Oh goodness. Talk me out of buying a macbook.

Know also that Latitudes come with a 3 year warranty by default, whereas a MacBook only comes with a 1 year warranty.

Personally, I can't stand the build quality on the MacBook...they look nice but feel really flimsy. Not something I would want to be lugging around with me at school. Latitudes, on the other hand, are generally pretty solid.

 

Spend $2k for a base MBP or spend $1k for a Dell vostro 1700 that's equiped the same or better then a loaded MBP. Save $1k and enjoy. Thats what I did. Basically unless you need OSX or just really want it and have money to spend there are cheaper faster things you can get with your money.

 

Apple's are nice and shiny, that's how they lure people in. I've owned three in my life so far and they have all been good computers, though my Powerbook would usually get blazing hot. However, I just don't really care for OS X at all. Plus, you get way more notebook for your dollar going the PC route.

 

Do you have lots of photos?

Do you use picasa? if you do can you live without picasa?

 

Same experience with me. I found out over a period of 6 years using OS X that it was the hype and deception that got me. I remember those Mac commercials claiming our OS never crashes, it's better than XP. Funny over the life of using XP i've had 2 BSOD's and both were memory related.

OTOH I experienced numerous random application quits in OS X as well as a Kernel Panic.

As you said you get a much better bang for your buck hardware wise going with the PC. Also software especially games tend to be cheaper or drop in price faster than on the mac platform.

Having experience with both platforms and removing all the Apple misinformation about Windows, PC's are the way to go.

 

I used Macs exclusively for a year and a half--a mix of MacBook Pros and MacBooks. I too am an engineer and found the Apple hardware to be OK (besides the MacBook Pros getting ridiculously hot) but OS X is an annoyance... I found myself using Windows XP way too often through Parallels and that just gets annoying. I've since gone back to PCs and haven't looked back. An OS is an OS, I'll stick with whatever has the most software available for it.

 

dont do it

 

I have a macbook pro.. My work got it for me after my lease was up on my XPS. I miss my xps due to the size of it...But if your a die hard PC guy it will take you 30days to get use to osx. OSX has its power FBSD base.. So if you linux linux/freebsd you will appreciate it for what it is.

The screen on the mbp is second to none (matte). BEST screen ive put my eyes on. Apple is known of the good screens. I had to get a mac because I do alot of support mac customers at work.. It was becoming hard not having a mac in front of me to help them.

Would I buy one again? No.
Do I mind using it? No because I have PC's too. Plus this thing will run windows if u want to.
Why? I think apple is a high priced Fad.
But... At the same time vista sucks.. so stick with XP.

 

I jumped on macbook pro since it was switched to intel. and I find myself spending 80% time in XP and 20% in OSX and out of that 20%, 100% using firefox. I will be selling it and get back to E6400 or thinkpad T61 once e6400 full review comes out. I paid big bucks but didn't gain anything from it.

is it cool? yeah for maybe couple of weeks but I missed thinkpad T big time.

MBP runs x times hotter in xp than in osx, don't get yourself burnt if if go for that. and that **** screen won't bend over 120 degrees. only apple is dumb enough to design that.

 

see it was a FAD