop, you will want to up the ram for that as well.

If you aren't to heavy of a gamer, it is much more of a toss up. The extra RAM I covered above, the extra HD space I am kinda iffy on. For many folks a 128MB Video card will be more than adaquete for most anything except heavy gaming. The processor boost probably won't really be noticable to be honest, but it is there. If you do go with dell though, get the 24 Hour on-site warranty as a just in case measure. It is the primary reason I can reccomend Dell at all anymore.

Seablade
post #5 of 8
The census, last time I checked, was that Apple has a superior build quality to Dell. I've never personally owned a Dell laptop, but I am happy with my Macbook. Very light and well put together. Macs seem to be all the rage among software developers, I don't know if the same can be said for web developers, but that's worth considering also. Not just so you can fit in but because that kind of demographic could attract some cool software to OsX.

I also think gaming laptops are contrary to the entire idea of a laptop and anything besides light gaming should be done on a desktop, but that is my own personal bias. I prefer light small laptops and for PCs, IBM does that a lot better then Dell.

Also if you are going to buy Apple, I recommend you check http://www.macrumors.com/ regularly. Rumors are that Apple is just about to launch a new notebook line, so you will probably want to wait for that.
post #6 of 8
Honestly, if I had the choice between those 2 laptops I'd probably get an Apple one. Since you can dual boot you can pretty much play any game you want.
post #7 of 8
FFS people, dell and apple are not the only 2 brands out there,

#1 dell doesnt make their laptops, quanta makes them
#2 apple doesnt make HW at all, MBA is made by foxconn and the macbook is make most likely by Quanta as well, MBP are made by Asus
post #8 of 8
But they are the two brands mentioned in the original post as the OP was looking at "after loads of searching" and trying to decide between those two laptops mentioned.

Seablade
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