What notebook to get?

Hello all,

I will be looking at purchasing a laptop fairly soonish probably around August time. 

I hate my pos 15 inch hp - the screen has uneven backlighting, dull colours and the keyboard layout drives me crazy. But worst of all is the pathetic battery life. But hey it was cheap at the time. 

I am stuck whether to purchase the following:

Apple macbook pro 13 inch: £859 (Student) 

Click for picture

1280x800 resolution

2 Years Warranty

Both will have Back-lit keyboards, 500GB hdd space, USB3 ports and battery life up to 7 hours.

Both also look quite nice.

I'm stuck on which one to get, both are very compelling however as both are roughly the same thickness, but i do like the idea of magsafe, however the Sony has vastly more power. 

Please fell free to suggest your own, however No sleekbooks or Ultrabooks (Not powerful enough), and no bigger than 14 inches as 15 Inches was too big and heavy to carry around. 

EDIT: I have used both Windows and OS X comfortably, although the machine will get a copy of windows (free from uni) on it and linux on it for my uni course. 

Best Regards

Arne 

Quote:

Originally Posted by qhn 

You are just comfortable with OS X as with Windows? And what will you be using the notebook for?
cheers ...

Sorry to all those I forgot to mention, I am happy with either OS as i have experiences in both. 

However I need to get windows 7 before 8 (I have the preview - not happy so far) comes out. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by qhn 

From the 2 mentioned above I believe that the Sony will give you better value/performance ratio.
cheers ...

Thank you for your opinion, I will keep that in mind.

Albeit the Sony does have keyboard flex, and the macbook pro does not. 

And a note that Apple does have better customer support. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by qhn 

True that Apple does have a uniform / universal support, much more than other manufacturers. It all boil down to where you get the comp from. Have you checked out the refresh on the macbook pro model from today? You might be able to get better specs with the same price.
cheers ...

That's what the comparison is based on, the refresh as It is a little more powerful than the last gen, prices haven't changed. 8GB ram is cheap from crucial - ill do it myself - I'm not giving apple £80 to upgrade it for me.

I'd probably won't be gaming on my laptop as such, it's more for possible 3d content creation, but I have seen blender run adequately on a macbook pro 13 inch. 

I will be ordering either machine direct from the manufacture. I have an Apple store and a Sony centre near me. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by qhn 

Cool. All peripheral devices (printer etc ..) will work with either one of these 2 that you are considering? Software? Those are the next things I would keep in mind when purchasing a new system
cheers ...

The only peripherals I have atm is a wireless mouse, which works in all systems, printer, i'm looking to get a cannon pixma as my HP printer atm is slow and expensive to run, however they run in both windows and mac, software will be OK stuff like office and adobe runs on both windows and mac but for development I will most probably need to use windows which my uni will provide a copy of, so no additional software costs are involved.