• meschi
  • flesh eating zombot
  • Offline
  • From: Scotland
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 3,834

Topic: I need a laptop.

Basically, I bought a laptop about a year ago recommended from one of these laptop review sites, and its been a pain in the arse ever since. constantly fucking up, terrible battery life from the get go, making noises I never knew existed and now its ready to kick the bucket. Which is a bit shit!

Theres loads of choice out there and wondered if anyone had any brands / models that are particularly trustworthy as Im not trusting review sites. preferably one with a decent battery life and powerful enough to run audio software without acting like a little bitch. I dont need it for games though.

Ive got up to

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  • From: chroot
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 680

Re: I need a laptop.

One year ago I made the switch from windows to mac... it has been (for me) possibly the best choice ever made.
Last march I bought a MacBookPro, 15" and so far I can consider myself very happy, concerning quality, battery duration
and so on..
Of course, the price tag is quite higher than what you mentioned, but nevertheless I have to mention that it has been the
best money I have spent for a laptop to date.
a.

  • Registered: 2008-08-05
  • Posts: 463

Re: I need a laptop.

I know your feeling man. I had a pc laptop but it caused me nothing but trouble. Crashing when playing live, overheating at home when trying to produce music, making all kinds of shitty noises. It made me eventually to switch over to Apple. Get one of those white macbook's. They still sell those and you can get it for cheap I guess... Whatever your stance on Apple's product are I have to say that macbooks are very reliable and trustworthy. Battery life is also excellent. They might be tad more expensive than pc equivalents but most of the time you get what you pay for. That is reliability in my case.

  • Registered: 2008-08-05
  • Posts: 463

Re: I need a laptop.

Alex beat me to it wink It was also the best choice I made for a long time. Os X is also rock solid, I always had bluescreens and whatnot on Windows. It's not perfect but then again nothing is.

5 Reply by meschi (edited by meschi 2009-03-06 11:26:39)

  • meschi
  • flesh eating zombot
  • Offline
  • From: Scotland
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 3,834

Re: I need a laptop.

thanks guys. The price is the only thing that is putting me off a bit, although I may be persuaded to go for it. Ive never owned an apple, Ive thought about it a lot though, but always just went for the comfortable familiarity of windows. My flatmate has got a macbook and ive had a wee play around with it, he just uses his for the internet though. Its nice, but I suppose it would take some getting used to considering im on a windows pc all day every day.

update: my current pishy laptop had a battery life for watching dvds of 40 minutes from new... terrible smile

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  • Registered: 2008-08-05
  • Posts: 463

Re: I need a laptop.

I'm not saying you can't get a reliable pc laptop but you have to shell out more than that I think to get really good quality. Like Vaio or something. Then it's the same price as macbooks. Btw. you can get white macbook for under 1000eur

  • meschi
  • flesh eating zombot
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  • From: Scotland
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 3,834

Re: I need a laptop.

Having a look on other sites, I think your right. I was hoping for a powerful and reliable cheap alternative. If I cant find one, I may be forced to shell out the extra and live with being happy and skint smile

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  • From: Ghetto Studio, London
  • Registered: 2008-07-09
  • Posts: 747

Re: I need a laptop.

meschi wrote:

Having a look on other sites, I think your right. I was hoping for a powerful and reliable cheap alternative. If I cant find one, I may be forced to shell out the extra and live with being happy and skint smile

Didnt we talk about this ;D....

Get the Mac book and I will hook you up with the necessary! You know it makes sense! (just get at least 2gig ram)

+++ Dont be scared honey, thats just the resonance knob +++
  • Registered: 2008-08-05
  • Posts: 463

Re: I need a laptop.

I think all of them have default 2gig even the cheapest white macbooks

10 Reply by meschi (edited by meschi 2009-03-06 11:54:42)

  • meschi
  • flesh eating zombot
  • Offline
  • From: Scotland
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 3,834

Re: I need a laptop.

computerdisco wrote:

Didnt we talk about this ;D....

Get the Mac book and I will hook you up with the necessary! You know it makes sense! (just get at least 2gig ram)

Yeah I remember man. I shouldve listened to you then. When will I learn lol

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  • rude66
  • robot des duivels
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  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 1,844

Re: I need a laptop.

this is such absolute nonsense. i've worked with both pc's and apples for more than 20 years, and they both are equally crap or equally good. i know several people that have had all kinds of problems with macbooks and other portable macs.. so please don't act like they are trouble free because they are not, just like pc notebooks.. as a matter of fact, a pc and a mac contain about 99 percent the exact same parts these days. and os-x or windows (xp, not that shitty vista!) are a match when it comes to reliability.

i've had my ancient asus notebook for about 6 years now, and it's never let me down. ever. never crashes, not even on stage. its been dragged all over the world, and a few months ago i dumped a whole glass of beer over it. it just kept on running while i dried it a little, didn't even have to restart it for the show. been just as flawless ever since. at the same time i'm reading stories of people throwing a few drops of coke or coffee over their white macbooks and they can throw them away..

the point: its up to your preferences.. dont get one or the other because they are supposed to be more reliable because they arent..

and if youre looking at pc laptops, more expensive is better. a lot. its even worth getting a second hand ex-top of the line from a year old over a new cheap one..

12 Reply by Kenzaburo (edited by Kenzaburo 2009-03-06 21:48:46)

  • Registered: 2008-08-05
  • Posts: 463

Re: I need a laptop.

Rude, I never said that Macs are better than Pcs. What I meant was that the cheapest of pc laptops (which Meschi was going for I guess) are really shitty at least in my experience. If you pay as much as a mac for a pc then you get the same quality. It's a matter of taste then. XP is reliable if you have good parts in your pc that don't cause bluescreens. Again macs are good because they have the same parts in every mac and OS x is build to work with those parts. Pc's can have so many different brand of chipsets etc in them ... You need to be more of a propellerhead with Pc's I guess.

Of course Macs can have problems too. Nothing is perfect. Mine had a hd crash after abt. 2 years of heavy use. Don't know if it was a bad batch of hd's or something. Anyway had all backed up because of the great backup system built-in Os X called Time Machine. No big loss!!! Got a reason to buy bigger hd too.

And btw. I spilled coffee on my macbook. Still works damn fine! Could you give me a link where you read such stories? I read contrary, many people have spilled stuff on Macs and they still work fine... That said you have to be careful with food and drinks with any computer!!!

  • rude66
  • robot des duivels
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  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 1,844

Re: I need a laptop.

i dont remember where is read that stuff, i just remember seeing it more than once. what you have to look out for, is a machine that has protection in between the keyboard and the rest. my asus has a protective plate, so nothing can spill through.
hd's can be a pain.. i had 2 die on me in one month, one brand new.. backups are the key, but also for the pc there are plenty that are free. i guess ms can't add a lot of this stuff to their OS anymore because of those lawsuits like with IE.. big_smile

i've never had bluescreens on any of my pc's with xp. thats why i feel buying from a company like asus is a good idea, because they also make boards..they should know what a good pc is.
the problem you have with macs is that they switch too.. a version of an OS and the software that goes with it will only be good with certain machines. first you had the motorola macs, then the powerpc's, then the imacs and g-series and now the intel macs.. and who knows what they'll do in the future.. when technically i could still install windows 3.1 on my new pc. those chipsets in pc's all work with the software, its only sometimes that there can be specific problems with video cards or sound cards that are usually solved with driver updates. a lot of times those problems come from the manufacturer of the hardware that doesn't work according to the specs..

  • From: spice-land
  • Registered: 2008-07-16
  • Posts: 198

Re: I need a laptop.

Having both a mac & a pc (both laptops) i can say ive had so much more hassles with my mac book pro then with my IBM.  Mac book Pro 15"  had 4 busted super drives & 2 internal hd's changes. All covered by .mac (luckly i extended the insurance add 150 euro) but they were pretty much assholes about it and wanted to blame my problems on 3rd party application.  IBM thinkpad is rocksolid, never an issue. When it comes to OSX & XP  talk , there are alot of benefits to OSX and XP alike but both can be total pain like Rudd says.

I would buy a PC cause it much cheaper and faster like a Dell that now comes 3 year insured and forget about spending 3 grand on a MAC and have the thing be obsolete in a year or less.

  • Registered: 2008-07-08
  • Posts: 1,443

Re: I need a laptop.

rude66 wrote:

the problem you have with macs is that they switch too.. a version of an OS and the software that goes with it will only be good with certain machines. first you had the motorola macs, then the powerpc's, then the imacs and g-series and now the intel macs..

power pc is the same as those imacs and g3 g4 g5 chips. it only made a difference when they switched to intel. probably intel have got the market cornered now so maybe no changes for a while, at least a conceivable life span fopr your laptop. the mac i use is 8 years old, everything still works perfect never one single issue. only flaw is it has usb 1.0. thats the only thing i would change, but a 600 quid comp lasted me a long time.
not laptop though tongue

  • From: Grodno, Belarus
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 529

Re: I need a laptop.

From all the laptops I owned or worked on (pc only) Dell and Sony vaio have been the most strudy-built and reliable. I also hear good comments about IBM thinkpads from a few guys at work. If I were buying a laptop now, I'd try looking through one of these brands first.

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  • From: Cambridge, UK
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 592

Re: I need a laptop.

I've owned an Asus L8400B for 8 years, running only Traktor 2.5 on (wait for it) Win ME. Believe me when I say that it has survived a shitload of clubnights and 5 hour sets without a glitch. It's only now that it has started showing its age, and rest assured that its replacement will be an Asus as well...

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Woody Aki's Website

  • Registered: 2008-07-08
  • Posts: 692

Re: I need a laptop.

I got a macbook ... after being a pc user all my life. My last laptop had hd die, i didn't have backup and had to pay thru the nose to recover it. With windows i could never understand the backup software, it all seemed too painful to set up and keep track of, so i never followed up and disaster struck. Then Vista came up and that was the last straw.

The back up feature Time Machine is pretty much fire and forget, but still has enough functionality for me and ultimately works for me.

In terms of value, if you do an exact hardware to hardware comparison macs are not that much more expensive (at least for a macbook in the US). I timed my purchase right and got a free ipod touch and printer + a student discount. I also tried VMWare Fusion to run Office and Photoshop on XP and was very impressed (considering I only have 1 Gb ram and this virtualization). However for music stuff  (i miss fruity) i plan to use bootcamp to create dual boot with XP.

Carbon Chic - A Broken Man

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  • Registered: 2009-02-22
  • Posts: 109

Re: I need a laptop.

Both platforms have there issues. I used to work as a tech and have seen alot of different situations. I personally would get an ASUS or IBM thinkpad for a laptop.

As far as stability, XP is the way to go for music if your going to do  PC platform. The trick is to shutdown alot of the services your not going to use. You could almost shutdown alot of them if you don't cave in and decide to use your laptop for internet and networking. THe borg xp edition is good (older) and there is an xp (vista theme) build going around that is good and solid. I currently have the newer xp (vista theme) build on a desktop and there are no errors on the event log when i start up, incredible!

The OSx operating system out of the box is superior compared to microsoft oem products, but when you tweak xp correctly it can blow it away as far as performance and reliabilty. Unfortunately running xp/vista without any tweaks and with those dongle usb things is horrible in my opinion - there is a big difference when you hack it up wink

Planet of Cevo

20 Reply by plikestechno (edited by plikestechno 2009-03-07 06:09:20)

  • From: Edmonton AB Canada
  • Registered: 2008-07-15
  • Posts: 712

Re: I need a laptop.

The thing Blue and some people said is true. You have to just buy a really good laptop. A lot of these discount laptops and towers have some great numbers but then they skimp on a lot of other things.

On your budget go on a local classifieds site and buy a couple year old Asus or Thinkpad. Or Macbook if you want. They still run pretty much everything. This summer, I bought the last behind now generation power pc 24 inch imac for the equivalent of 400 quid from someone who had used it a handful of times and wanted to buy a Macbook Pro. And it's amazing on the desk and for what it does for me..

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  • From: hackney grid
  • Registered: 2008-07-09
  • Posts: 328

Re: I need a laptop.

Meschi, I have got one of these back in Italy, I can get it shipped over for you tongue

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/9207/appleport2.jpg

signalsum

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  • From: Cambridge, UK
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 592

Re: I need a laptop.

Fico... lol

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  • From: chroot
  • Registered: 2008-07-07
  • Posts: 680

Re: I need a laptop.

eheh remembers me of the advocacy wars Amiga vs. Atari St... (the topic, not the picture above).

Anyways I state my situation: I had an HP, an IBM, a Dell and now the MacBook... Considering only the hardware side,
the best one I had so far is the Mac. But then, your mileage may vary....

I don't enter the OS "competition" because I use linux for my needs.

24 Reply by San

  • San
  • Babushkabot
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  • From: Melbourne
  • Registered: 2008-07-08
  • Posts: 738

Re: I need a laptop.

I'm in this situation too Meschi. If I was better at tweaking I'd get a PC and run Linux on it because it seems to be really  reliable. Unfortunately, all the stuff I use at school is Mac so I'm stuck between getting a new white Macbook and upping the Ram (but only 2.0 processor and I'm worried the graphics card will really slow it down), buying a secondhand Macbook that still has firewire or paying a few grand for a Macbookpro which I don't really have and I'm worried will be obsolete by the time I finish my course. Sigh.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

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25 Reply by Kenzaburo (edited by Kenzaburo 2009-03-08 08:01:47)

  • Registered: 2008-08-05
  • Posts: 463

Re: I need a laptop.

The new white macbooks (they still manufacture them) have default 2 gig of ram. So no need to up it. And I think it really is fast enough for almost anything. Unless you do some 3d-modeling or something where you need lots of calculation power in graphics card. And ok, you can't really play modern games on it but you should buy a console for that smile I think actually they upped the graphics card on the whiteys too just in the beginning of january. Don't know exactly which one they have now. By the time you finish your course you can still use it and then you can apply a job and buy a new computer because you have awesome diploma and earn loads of money!!!

Linux is great but not for a person who is not a bit of propllerhead... Still... Os X is based on similar technology so you get the same stability.

I suspect you do some video stuff because you need firewire? If that's the case you will be probably using Final Cut. Which runs fine on white Macbooks what I've heard. Fcs will run on any of the intel macs (and i believe some successfully use fcp even on ibooks). Just use an external drive as a scratch disk.

They still sell the last generation Macbook pro's cheaper so that might also be an option if you need the additional horsepower.