Macbook School Questions

Hey, got a couple Macbook questions:

IS this a good computer for college?

How is the battery life and weight compared to a Dell e1505?

Is the oeprating system and the fact its a mac and not a pc going to give me trouble?

Is the 13.3 screen going to be annoying typing midterms and all?

If you had 1500 to buy a laptop for school would you still get a mac?

 

1. Yes great for college. Plus its got some creative stuff in it, as well as things to help you be more creative, and creative things are always a plus in school.

2. No clue about battery life in comparison to that Dell, most of us don't use Dell, might had previous experiences, but we don't use them anymore. battery life on the Macbook with Bluetooh off and Wifi on and dimming the brightness down will give you 4 hours, just changing brightness 1 step down will give you over 3 and half hours and that setting is very bright, in Macbooks unlike Dell you have 16 brightness settings to choose from instead of 4..

3. Oh heck no, you'll most likely love OS X and never want to see the sight of a Windows logo ever again, unless you have to use some kind of windows application you can't leave behind, anyways there is currently software under development that will let you run Windows Applications (that they support, but don't worry it'll be the major ones) under OS X. if you can't use Crossover for mac than boot camp should suffice, but be warned there are certain things that Windows XP can't use when installed on a macbook such as iSight.

4. My Macbook is college, and I already typed some stuff on it. in my opinion, it's not annoying, you gotta remember its the resolution that makes the difference here. You could have a 8" screen with the same resolution and it would be the same, good luck finding an 8" that can reach this high anyways.

5. Yes.

 

1. Yes, this an excellent computer for college. I have relatives in college who have it and can definitely vouch for it. Plus it's an awesome eye-catcher

2. I haven't used the Dell e1505 but it should be comparable. I've seen about 3-4 hours as the norm.

3. I think the fact that the operating system is OS X will do the opposite of give you trouble, it'll probably wonder why you'd deal with windows. OS X just has alot of features that are great especially for a college student.

4. 13.3 inches should be plenty for typing word documents and such.

5. Yes.

 

Yes the women (I'm assuming the original poster is male here) will think its cute and ask you on a date. (jk)

Just give a whirl at a local Apple Store or an Apple Authorized reseller. Don't worry about the reseller being more as Apple restricts any compeition with itself.

 

1. Yeah it's good college notebook for work and it looks great like others said.

2. If you get the 9-cell battery which is only about $40 CAD here instead of the 6 cell one, you'll get 4 to 5 hours and there are more brightness levels than 4. They don't get that hot either. I have been using a friend's old dell laptop for an hour on my lap as I type this.

3. Probably not. I don't know how Mac Office 2004 runs on Rosetta though. Some people say it takes a while to load up but then runs fine when it's actually running. A good thing is that you can always install Bootcamp or Parallels if you need to run any Windows software.

4. I can't comment on that because I haven't worked around a 13'3 screen too much. It all depends on your preferences and what kind of screen size or resolution you're most comfortable with working on.

5. Yeah.

I don't know why some people hate Dell so much. My experiences with them have been just fine except their ugly design looks. I have many desktops in my house that are Dell, and they haven't broke since I got them years ago and some of them are running almost all the time.

I'm considering to get a Macbook too but Dell is offering me a cheaper Inspiron 6400 (T2600) with a 15.4" UltraSharpTM WSXGA+ (1680x1050) display, 1 gig of ram, 120 GB hard disk space (!!! twice as much as Mac), a Dvd/Cd burner, 9-cell battery, 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™Go 7300 TurboCache or a cheaper Radeon X1400 which looks much better than a GMA 950. That goes to a $1150 CAD Dell vs $1199 CAD (Low-end Model). However, the Mac also gives me an Ipod Nano, but the Dell computer is offering so much that I don't have to worry about finding non-Apple ram to upgrade or another hard drive because people say that 512 MB ram won't be enough for OSX well and 60 Gb of space is definately not enough for a lot of multimedia. Go Apple Design though!

Good luck finding a computer for college. It's honestly driving me nuts.

 

MacBooks don't use "Apple-specific RAM", so you shouldn't have any trouble finding RAM for it (it doesn't have to be Apple RAM). The RAM and HD are easily replaceable with standard RAM and HD's available from places like newegg.com, etc.

In terms of experience with Dell, it's just sort of natural that there will be more people with bad experiences with them, just because of the shear volume of computers they make, there's going to be a larger number of people who have problems with them.

I think the other complaints a lot of people have with Dell have more to do with their support, etc.

This is one of those things where anecdotal evidence doesn't help much; that is, you have lots of Dell desktops in your house, and have had no problems with them, so from your perspective Dell is just fine. In fact, you can't understand why anyone dislikes Dell. But the main thing is that not everyone has had that experience with Dell, so people who have had problems either with the hardware itself or with Dell's customer service or support, are more likely to have negative feelings towards them.

Regarding your specific comparison, I would probably argue that the Inspiron 6400-series isn't specifically comparable to something like the MacBook - it is a larger notebook with more room to put higher spec components while still being fairly cheap.

 

Don't waste your money upgrading to the Geforce7300. The X1400 is quite a bit better than the 7300.

 

1. Its the heaviest 13.3 inch notebook ever. 5.2pounds. I mean you can find many 14 inch wide screen notebooks that weigh the same. I dont understand why they couldn't fit this in a 4.2 or so lbs like Sony.

2. Your buying an obsolete notebook already. 512mb RAM will not be enough for future programs and games etc. 950GMA Intel Integrated garbage is also crap.

3. You can get a fully loaded DELL 1505 for around $800 with ATI or Nvidia video card there are special every week or so. Or HP DV2000t with geforce7200 for around $1000 (also with school discount save around $100) that will kick macbooks you know what. Save the rest of your money for something else.

4. If you can wait a few weeks Intel Core 2 Duo processors should be availble in the notebooks. That processor is faster, has 64bit support and has better battery life.

5. Macbooks get very hot on the left upper side. Some also have problems reading DVD's and Audio CD's. Even scratching cds. There is also NO DUAL layer burning.

 

First off, gaming isn't a priority for everyone, and for most Mac users the GMA 950 is perfectly acceptable, because Mac users typically aren't gamers in the first place, if anything Macs are used to help the production of games such as graphics arts, and that isn't GPU intensive.

The MBP isn't an option for the original poster, if it was he'd be asking about that as well. its clear that Apple won't put Intel Core 2 Duo on a macbook until MBP has it, and it definitely isn't gonna be right away they need something to set the two apart.

Macbooks don't get very hot, they get warm in the upper left corner ONLY when your charging the battery, it's where the power adapter is.

Anything you buy these days is obsolete already, whats your point?

everyone takes weight into a different level of consideration, its obvisous for you, its near the top of the scale, but some people like myself consider weight as an idea of the quality, I've noticed usually the heavier something is the better the quality, and no I'm not saying any weight is fine, I have my limit as well but 5.2 is perfectly acceptable and anyone who complains so bad about such a thing needs to hit the weight room. 5 pounds feels like nothing to me.

 

Sorry for that misunderstanding. I meant I wouldn't need to go get an upgrade of RAM or HD (not off Apple) for the low-end Macbook since the Dell gives a nice amount of both. Newegg.com doesn't ship to Canada unfortunately but if you know any other cheap places, it would be nice if you could list them.

 

How about TigerDirect.ca

It doesn't have the best site layout out there, and can be a pain to browse sometimes, but its one that generally has low prices, however usually not lower than newegg.

Also zipzoomfly.com might be good, however I don't know if they ship to canada, if they do you're gonna get a better deal there than TigerDirect.