s2mcpaul said:
Hello all. I am looking to purchase a new laptop. I am very much aware of the major differences b/w Macs and whatever you want to call the others. I think I am ready to throw windows out the door, however my main concern is that I have never owned a mac and I need some insight as to what the main differences are between the "_books." I will use it primarily for internet and business/finance related work. -ie lots of spreadsheets. I obviously want the most bang for my buck without sacrificing the most important functions. For me that would be(at least I think) batery life, storage capacity without loss of processing speed, screen size(not too small, not the biggest), and weight(not top priority).
Also will I run into conflicts using certain taxonomy applications like edgar-online or the like?
thanks for any help
MacBook Pro - more expensive, 15" and 17" varieties, all dual-core
iBooks are about to be replaced; the soon-to-be MacBooks - less expensive, no firm details but probably 13.3", probably mostly single core with the top of the range being dual core
Battery life is likely to be substantially similar in both options. Storage capacity is going to be upgradable-at-time-of-order for both, the 'Pros starting out more capacious and having larger/faster maximums. Weight is unlikely to be much of an issue until you get to the 17", which is still only average weight for laptops in general.
Really the question is, what is your budget? Based on your screen size requests, a 15" MBP seems like the obvious choice. "Bang for buck" is a difficult idea because judgements about value are... value judgements. It is hard to tell what you feel is worth the money.
Here are a few (conflicting) principles I have:
- As many processing cores as possible, but pay as little as possible for cpu speed within model+core range; in other words the difference between a 1.83GHz dual core MBP and a 2.16GHz dual core MBP is not worth the money, at least not for processor speed
- Get the best video card/chip possible, and as much video RAM as possible. The video card is used by all modern operating systems (OS X, Vista-to-be) to handle more and more user interface processing, and with good reason. The connection between the CPU and the video card is a bottleneck, and having processing done on the far side of that line means far less has to cross between the two. Further, every context shift from content processing to UI processing for the CPU is very expensive in a performance sense. Lastly, the chief obsolescence-provoking factor for slightly older computers is graphics card requirements. Thus this is the best way to future-proof any computer. Sadly, to get to double your VRAM on a MBP (for a very small fee, all things considered) you first have to pay for the 2.0GHz version (at least).
- Screen space is often underestimated in its productivity implications. Just as CPU context changes are incredible expensive performance-wise, having a situation where all the information you need isn't on the screen at once worsens our performance. Get as large a screen as you are able to reasonably transport (in other words, if you simply won't carry around a computer if it is larger than X" long, Y" wide, or more than Z lbs, than its screen space is useless).
None of the above require one to be using one's laptop for games or multimedia; I believe the above even if one solely uses office applications.
I certainly wouldn't buy an iBook; they were achingly bad a year and a half ago, and then had a tiny update that has left them ever more behind. It sounds like this is your main computer (as opposed to having a desktop and using a laptop only for visits to a coffee shop or browsing whist watching TV); all the more reason to avoid the iBooks.
If you absolutely can't spend more than $1000, wait for the MacBooks, they should be released in a week or two. If you can afford a MacBook Pro, get what you can afford. Were I to get a new laptop, I would buy a 2.0 GHz MacBook Pro, buy aftermarket RAM but upgrade the video card. I would max out RAM (any Mac with less than 1GB RAM is going to be strangling itself with thrashing the hard drive for swap memory).
It's penny-wise pound-foolish to buy an iBook if you can afford, well, anything else.
