Mac Book Pro with Retina or Dell XPS 15? (both with new Haswell processors)

by Simon 70 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Stealth

  My wife is a photographer and heavy user of photoshop. She used in on windows PC for a couple years and every evening the same thing would happen. She would be cursing at the PC for it being to slow, locking up, problems etc. I swear she must have been a sailor in a previous life.

  We purchased her a Macbook pro, transfered the photoshop license to the mac and all of her problems went away. The cursing stopped and she was a new woman!

  I think the overall lifespan of the Mac is longer than the PC due to a more solid OS. Worth every extra $ for the piece and quite it brought to our home.

  A year later I replaced my laptop with a macbook pro and have no regrets.
• 

  Finkelstein

  It always pays to go to a store and get a hands on feel for Laptops in my opinion as toward making up a final evaluation.

  What could be better than having a quality Laptop in regards to both speed and display, that has both Win. and Mac OS to use at whim ?

  Two things that stand out with the Apple's Laptops is their genuine quality of the parts they use and their functionality which

  inevitably results in their usability and longevity.

  But as I mentioned before you generally have to pay more for their products .

  I'm a person who prefers to pay more for my computer products that have the instant pleasure of using them now, as well to have

  these products for the foreseeable future. It just the initial $ that hurts for a little while.

  Desktop computers is a whole other form of computing environment which I've always built my own systems.
• 

  Simon

  Yes, desktop is cheap / commodity so Dell is great for those (unless you want some serious gaming rig).

  Laptops are a whole other ball game.
• 

  GoodGuyGreg

  +1 on going Apple, especially since you know your way around computers. If you check out the prices of similarly specced machines from different companies, you'll see that the so-called apple tax doesn't really exist, in the beginning of a production cycle. Add to that the robustness of a Unix based operating system and the design choices aimed at minimizing bloat and providing a snappy user experience during year after year of ownership, and the choice really is a no-brainer.

  My current mid-2010 MBP will be bought out and used at home when I get a new one at work (an upcoming project will require me to run several virtual Windows servers in tandem while on the move, which might be a tad too much for a dual core i5 with 8GB of RAM). It has been up and down my backpack for three and a half years and I really see no serious signs of aging on it, nor has it lost any of its initial speed (granted, the first thing I did was to install an SSD in place of the original 5400 rpm disk). The old T- and W-series Thinkpads I used to use would have if not broken then at least seriously loose lid hinges by that time, and I would usually reinstall them at least once every 9 to 12 months to regain some speed in Windows. On the Mac I just reboot every once in a while and run Onyx every couple of months to keep things shipshape.
• 

  Captain Blithering

  You're just materialistic. I decided a long time ago to stick to my 48k zx spectrum, jet set willy never gets old!
• 

  Simon

  jet set willy never gets old

  Ah, memories. I preferred Manic Miner and now, have that blasted tune in my head, aaargh !!!!

  I actually found a TRS-80 game for android last week. All thouse hours say staring at a crappy old B&W TV make-do monitor.
• 

  Dis-Member

  Come on Simon!! Can't you just see yourself running the board on this baby?

  The ultimate Midas touch? The 24-carat gold MacBook Pros complete with diamond Apple logos - a snip at $30,000

  

  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2257354/The-ultimate-Midas-touch-The-24-carat-gold-MacBook-Pros-complete-diamond-Apple-logos--snip-30-000.html
• 

  under the radar

  Hi Simon,

  At the risk of being called a "fanboy," I have to add my two cents to the Apple camp. I know there are exceptions, but generally, when you buy an Apple product, you just take it out of the box and it works. I have spent literally days trying to configure and set up a new PC.

  I have an early-2013 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display. It is pretty much maxed out with the 3.0 i7 chip and 512 gb SSD. I only wish I had gotten the 768 gb SSD instead. Otherwise, it's perfect. I have Windows Ultimate 7 installed in Bootcamp and it works great too. As an aside, I use Winclone 4.2.2 to regularly backup the Bootcamp partition to my Time Capsule.

  I realize there are pros and cons to everything, but if you can stand to spend the bucks, I recommend going with the MacBook Pro. I like the 13" because I take it with me on the road, but a 15" doesn't weigh much more and has even more computing power. I think you'd be happy with either, especially since Mavericks has been released, It includes several great productivity programs you'd pay a lot extra for with a PC.

  While I'm typing, let me thank you again for making this website available. It's a priceless asset to those who are or have been trapped within the Watchtower's tentacles. Keep up the good work!

  Regards,

  Radar
• 

  Simon

  The ultimate Midas touch? The 24-carat gold MacBook Pros complete with diamond Apple logos - a snip at $30,000

  Ok, did I forget to mention how the board needs urgent financial help? Everyone can contribute something towards my new gold, erm, I mean the forum ... yeah, so give generously - as much gold or diamonds as you can spare.

  Seriously, *who* on earth would use such a monsterously ugly thing?! It just screams "lots of money but no class or taste whatesoever".
• 

  tootired2care

  Seriously, *who* on earth would use such a monsterously ugly thing?! It just screams "lots of money but no class or taste whatesoever".

  I can think of only one big enough blow hard, who fits that bill, and who probably does own that...LOL.