Should I Buy?

An out of state, acquantance has offered to sell me an Apple MacBook Pro for $1850 (about $2500 - new retail). I have been a windows guy my whole life, but since, Apple has now started using Intel chips and you can install windows and windows software on it, my interest in Apples has increased. This Apple has the specs I'd want (2GB memory, 2.4GHZ Intel Dou Core, 15.4" wide screen - 140X900 reolution, NVidia GEForce 8600T 256MB, 160GB hard drive, etc.).

The cost is tempting, however, the work I do uses VBA, Visual Basic and VB.NET, so in the beginning, I will be spending most of my time in the windows environment.

So should I buy it or stick with a pure windows machine?


Thanks


Gary

 

No comments?

 

1. Can you trust your acquaintance? i.e. why is he ditching a brand new top-of-the-line MBP?

2. You could resell it after you buy it for a bit more, but the effort involved probably wouldn't be worth it since your margin would be only $600, and you'd have to factor in taxes and shipping and etc.

3. Paying $1850 for just the hardware in that MBP is a good deal. You will not get a PC with those specs for that price (actually you wouldn't be able to get a PC with the MBP's specs for any price currently since no 15" PC has a LED display ...how much that's worth is up to you of course). The price difference would even possibly offset any costs of not using OSX to some extent. Be prepared to have to deal with some minor inconveniences though if you use Windows exclusively (i.e. smaller HDD space because one partition will be used for OSX, keyboard isn't the exact same as a Windows keyboard, and some other minor bugs that should be ironed out by the time Boot Camp gets out of beta).

 

In theory it sounds like a good deal, but I'd want to know why he is selling a $2500 machine for only $1850. That is a pretty remarkable discount, and well below what it should fetch, especially if it is in like new condition.

 

You'd be safer buying a refurbished model from Apple. The 2.33ghz 15" MBP is $1900 there.

 

That's an old model though, without LED, a suckier graphics card, etc. etc. etc. Not worth buying at this point

I guess what it hinges on is how you define "acquaintance" and why you didn't call him a "friend" or something else. The whole "out-of-state" thing makes it more suspicious too.

 

Yes one of the reasons for my interest was because of the NVidia 8600 256MB. If one gets a refurbished macbook pro, is it possible for one to one the laptop and replace the ATI video card with an NVidia?

 

Nope. Can't replace the GPU here.

 

A) Thats an amazing price if you can trust who you're buying it from.

B) You can run a virtual machine to run VS; it'll run fine

C) I went from Windows-->Mac; I love my MBP (I'm a sucker for the design and OS Xs 'clean' interface)

 

wow all these people ask about running windows dedicated on macbook pro hardware.

i wish i could sticky the reasons why you shouldn't do that. even if price isn't a factor, its not a good idea.

unless you have an external keyboard / mouse and want to stay plugged in - (battery removed for the battery-heat conscious)

you will not be productive in windows.

 

Indeed. People want the Apple name and design, but they don't want the software or hardware.

That isn't going to work. You can't run Windows as well on a given mac as you will be able to on a similarly matched PC. They're simply different computers designed for different operating systems. People shout incessantly that "anything you can do on a PC, you can now do on a Mac, including Windows har har har!", but it just isn't true. Windows is designed for a two-button mouse or a two-button trackpad. Windows is designed for a Windows keyboard. Windows is designed for hardware and software configurations that understand how to properly manage its power consumption. Windows is designed for computers with easily-replaceable hardware parts.

I see posts by people trying to remove the LCDs of their MBPs and replace them with LEDs. I see posts by people trying to remove motherboards, graphics processors, hard drives - Macs aren't PCs. The laptops aren't designed to be user-serviceable. You're looking at the wrong computer brand if you really want to tinker with the insides of your computers, or if you really want to run dedicated Windows platforms and programs.

Windows is not designed for Mac hardware. Nor is it designed to be emulated in Mac software. Yet people refuse to acknowledge this.

 

Well, it's not quite so clear cut as that.

Yes, there are many disadvantages and inconveniences to using Windows exclusively on a MBP, and it is a inefficient use of resources - both monetarily and otherwise.

However, the degree to which that affects someone, and the amount of inconvenience that they're willing to put up with, when balanced with whatever it is that they want from the MBP, is a personal decision. If they feel that they're willing to bear those disadvantages and sacrifice some degree of convenience and/or productivity, then I'd say go for it.

In fact, from a certain point of view, there would be benefits to running Windows on a MBP - namely that you'll always have something to fall back on if your Windows partition fails - there's still an easy way to recover your data and reinstall everything from OSX. (of course you don't need a MBP to do this, but just an example).

In the end, it's enough that they realize ahead of time that those disadvantages will exist so they're not making an uninformed decision when buying the MBP. Beyond that, it's just up to their own preferences. Why should we be the judge of that?

 

its not even about the money. if apple users just wanted to "get things done" on the tightest budget, we would all be using windows, on old hardware, i might add. now that i think about it, we would probably be using linux on old hardware.

its not that the mac platform can't properly manage power consumption, or that it can't be useful in a two-button operating system (mac osx requires two mouse buttons), or any other reason that isn't fixable (hardware based).

its just the support. its not ready for windows exclusively. you don't need to remove your regular LCD and replace it with an LED back light to have a functional windows environment. It's just that the expected laptop features (like an effective trackpad, power management, etc) which are very well implemented in os x on the macbook pro have not yet been carried over to the windows environment.

its not that it cant ever be, its just not there right now.

its entirely possible that with the official release of boot camp, the story will change. all windows needs to be fully functional is better driver support. in the meantime, you can run programs natively, which is great, as long as you are near an outlet and have an external mouse and keyboard.

 

Well, yes...

It's always been a personal decision as to whether to go for this or not. But it would be errant of us not to point out the inherent disadvantages in attempting to use a Mac as a Windows machine - especially when most people, due to the marketing, attempt this with the unflinching belief that running XP on an MBP (for example) will be *exactly* like running XP on a Thinkpad, or a Dell, or a Gateway. Apple certainly doesn't advertise their shortcomings - referring to the shortcomings of running XP on OSX hardware - they simply imply you'd be better off running OSX, rather than a WinOS.

I'm just saying people should look before they leap. Yes, you can run Windows on an Apple. But for the love of your sanity (not to mention productivity and bank account), know what you're getting into.

 

Why not? I plan on buying a MacPro and having XP on my drive too. What problems?

 

i actually don't quite see all the "disadvantages" that overclock is seeing. i mean yes your windows xp will run slower when you run it through a virtual machine. But actually that's not bad, for i've seen people at my school still code just fine on them. The only thing i see as a "disadvantage" in this configuration is that games won't play well. If this is your concern then you can just get xp for boot camp. much less emulation here since most of the hardware are from intel. If you look at the performance in this configuation the mbp is very close to the performance of the asus g1s. So what about keyboard and mouse layout? Well lucky you, mac put in a program that allows you to change the layout of the keyboard so if you want that apple key to be your alt key and your options key to be the windows key no problem there. macs are built from one mouse layout? um... i'm not sure if you noticed but apple do sell two button mouses but just that the touchpad is a one button mouse. oh that is a slight inconvenience but i would just get a real mouse. Also i would like to think that people who wants a mac wants to try something new.

But back to the original form question "Should I Buy?" I think if you trust this person well enough then yes. But i would suggest that you look at it and see what are you getting. I mean that $1800 price tag seems a bit suspicious. Other than that i would suggest you go for it. Trust me, i'm not a mac fan by a long mile but i do support people to try other os systems (especially developers). There is one thing that i agreed with overclock in this topic is that "people should look before you leap".