Ditch my new MacBook Pro i5 for...a Dell Studio 1558? Yes/No

Hi everybody,

Long story short: I'm the happy owner of a new MacBook Pro (i5) but I need to recuperate some money, and because I don't need all the fancy Mac stuff I'm thinking of selling it and getting a Dell 1558 instead with half of the money.

I already found a buyer, the financial loss would be in the £100-£120 range (another long story short, I bough the Mac with a good discount so the loss would be limited!).

I'm leaning towards a similarly spec'd Dell 1558 with i5. BUT, and here's the problem, I read about the overheating and the fan issues. Is it really so bad? I could get a 1558 for around £650, but I'm a bit scared that the 1558 is intrinsically bugged (fan and heat). I would like to hear your opinions and if you recommend me the 1558.

PS: I don't mind Win7, I'm a long term Windows user (I started on MS-DOS 3.22!), only a couple of years ago I switched to MacOS, so please don't start a comparison between Win 7 vs MacOS I really like both.
PPS: I don't play games, only music, MS Office, internet and photos.

Manny

 

I don't have any overheating issues with the i5. The laptop and adapter gets hot if on load, but it's not overheating.

The fan isn't THAT bad. You can't play games with it in a silent room, but when the laptop isn't on load, the fan isn't that loud. It's only a bit annoying when it turns on, off, on, off, etc.

Imo it's a good laptop for the price (but get the 1080p screen!). It has a few annoying design problems (touchpad gets hot, hard to plug USB devices in the USB ports, etc.), but overall it's a good laptop

 

Hi thanks for the reply. The on/off/on/off/etc fan behaviour would bother me a little, looks like my wife's Acer Aspire. Just for comparison purposes, you literally can't hear the fan of my MacBook Pro, you can barely hear the HD.

I wonder why they don't implement a variable speed fan on the 1558? How difficult is that?

It surely is a pretty laptop in the £500-£650 range.

 

I did the same thing with an older MacBoook Pro (17" C2D 2.33). I really like the Dell Studio 1558. No problems with overheating or noise or anything else. I did have a bluetooth module die, but Dell swap it out within a couple days and all has been great!

 

Hi,

Thanks for the kind reply. In the end I decided to keep my 2 months old MacBook Pro i5 because:

1. Doesn't matter how flexible I am, once you owned a MacBook Pro you will always find 'things' (i.e. 'features') you don't like in other laptops!
2. The Dell 1558: too many complaints. I don't want to spend £650 and 'hope' that it'll be a lucky one.
3. I can run BootCamp (or VirtualBox/Parallels/Fusion) should I need (occasisonally) Windows-based apps
4. I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to Windows with all the security updates, constant upgrading (drivers, antivirus, firewall, you name it), patches, defrag, registry etc. The Mac is always in tip-top condition and I don't actually do any maintenance!


I openend this thread on a financial ground, but I decided to keep the Mac and accept that I'm £600 poorer (diff between selling the MacBook Pro and buying a Dell 1558).

Thanks everybody for your input.

 

1. True of any laptop, not just MacBooks
2. They've been resolved. Every new model has issues, including the ever-glorified MB and MBP. Unfortunately, you may need to update the fearsome BIOS and install an evil driver.
3. Absolutely true, but an expensive route to go (i.e. more expensive hardware to serve the same purpose).
4. MacOS is the same exact way. It's just in the background. Of all OS-users I know, MacOS users are the only ones who blatantly refuse to run AV and FW out of trust in the company (not the OS)

 

This is not a thread about MacOS vs Win7...I made that very clear in the post.

 

In your first post, yes. Then you compared them yourself. Anyway, the statements I made apply just as easily to MacOS vs. Windows as MacOS vs. Linux. If you read what I wrote and glean pro-Windows from that, that's on you, but practice safe computing regardless of your OS and belief that it is bulletproof.