Convincing my father about the Macbook Pro advantages...

[toenexx]

I had a similar problem when dealing with my father about my laptop, which ended up being a low end 15" MBP with an upgraded hard drive. My dad always asked me if the $500 or so Celeron laptops that Best Buy has were "good enough" and always grumbled when I said "No, they aren't." Luckily, I had my mother to talk to, who gets computers. Reguardless of whether your mother is a computer person, if she isn't involved in this decision yet, get her involved.

Step 1 for getting a better computer: Get your mother involved on your side.

LOL, I agree!!! I showed my mom this, and she's like "Wow, why don't post something on there saying you did that too!" She was joking of course, but she does know when I want something, I try to sweet talk my her. It's quite suprising tho, when I asked my father for a new SR MBP, I didn't have to turn to my mom... cuz I desperately needed one for the field of work I'm getting in.

 

[Igantius]

Have you tried threatening to hold your breath until you dad gives in?

Seriously though, it sounds like your dad has done homework and he knows the difference between your needs and your wants. Why not make up the difference in cost yourself?

 

[aliquis-]

1) Valid point, are glossy really that bad?

2) I doubt you "need it", if you really want better res/screen get a regular tft screen beside the macbook, a dell 2007wfp or whatever they are called for instance. It would be nice if the macbook pro got 1680x1050 resolution thought.

3) Lame, learn to type , stop looking at the keys!

4) Your dad are probably correct, unless you play games I doubt it will matter, and your laptop will die/be to old for you in a few years anyway.

YOUR DAD ARE TOTALLY WRONG ABOUT SILLY GAMES, THEY ARE KICKASS GAMES AND YOU NEED THEM, SCHOOL AND STUDIES SUCK, PLO GAMING RULE! KEEKEKE

Tell him you'll score more chicks with the macbook pro, and he'll be like "Son, I want you to have the full 17 inches!"

Personally I think the macbook looks better and it seems to have better network coverage aswell, so I don't know if there are so many valid good points for the mbp except gaming (and faster firewire.)

Anyway, if you don't want the mbp for gaming just get the macbook and be happy with it, tell him you need 2GB ram thought (maybe you can use that as a reason for the macbook pro "but daaaad, 1GB extra ram on apples webpage cost an infinite amount of money, you better give me the mbp."

And if you want it for gaming just tell him. Chicken ;/

 

[aliquis-]

Science or Engineering, you will be using programs such as Matlab, which the faster CPU would really help with

Yeah right, because every student knows that it's the matlab calculations which makes the labs take so long time, not to read the exercise, understand it, figure out what to do, solve it, write down whatever you need to do, draw conclusions from the answers, write a report..

No, it's all about matlab speed! Damn matlab! ;/ ..

Heck, when we ran autocad 12 or whatever it was it was on 386s, and it worked back then aswell ;D

 

[aliquis-]

Perhaps. But does it last twice as long? That is the good question.

It really boils down to want vs need, and apart from literally the content creation pros, very few people, including the bulk of the working class users, need a MacBook Pro.

No, it does not, and you are correct, however on my last desktop PC I cheaped out a lot on graphics and well.. that of course made it less fun. Sure I saved some money but when the rest of the machine is old that small extra charge wouldn't have mattered. So yes, a macbook now and a macbook later might give as good or better specs in the end, but you will sure as hell have more fun with a macbook pro NOW, because the macbook will be to lame for any gaming all the time anyway =P

But well, he don't wanna argue with that it's for gaming, why I don't know..

Anyone my parents didn't bought a laptop for me in school ;/, AND I CAN TYPE WITHOUT BACKLIT KEYS LIKE A REAL NERD1! ;/

 

[aliquis-]

yeap true. the bulk of mac users would have their macs for at least 5 years regardless. i spose thats because everything is still supported (less things to create drivers for etcetc.). macs tend to last longer i spose. im not sure how you can work out how..they just do, more care by the users maybe

I think it's just that mac users are used to slow machines/doesn't care. I mean, it's not like I would accept running a 400MHz G3 today ;D, but some mac people do!

Of course a PC running at 400MHz with freebsd, some more lightweight windowmanager like evilwm or so with firefox, mutt, irssi, xmms, would run just fine aswell.

 

[aliquis-]

Anyway, to all the dads, what would be a good reason for the extra funds?

Tell him you'll be sober all thru university! ;D

 

[iW00t]

No, it does not, and you are correct, however on my last desktop PC I cheaped out a lot on graphics and well.. that of course made it less fun. Sure I saved some money but when the rest of the machine is old that small extra charge wouldn't have mattered. So yes, a macbook now and a macbook later might give as good or better specs in the end, but you will sure as hell have more fun with a macbook pro NOW, because the macbook will be to lame for any gaming all the time anyway =P

But well, he don't wanna argue with that it's for gaming, why I don't know..

Anyone my parents didn't bought a laptop for me in school ;/, AND I CAN TYPE WITHOUT BACKLIT KEYS LIKE A REAL NERD1! ;/

For the price difference of a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, you can get quite a basic gaming PC too. That is another point to consider. I don't know, it is his money, but hey when I bought my MacBook Pro on my own penny I did realise that it is ~ twice the price of a MacBook, and for the price I am not exactly getting *a lot* out of it.

If I had a decent laptop already, I would gladly have spent the money on a Mac Pro instead. That is the way I saw it... the MBP while cool and sweet is not that great a way to spend money.

 

[Erasmus]

Yeah right, because every student knows that it's the matlab calculations which makes the labs take so long time, not to read the exercise, understand it, figure out what to do, solve it, write down whatever you need to do, draw conclusions from the answers, write a report..

Labs? I'm talking about REAL Matlabbing, where you write a few function files, an overall script, and you plug in a bunch of different combinations and make the program run each time. Trust me. Last year, I was using a Matlab script to calculate funky stuff in optical fibres. I'm serious when I say some of the simulations took over a day to run. And that was 1st year!!!

So when someone like me is trying to run a program I, or someone else, wrote to optimise an aircraft design by doing a calculation, changing the parameters and then rerunning the program, over and over, you don't think that's going to take a lot of time, and a few hours cut off the end by using a slightly faster processor would help?

Or, in Solidworks, last year I made a model that completely ate the Uni computers. They really couldn't handle it, taking minutes to render each frame, and calculate all the collision detections. I believe the Uni computers had integrated graphics, which may not have helped much with the rendering, but when the computer decides to give up, and just display everything as rectangular coloured boxes, I'm pretty sure a dedicated graphics card and faster processor would help.

So, yeah. I completely disagree with your implication that Matlab, or other professional applications, will not eat too much from your time if you don't spend a little more on a faster computer. And I reckon a 2.2 or 2.4 SR MBP would be quite a bit faster than any computers you are likely to find in a Uni lab. I know I don't have easy access to anything close to a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 8600M GT.

 

[aliquis-]

Show him the leopard demos! haha. you also gotta look at this from a software side rather than just hardware. toss in no viruses, spyware, etc. Harder to hack. and so on. The computer last longer because OS X puts less stress on the hardware than windows does on a PC is another good one.

Yea... just dont forget the software side as well.

But the leopard demos runs on the macbook!! He'll surely fail then