Is a MAC worth it for the build quality only?

First of all I like Windows, I even like Windows Vista (which I am using right now). I don't really mind it at all. Windows has so far worked great for me, and I have anti-virus software installed (which is probably the biggest pain to be honest with Windows). I would probably get anti-virus software for MAC anyways just because I am paranoid.

What I don't like is how my HP computer has a 50 DB fan running right now and has 14 seconds of battery life after about 1.5-2 years of use.

All of these Apple fanboys keep telling me that Apple is worth it for the quality. Well right now I am looking at the Mac Book Pro i7, with the student discount, around $2,000.

This is vs. a Sony Vaio F series around say $1400 and an Alienware M15x around say $1700.

The MBP has weaker stats then these computers (2 GB less ram, weaker graphics card, older processor (620 vs. 720) and is $600 to $300 more. I don't care about the style etc. All I do care is that the MBP does have probably double the battery life....and is the quality that much better? IE no hardware problems at all for four years?

 

I'm really tired of answering these questions but here we go:

The specifications of a machine do not mean squat unless you're running the same OS. OS X is by far much more efficiently written than any version of Windows out there (Even 7 ... This is coming from someone who runs Windows on their main desktop)

Yes on paper the MBP seems to be lacking compared to the other machine you're talking about ... Just go to a Best Buy or Apple Store and try it out for yourself ... I mean, how do you expect me to describe performance to you when you can see it first hand?

When you go to said Apple Store pick up the machine and decide for yourself if it feels solid enough for you to justify shelling out the additional cash.

As for the battery life, yes it does last longer than most Windows equivalents but it's not by a wide margin ... You're looking at 5 hours tops if you're going to use your MBP conveniently (50% brightness, WiFi etc).

In case I didn't drive the point home, go and see the machine for yourself, it's a decision only you can make.

 

IMO, the build quality of Apple's notebooks aren't all that great. They're comparable to most consumer notebooks but a far cry from any business notebook. If you're considering a notebook based on build quality, you could find much better at a lower cost with the Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Elitebook, or Lenovo ThinkPad T/W series.

 

I forgot to mention I need this for engineering and I would run some games on it. The stats would be primarily for engineering software, which I'm pretty sure doesn't run on OSX and games which don't as well.

So the "efficiency" of OSX would only be for like photoshop and web browsing, plus whatever games run on Mac.

I didn't know you can run advanced applications on the MBP in Windows....sorry if I was mistaken.

 

Yeah, nothing on the market beats the Elitebooks in terms of quality.

I don't know what engineering software you're running but I'm an Electrical Engineering graduate and I can run LabView, Matlab, and Simulink on my MBP.

I have Photoshop CS4, Lightroom 2 and Photomatix Pro installed as we speak and they all run alright ... Could use some faster startup time for Photoshop but it's fine considering I'm using a 13" MBP.

As for games, can't help you out there. Don't play video games.

 

FYI AutoCAD is not out for OSX...only windows so you would have to run bootcamp if you need this program for engineering. Butttt.....i did hear a rumor that AutoCAD is coming to mac very soon.

 

If you're not going to be using OS X as your main OS, you might as well not get a Mac.

 

Absolutely not. Apple is middle of the road in terms of reliability (see graph -- it's better than HP's consumer line, but that's a really low standard). And don't expect the fan to be any quieter. I share an office with somebody who has a MacBook and if it is doing anything CPU-intensive at all, the fan on that thing is LOUD.

The Macs are worth it if and only if you either need or want OS X. If you're going to be running Windows anyway, you can probably get a business-class notebook with better specs, higher reliability and better service for the same price.

 

Apple quality is midway. In fact it's what you'd expect from a machine that costs 1500$(not more) and it's subpar for a machine that costs 2000$.

 

I love how most of the nay sayers are PC owners posting in the Apple forum.

The chart pretty much falls in line with Consumer Reports' reliability ratings. There is no such thing as a computer brand that has no issues. Even the best rated on that graph still has a 15% problem rate.

There is more to value than simply reliability, specs or operating system. You need to decide what your needs are (not wants). Look at different systems and rate them according to your needs and then decide which is the closest to your ideal system. No forum is going to be able to make an accurate decision for you.

If you're happy with Windows anyway, chances are good that you would enjoy another PC.

 

huh?

this.

no.

uncommon. your office mate should have his MacBook looked at.

a business-class notebook will come with a poorer GPU, a poorer screen, and/or poorer battery life for the weight. some combination therein. workstations with good GPU's won't get you more than 2-3 hours on a charge at best. I've done all that research over the last 3 months. there is no business class notebook that offers the MBP's hardware AND battery life AND screen quality. it doesn't exist. and anything else is guaranteed to have a less impressive trackpad. he specified a need for good battery life...well the new MBP's offer solid power and performance and at least 6 hours of battery life. with people getting in to the 8's and 9's on integrated.

it all depends on what your priorities are. as for gaming, the topic creator should see this thread and decide if what he finds there will be sufficient for his/her needs. but that's IF he's willing to spend most of his time in OSX.

TC: you should find out if the apps you need to run have OSX versions or not. and of those that don't, how often you need to use them and if they'll work well in parallels/fusion, or if you will indeed have to boot into Win7 on a regular basis.

 

^^^
Well said,
Also, you might have to wait really long for you business machine to arrive...

MBP arrive comparatively fast or you can just pick em up .

 

Most Mac users love their Macs... many non-Mac users who come here think they are more qualified because they have read some reviews and maybe used a Mac here or there for 10 minutes or a day or two... typical know-it-all people. Take pretty much anything people reply here with a grain of salt.

 

if you do not mind the heat, the poor battery life and trackpad sensitivity of the mac under windows, then get a mac...if you mind all these and still need windows, get an hp elitebook.

 

Well it looks like many engineering programs do run on OSX, now I just need to see if my school has licenses for those versions (as you get them for free for Windows) to enhance my decision.

Thanks for your help. I'm surprised that people say that Apple quality is mid-range, somebody was telling me that Apple quality is very superior. Which is why I was considering spending on it. I don't want issues.

 

its one of the best quality wise. What people consider top notch quality is some theoretical ideal super quality that doesn't exist anywhere.

 

Just to clear this up (as I haven't noticed anyone else doing so), the i7-620M is a *newer* processor than the i7-720QM, by a few months. More important than the time, the 620 is made with Intel's newest 32nm process, while the 720 is the older 45nm process.

The 720 does offer more cores, but it also comes at a significantly lower clock speed. While it will outperform the 620 on some highly threaded tasks, it will be outperformed by the 620 on tasks that don't use all the cores. Overall, I think the performance is a wash for most users, but the 620 runs on 10 less watts and will cause you considerably less headaches with battery life / heat / throttling.

As someone who *does* run CPU-intensive tasks on his laptop, I prefer a 620 to a 720 in a notebook form factor.

 

well said, Mr. Savage. I meant to chime in on that point too, but got sidetracked by the misinformation and addressed that stuff instead.

 

I recently picked up the new MBP 13-inch and so far am impressed with the build quality. The laptop feels solid, even when I hold it with one hand. It is a bit on the heavy side for a 13-inch, but it's still light enough to not be a bother. In terms of performance, it's rock solid for my needs. I virtualize Windows 7 with VMWare Fusion and it runs very well, even though I have the slower hard-drive spinning at 5400 rpm. And lastly, I absolutely like the battery life on it, as I am getting 7 hours easy even when I'm running Win7 virtually. The laptop remains quiet too, and doesn't get hot at all.

 

It is superior only when compared to consumer notebooks. When you throw business/workstation class notebooks into the picture it's another story altogether.

 

Actually I would go further and say that most "business class" laptops are a sham. There are few laptops actually engineered purely for business. But in any case there isnt anything whether "consumer" or "business" that matches the Macbook Pros on all three of those dimensions mentioned above. That's the situation with laptops these days: there is a lot of junk out there. Which is why the Macbooks are commanding a high price. We need to see more real competition in products from the PC makers, but it just isnt there.

But at the moment if you dont want to compromise on anything and you dont have any specific programs that you cant operate on Mac then Macbook pros are really the way to go.

 

agreed, good sir. that's what my search has lead me to conclude as well.

 

does Dell still make "business" lines with extra cost?

when I used to do warranty work for them, they had inspirons, latitudes, and precisions all that were exactly the same with different plastic and prices. I first found this out when I was changing out a motherboard in a Precision, and when I turned it on it said Inspiron... and I had to just force flash the bios to a "precision" bios so it said the right thing.. it fully worked as an inspiron. They've done this for many many years... the only real differences besides the plastic, was the extra option choices you could configure.

 

my understanding is that their Precision line is held to higher quality standards.

and I know for a fact that HP's Elitebook line is very solid in build quality. no flex anywhere on my HP Elitebook. I even dropped it from 4' onto marble and it dented the corner a bit, but no other effect on the laptop.

I'd definitely buy Elitebook again. these are clearly made to higher quality standards than their consumer lines. I cannot speak for HP Probooks or Dell Latitudes, though. But I think the biggest emphasis on all of theses "higher than consumer grade" laptops is the service and support. Dell's consumer-grade support is fantastic and I presume their business support is even better.

And really, when you get into expensive computers, what you're paying for in addition to higher testing standards is better support. Even better than Apple support in that Dell and HP will send people to your home or place of business to fix issues, rather than having to make an appointment with a "genius" at a local apple store (if you have one locally at all) and/or mailing the laptop away for who knows how long.

 

Well the other computer I was strongly considering was the Sony F series laptop, this was coming in at around $1400. (6GB Ram, I720, 1GB Nvidia 330m, 7200 RPM hard drive 320gb, FULL HD 1080p screen). Aside from the battery all I really cared about was the quality of the laptop, I'm still not really sure. The Mac Book pro would probably come out to be similar performance from what I'm seeing, so I'm not really sure whether the $600 more is worth it.

 

I don't really feel like arguing, but just so the OP gets the information he/she needs:


Elitebook > MBP in build quality and screen quality (optional). That being said, a MBP would meet more than 70% of the general populace's standard for superb quality.

 

Sony's are good quality, relatively speaking. definitely among the better consumer-grade laptop systems.

as for whether it's worth it or not, you have to decide if the better battery life, styling, trackpad, display quality, OSX-exclusive apps, and availability of apps you need are worth the higher price tag.

depends on the screen you get if you can get a good one. Dreamcolor display is superior to damn near everything...but is the average elitebook display better? and as for build quality, I tend to agree...but cheap palm rest materials were cheap. my palm rest on my Elitebook is peeling off and looks terrible. still runs like a champ, though. damn does it look tacky for a laptop only 9 months old and treated rather well.

 

build quality is sujective here. You cant expect a laptop to be durable if you throw it everywhere and you treat it like it's something cheap. The only tru durable laptop i can think of is the panasonic toughbook. A laptop's durability all depends on how you use it. Mine's pretty clean after 2 years. My friend's hp died on him after 1 year and he was treating it badly.

 

Source

The problem with these kinds of research is that they don't differentiate between the plastic Macbooks and the aluminium. Or between HP Pavillion and Elitebook. The picture might look very different if they did.

 

That graph doesn't really say anything, all other brands have low end and high end lineup of notebooks, while Macbooks are the only one with all supposedly high end notebooks. The low end notebooks of other brands will definitely have a higher failure rate, and averaged out, it will bring up the average failure rate of that brand. However, in the end it means nothing.

 

Yeah that's what I said below the graph.

Means nothing? I wouldn't say that. For example: Anyone saying Apple quality is superior to any other brand is mistaken.

 

The problem with this graph is the title.
If it was really manufacturer as the Graph claims it should read Compal, Quanta, Wistron, Foxconn, etc .
Crappy article with Zero Credibility.

 

you all do realize that that graph is useless...?

its data by SquareTrade who sells extended warranties. This data doesn't come from the actual manufacturers of the machines, but just that one company and their totally 3rd party coverage.

 

It's the 3-year service history of more than 30,000 laptops.

The fact that it comes from SquareTrade doesn't make it less credible to me. If it was coming from Asus it would be a different story.

 

Consumer Reports has reliability numbers that show a range of 16% (Toshiba) to 21% (Dell and Lenovo) of notebooks that needed repair. Apple had 19%, HP had 20% and they advised that differences of up to 3% were not meaningful.

Just to address the "Dell will come to your house" argument. In my years of owning Dell systems, they NEVER, I repeat, NEVER came to my house to fix a problem. What they have done is sent me parts and instructions to fix things myself. I've replaced, keyboards, hard drives and DVD drives (that one was a pain). My friends who did have Dell respond to the house hated the experience as they kept rescheduling on them. One friend battled with Dell for two weeks and took numerous hours off from work waiting at the house for a Dell tech. When one finally did show up they said they didn't have the part and the whole scheduling thing started over again. Just to be fair, every manufacturer (including Apple) has horror stories about tech support. I just wanted to point out that "home service" isn't the holy grail of tech support.

Back to the OP's question. The correct answer is NO, no brand is "worth it" based on build quality alone. That being said, its still not the correct way to compare systems since its only taking one factor into account.

 

Well I generally take pretty good care of my electronics, so i was thinking more of if there is no major fault on my side, will the laptop die anyways type of quality. IE a manufacturing problem.

 

Thinkpad X201T beats the macbook pro 13 in all three aspects (ok, the GPU in the X201T is crap, but its CPU is better so if you are not doing anything graphic the performance is better) and is better in term of portability, ergonomics and expandability.

Problem: the X201T, fully equipped, costs over 2k$...

http://virtualization.info/en/news/2009/07/how-sony-impedes-virtualization-hurting.html
Oops...

If for you build quality just means "no killer fault", then probably 70% of all laptops have good quality (unless there is some kind of NVIDIA GPU fault, but no brand is immune from it).

 

The build quality of Mac has gone down the past couple of years.

The only reason to buy a Mac these days is to run OSX and anything on it you'd like. Otherwise, stick with a PC.

 

Where do you base this on?

Did you own any unibody MBPs?

 

therein lies the beauty of dell. if a repair is something simple, they'll send you the part. why? because you'll get the part in 2 days or less and be back up and running. isn't that preferrable to having to:

1.) Schedule an appointment with a local "Genius" (who may be 30-60 minutes away or more, depending on where you live)

2.) Wait as they try to diagnose the problem or substantiate your claim.

3.) Wait for them to receive your part in......or watch as the laptop is shipped off and wait for it to come back in to them...and go pick it up.

???


that's no better than HP service for major issues (let's say...a bad screen).

Now. With Dell, if the part is simple to replace (keyboard, memory, HDD, bad battery) they'll send you the part, saving literally days of time you'd have to wait with any other manufacturer. And if it's something major (say...screen replacement, speaker replacement), they WILL send someone to your home.

I had a screen replaced by Dell. Set up the service call...within maybe 4 hours, I had my at-work service appointment set up. Guy came to me...I left him to do his work in a small conference room. He was in and out in about 40 minutes. Total time to fix? 1.5 days. How long would it have taken Apple? I hope to not find out, but I know that repair would have taken HP about 7-10 days round-trip (most delay due to shipping)...and it took Sony even longer for the crossed out laptop in my sig because of parts shortages, but I'd give them the same estimate.

I also had the palmrest replaced on my 1996 Dell E1705 because the touchpad started to go. They again came to my house after 2 days and were in and out in about 20 minutes.

So really...your experience with them shipping parts was as much a matter of what's most convenient for you as what's least expensive for them. the fact that all of your repaired parts could be mailed to you reflects only that your issues were small and easy to resolve. Had you had an issue that would have required serious surgery on your machine, they would have sent someone to your home. as such, you really should have been glad they had the ability to mail you the part with simple instructions for replacement, no? it means you probably saved a ton of time. Hell man, you don't even get that option with 90% of manufacturers.

And that's why I'll never, ever have anything bad to say about Dell. Not only do they stand behind their products with their warranties, but they'll get someone out to wherever you are in 48-72 hours. and when it's an easy fix to a problem that doesn't require all that...YOU win by not having to drive somewhere or mail your entire machine in and having to waste your time. my personal experiences testify to that. At least, that's the experience I've had with my Dell laptop and Dell desktop.

 

One thing I liked about Apple is that if I needed to have any repair on my MBP done, I could just take it to the guru's at their store to have them fix it. It beats having to mail in the laptop, wait 2 weeks, then hope that they repaired the machine.

 

Oh, is that why the games just released on Steam for Mac run like crap in OSX compared to their performance on the same hardware in Windows?

There's that Apple RDF hard at work...again...

 

perhaps you live really close to an Apple store, but for some of us the local store is 50 miles away. for others, there isn't one within reasonable driving distance. when talking about general experiences, it's good to consider that others may not have such a convenience.

it certainly does, but do you know what beats it? in-home service. although I agree that if you have a problem and can get to an Apple Store faster than Dell can mail you a part (usually 24 hours with Dell in my experiences) or get someone into your home, that will be just as good as or better.

no.

that's because of mediocre, uninspired porting processes from one OS to the other. most developers aren't terribly interested in rebuilding their engine to work optimally on a platform that only owns 10% of the market. so many of them don't. As for STEAM, simple logic would have told you that Valve is just getting into it...problems will occur. they've been doing updates a couple times a week, stabilizing and enhancing performance, as they would with any game of theirs. the fact that their game and service are on a completely new platform, some issues were to be expected. It'd be short-sighted to believe Valve would have come out of the gate performing as well on OSX as they do on PC where they've been perfecting their service for years.

Simple logic would have told you this, had you applied yourself.

 

It's an interesting theory, but it's not supported by the various other multiplatform games out there (particularly relevant here are open-source games that perform better on Windows than they do on Macs.)

You could've at least pointed to one of the real contributing factors: crappy drivers.

 

Graphic drivers on OS X are usually more optimized for stability than performance (it's pretty much like gaming on a workstation card).

 

Driver optimization is always important. And most of these games we'd actually talk about are not open source blah blah blah. Those aren't what people come here asking about unless BC2, Crysis, TOB, L4D, E:TW, SCII, ME2 and others are now "open source". the biggest issue that game ports like Modern Warfare 2 for Mac have lies in terrible porting. I think some of these games are just PC games wrapped in a wine-like wrapper to enable play or something like that.

the port quality issue has been a known one for some time. drivers could be more optimized under OSX I'm sure. Doesn't change the reality that the biggest culprit are the game developers. Certainly I don't begrudge them for not putting max time into a market 1/10th the size of their main market. It's good business. wanna play games on your Mac? See how well the OSX version of the game you wan runs (if available at all). If you're not satisfied, install Win7 + the game for that purpose and move on.

overclocking a 330M is easy in Win 7. and should someone become inspired and create an overclocking tool for OSX, gaming on the platform can be even better. but I think Valve and Blizzard will prove that rebuilding a game on OSX and optimizing it will produce solid frames where mediocre ports will not.

 

Funny thing is that steam for Mac is more stable than for windows.

Valve Releases Some Early Mac Statistics from Steam - Shacknews - PC Games, PlayStation, Xbox 360 and Wii video game news, previews and downloads

Valve even has said that we need to remember that pc games have had years worth of a head start. Give it some time and see what happens.

As for parts shipped to your house. It's fine for tech savvy people but I wouldn't expect my mother to happy abbot having to work on her pc whe she paid for "in home" service.

 

I hear you, bro and I agree. but I'd like to think that in the "mom/grandma" scenario, she'd decline having parts shipped to her and Dell would send someone out.

I don't know because I've never been in that position. I'd call customer service and ask...but eh...I think that's a bit much to do. I think for me, Dell's service strategy never let me down. not once. ymmv.

 

It all depends now as Dell has gone to multiple categories of service: basic, advanced and premium(of course they get more expensive as you go up). Feel free to read the policy online after going thru 4 or five links to get to the meat and potatoes of it. Dell seems to want to make it very difficult to find the actuall terms. You can also see that several states are or have sued Dell over the "in home" service as customers like I described were denied in home service.

http://www.crn.com/hardware/212800203;jsessionid=EQ2BQVLKSUUOLQE1GHPCKH4ATMY32JVN

 

interesting.

I think they've had multiple service plans for awhile. basic, accidental, mail-in, in-home, etc. needless to say, we're discussing the service plan that includes in-home support. and yes, there's a premium for that as there should be. it was a premium add-on when I bought my computer 4 years ago. stands to reason it still is now.

as for finding the information about the plans:

Learn More: Service Plans | Dell

was not hard at all.



basic service plan = Apple Care + in-home support (- convenience of local Apple Stores if one is near)

Advanced service plan = basic service plan + accidental damage protection

Premium service plan = Advanced service plan + faster in-home support + a free battery when your current one dies + someone to talk to to help you with any issues, 24/7.

for comparison's sake: the Dell "Advanced" Service Plan is priced around the same price as Apple Care. The Advanced plan is far superior to AppleCare thanks to in-home support and accidental damage protection. you can't honestly say Apple Care touches any of that with a 12' pole.

and if you don't have an Apple Store nearby, Apple's warranty doesn't even deserve to be in a conversation with Dell's.