Kinda sad I didnt get a mac now

Well i got a laptop for college back in August and was really debating between the dell 1520 and macbook. Well I let my gamer side get the best of me, and went with the 1520. Since ive gotten it, i've found it to heavy and too big, and have yet to play one game on it.

Im now disappointed I didnt get a mac, the reason I was only considering getting a mac was because of the OS. But really only due to it being something new and different that I could mess around with. I sometimes wonder if I would have gotten a mac if i would have been happier or if i would sfeel the same way i do now.

Sorry for not asking a question, just needed to get that off my chest. But anyone else fall into the same predicament?

 

This certainly would be of help to those who are in a similar predicament to you (and there are several members here) . Maybe next time around, you'll get a Mac!

 

Ive been possibly been considering selling my 1520, and buying a macbook. But i didnt buy the 1520, it was a graduation present so im not so sure how that person would feel.

 

If you're looking to do some cool stuff, why not play around with Linux? You can dual boot or run an OS virtually.

 

I could, it wasnt necessarily cool stuff I wanted, I just want something differnt now. Windows has bored me.

 

If Windows bores you, definitely give Linux a shot. Ubuntu is a good distro to check out... it's loaded with lots of goodies and there are plenty of sites with tutorials/instructions in case you get stuck.

 

Yeah, my gamer side pushed me to get the laptop I have now instead of a MacBook, although to be honest I couldn't push my purchase limit enough to get a MBP at the time (that was my reasoning against the MBP, plus I didn't want a MacBook since I did want to play games on it). I got a heck of a deal on my HP, but I still feel some buyer's remorse at times.

 

I'm the exact opposite. I did get a Mac thinking it would be great to have the new OS to mess around with, that it would be all I needed, etc.

Once the "honeymoon" phase was over, I had a severe case of buyers remorse.

OS X really isn't better than Windows. They both have their own problems, just different. OS X's lack of software choices really hurts it. The hardware you get for the money will eventually make you wonder what you were thinking when you look at the PC side of things and realize you can get something much more powerful for less (hell, you can get an Inspiron 1520 fully loaded with a blu-ray drive for less than the cost of the black MacBook).

If my white MacBook with DVD writer had been under $1000 after taxes, I would be perfectly satisfied. But the fact that it was $1408 after taxes and can't even play 3-4 year old games good, and DVDs look like crap under Tiger and Leopard thanks to the GPU and Apple's awful DVD playing software...........

 

Ahh, I was in a similiar predicament a couple months ago, whether to get a loaded 1520 or a Macbook Pro.
I went for the MBP, despite it being slightly lower specced and a bit more expensive, and haven't looked back since. Gaming is good, too.

 

It would cost you a few hundred dollars...but you could sell your Inspiron on Ebay. I just checked and they go roughly anywhere from 600 to 1000 dollars (depending on specs...).

If you have that much buyers remorse, it may be worth it to you.

 

Interesting... I'm a recent switcher myself(I've had a thread about it - specific windows user, where I've been recommended rather not to switch) and I haven't really encountered any problems with software yet.

All the quirky software I really need on the windows side I can get with vmware, and for all the mundane things there is an osx alternative, I think.

As for DVD - hm, why not go for VLC? I'm not sure how it can be related to gpu, as dvd is esentially mpeg2 and that's not cpu-intensive for modern laptops, gpu doesn't really play any significant part in dvd playing anyway.

 

Actually, GPUs play a very large role in DVD playback these days. At least, in Windows they do. DXVA and GPUs from the last 3 or so generations have changed things pretty dramatically in Windows. Thanks to that, GPUs do everything from decoding the entire stream to deinterlacing it to advanced upscaling.

Thats why you have videophiles who swear by HTPCs (home theater PCs) and spend hours setting up the system to get their DVDs to rival the best HD sources.

Up until Leopard, DVD Player in OS X didn't even upscale the video source. It simply stretched it to whatever resolution the display was set to. Talk about horribly blurry and distorted video.

But modern GPUs and DXVA will upscale, deinterlace, completely decode. They also generally have the same hardware support for VC-1 and H.264, as well as MPEG-4 Part 2 (otherwise known as divx and xvid). But Apple doesn't take advantage of this at all.

To put it in perspective, a Mac with a Core 2 Duo and GMA 950 or X3100 won't be able to play high bitrate H.264 HD video. And under OS X, systems with dedicated GPUs might have trouble. Yet my HP with a Core 2 Duo at 2GHz and a lowly GeForce 8400M GS can fully support and play HD-DVD and blu-ray with no frame drops and generally only ~60% CPU use thanks to hardware decoding. I just popped a DVD in. PowerDVD with PureVideo enabled playing a movie clocked in at 6% CPU use. That was decoding the DTS stream too. DVD Player in OS X is running the same movie at 22% CPU use. I just threw on a 720p H.264 video I have. It has about a 3Mb/sec bitrate. PowerDVD on my HP with PureVideo enabled.. 5% CPU time. Same video in Quicktime on OS X.. 50.1%

Thats really eye opening to me. I never thought to directly compare how much of a difference it would be.

 

Ive thought about an ebay sale, but as a business information major, i may need a windows laptop. I think maybe ill hold off and maybe buy a macbook next year when they have all the student discounts and sales again.

 

Well, you do know that Macs can run Windows natively as well now, right? Because that probably will fit your tasks pretty well too...boot into Windows at school, boot into OS X when you don't need Windows.