17-inch Apple MackBook Pro

[SilverStone05]

I'd pay a $500 premium if I had to (thank goodness I don't) to avoid using anything by Microsoft. .

The most widely used software in the world. They must have/been done/doing something right.

Mac only builds premium machines. They don't have budget machines.

The entry level macbook is a budget machine. The Mac mini is a budget machine.

Don't forget that ontop of the hardware, you get a beautifully designed machine and the best operating system you can buy.

Beautifully designed machine, yes. Best operating system, I dunno. :wink:

(p.s. - no Page Up/Page Down buttons on a Mac, just press the spacebar when not in a typefield (pg down) and shift+spacebar for page up, I like it better, the less buttons the better. – Also, what is an end/home button??)

Using two buttons to do what one can do otherwise? I call that counter-intuitive. If you don't know what end and home buttons are i'm not going to even address it, but suffice to say, I use them a lot.

People who complain about a Mac mouse should just plug in their Windows-machine mouse. It'll work instantly, even with rightclicks.

Great advice, I didn't know that. But that doesn't negate the fact that the apple ones stink.

I don't know of many real reasons why anyone should not atleast consider buying a Mac.

I said it before. Price.

 

[SilverStone05]

If I have to pay an "Apple tax" to have a useful computer that doesn't run Windows, then so be it. That's why I work -- to be able to afford the things I want.

"A fool and his money are soon parted." :biggrin:

Now thats a joke, so don't get upset.

 

[Arshad]

The most widely used software in the world. They must have/been done/doing something right.

Hmm, just like Ford?

The entry level macbook is a budget machine. The Mac mini is a budget machine.

They're not. They may be cheap, and they may be the "budget" offerings on Apple's site, but they are still full-featured machines with lots of "extras". A budget machine does not start off with a Core 2 Duo CPU. A budget machine chops $200 off the CPU price alone by going with a previous generation, low speed CPU. A budget machine skimps on the components by using 2 dimms instead of 1, no bluetooth, no firewire, no DVI out etc.

Since you seem to STILL insist that Macs are more expensive after two clear examples above, I will give you one more. The MacBook is configured very similarly to the Dell XPS M1210 which is a lightweight 12.1" notebook. When configured the same way (1.83Ghz CPU, 2GB RAM, 80GB HD, DL DVD Burner, GMA950 graphics, 802.11n, etc. the Dell worked out to $2010 and the MacBook ended up at $1399. Again, a savings of over $600 for the Mac!

Hmm, I think I'm starting to see a pattern here -- Dells are DAMN EXPENSIVE!!

 

[rickysals]

I'm not gonna argue anymore over Mac OS vs. XP/Vista - it's a preference thing. If you're content with fighting off spyware and viruses, then I guess enjoy it.

Personally I prefer the ease of shortcuts on my Mac. Cmd+W closes things, Cmd+Q quits, Cmd+H hides... it just fits my hand better. When I try to shortcut on my sister's Dell, I have to contort my hand to do things... it just doesn't fit my hand. Little things like that make me hate Windows with a passion.

They both do the big stuff efficiently enough to suffice. We know how the viruses are. The little things is where Mac takes the lead for me.

Preference thing though. So enjoy the XP.

I haven't compared the prices directly, others here have so I'm not gonna jump on that dogpile. I wouldn't consider the Macbook a budget machine though, it's just the cheaper laptop they offer.

 

[NSXrebel]

Silverstone, why dont you enlighten us on what the End and Home keys are used for since you say you use them alot. Last time I checked, this was a forum, where ideas, knowledge, and opinion are shared and discussed.

Just by your posts, I can see you're a Mac hater. There are 3 examples showing clearly that a Mac cost the same/cheaper than a PC(MS) equivalent, yet you still argue Macs are overpriced.

Being the most widely used OS doesnt make it the best.

Dont get me wrong, and think I'm some kind of mac fanboy, because I do use windows. But arguing about things like the 1 button mouse and how it sucks is just moot. Apple does make a multi-button mouse, 5 buttons actually w/ scroll, the Might Mouse. Not knowing about a product and thrashing it, well that's just 'ignant. So now you know about multibutton apple mice, what are those home/end buttons for?

Oh , and if you're not enjoying using your MBP, i'll gladly take it from you , and give it a loving home. :biggrin:
Heck, i'll even trade you my Sony VAIO for yours.

 

[Arshad]

Silverstone, why dont you enlighten us on what the End and Home keys are used for since you say you use them alot. Last time I checked, this was a forum, where ideas, knowledge, and opinion are shared and discussed.

They are very useful when you're doing a lot of text editing for quickly moving to the top/bottom of a document. Similarly page up/page down keys. So yes, they can be very useful keys, but on a laptop because there is limited keyboard space, they are assigned through the 'alt' key. Just like most laptops don't come with a full numeric keypad because of limited real estate.

Silverstone05: If you look at your MBP, you'll see that the cursor keys have "Home, End, Page Up, Page Down" marked on them. You can use this functionality by holding down the 'alt' button. Some PC laptops like the T60 contain separate keys for these, while others with smaller/cleaner layouts assign them to the cursor keys like Apple has done.

Two other points:

1) The standard Apple Keyboard also has discrete buttons for this functionality. You can't see it clearly here in this picture, but you can tell it's a full sized keyboard with standard layout (including separate home/end/pgup/pgdn keys):

2) If you don't like Apple's keyboard, take any USB keyboard off the shelf and plug it in and it will work. This obviously also holds true with your MBP. ie if you're sitting at a desk, you can connect an external keyboard/mouse/display if you need a full sized keyboard, a mouse and a larger display.

 

[JDMnsxR]

can't we just all get along? haha... sorry... had too :redface:

 

[SilverStone05]

Silverstone, why dont you enlighten us on what the End and Home keys are used for since you say you use them alot. Last time I checked, this was a forum, where ideas, knowledge, and opinion are shared and discussed.

By the end of this post, I will have used the end/home buttons probably about four times. Very useful buttons indeed, someone covered what they were a few posts up.

Just by your posts, I can see you're a Mac hater. There are 3 examples showing clearly that a Mac cost the same/cheaper than a PC(MS) equivalent, yet you still argue Macs are overpriced.

I wouldn't go so far as to call me a mac hater. It is true that I don't like their operating system, keyboard layout and pricetag, but I don't hate them. I think apple is a cutting edge, ground breaking company. Even made a little off their stock. I'm just not a fan of their machines. If you read some of my posts more carefully you'll see that I give Macs their credit where its due, most notably when I said they are "beautifully" designed.

As far as the pricing is going, I dont' know where our friend is coming up with his numbers. When I price at the dell and mac sites, a Dell with the EXACT same CPU, RAM, HDD and networking features is ALWAYS cheaper. Go price one yourself and you will see.

Being the most widely used OS doesnt make it the best.

I'd call it a darn good indicator, though.

Dont get me wrong, and think I'm some kind of mac fanboy, because I do use windows. But arguing about things like the 1 button mouse and how it sucks is just moot. Apple does make a multi-button mouse, 5 buttons actually w/ scroll, the Might Mouse. Not knowing about a product and thrashing it, well that's just 'ignant. So now you know about multibutton apple mice, what are those home/end buttons for?

Seriously, the only people who are arguing are the people who attacked me when I gave my informed and educated opinion of the machine. :wink:
Don't tell me I don't know the product, I've got the thing right in front of me, and while apple may make a multi-function mouse, well it didn't come with the macbook. I can't understand why people would get their panties all in a bunch about a computer.

Oh , and if you're not enjoying using your MBP, i'll gladly take it from you , and give it a loving home. :biggrin:
Heck, i'll even trade you my Sony VAIO for yours.

Thank you for the kind offer. However, the MacBook is the G/F's and she'd prob get upset if she came home and it was gone.

 

[Arshad]

Seriously, the only people who are arguing are the people who attacked me when I gave my informed and educated opinion of the machine.

I don't see anyone attacking you here -- only your incorrect claims.

Don't tell me I don't know the product, I've got the thing right in front of me,

Well clearly you didn't know that the keys you were complaining about (home/end/pgup/pgdn) are on the keyboard in front of you, or that OSX has always supported multi-button mice etc. It's not a big deal that you didn't know this, but just because you have something doesn't mean you know everything about it.

As far as the pricing is going, I dont' know where our friend is coming up with his numbers.

?????

What do you mean you don't know where I am coming up with the numbers? I gave specific models and I gave specific configurations. How much clearer do you need me to be?

Go on the sites and configure as I have and you will see the exact same numbers. Do you need me to give you step by step clicks? On the other hand, you've given nothing specific to support your claims.

If you're going to make an assertion, please be prepared to back it up when you get called on it.

 

[NSXrebel]

As far as the pricing is going, I dont' know where our friend is coming up with his numbers. When I price at the dell and mac sites, a Dell with the EXACT same CPU, RAM, HDD and networking features is ALWAYS cheaper. Go price one yourself and you will see.

You may have quoted lower prices, for same/similar CPU, RAM, HDD ,etc.. but you were quoting prices for notebooks with smaller screens/less resolution. As Arshad pointed out, when you compare them apples to apples, those PC prices go up. Of course a notebook is gonna be cheaper than a MBP when the CPU specs are similar, but you're not adding/including BT, WiFi, built in cam, DL DVD-R, and same screen SIZE. And those numbers are coming from the DELL site itself.

Lets say I bought a Chevy Silverado 2500 Truck with heated leather seats, tow package, offroad pkg, XM Radio, Nav sys, etc.. all this for $40k or so. By your logic, I paid too much for a truck because I could have had a Dodge Ram 1500 truck for $26K. I can guarantee you, that $26k truck is not gonna have all those extra features the $40k truck has. Both can haul a washer/dryer from Sears, or some lumber from Home Depot. But its nice to have those extra features that I might/might not need in the future.

and while apple may make a multi-function mouse, well it didn't come with the macbook. .

Macbook did come with a right click mouse/pad, you just have to go and change it in the settings. Why Apple didnt just do that as a default, you got me there.

Thank you for the kind offer. However, the MacBook is the G/F's and she'd prob get upset if she came home and it was gone.

I'll add ThemeXP and throw in a Mac OS skin, she wont know the difference! :biggrin: :wink:

 

[SilverStone05]

Well clearly you didn't know that the keys you were complaining about (home/end/pgup/pgdn) are on the keyboard in front of you, or that OSX has always supported multi-button mice etc.

Those aren't home/end/pgup/pgdn buttons. Those are arrows. You're missing the whole point: you have to press TWO buttons to get those functions to work...that's why i'm not a fan. As far as the mouse don't put words in my mouth, I did say I didn't like Mac mouses, but I never said why.

On the other hand, you've given nothing specific to support your claims.
If you're going to make an assertion, please be prepared to back it up when you get called on it.

Seeing is believing. And I'd like to add that the first dell example has a better DVD drive and a better video card with double the memory and is still cheaper :wink: (and on friday it was $50 off this price)

 

[Arshad]

Those aren't home/end/pgup/pgdn buttons. Those are arrows.

Uh, no. You complained about the Mac not having those buttons. I pointed out that the very machine you're using has them. Yes, they have to be used with an alt key JUST LIKE many other PC laptops. On a full mac keyboard used for a desktop system, they have separate home/end/pgup/pgdn keys. Anyways, no need to hash this any further, we both got our points across.

As for your price comparison .. I can see why you're confused: You're comparing two completely different things!!!

You're comparing the 12" M1210 to Apple's 15.4". You need to compare the M1210 to Apple's 13" MacBooks, which start at $1099.

I guess it didn't occur to you that one of the largest component costs is the display and that a higher resolution 15.4" display costs a LOT MORE than a 12" display?

Maybe you also didn't know that 2x512MB dimms are cheaper than 1x1GB dimm and that if you only have 2 dimm slots you are effectively screwed when you go to upgrade memory because you have to throw away your existing dimm?

I'll also give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you haven't researched your GPU's so I'll just tell it to you straight. "TurboCache" means that it uses system memory for video so the video memory amount is deceiving. The 7400 is also based on the G72 architecture which is significantly slower than the M56 architecture of the Mobility X1600 in the Mac. There is no comparison between these two GPU's -- one is a low-performing GPU, and the other is a high end GPU (for mobile). I happen to work in the industry, so trust me on this one, but if you'd like benchmarks, I can provide those for you.

You also forgot to upgrade those machines to 802.11n networking to match the Macs. Maybe you could add the bluetooth remote as well since the Apple's ship with a remote. There's also the option to add built-in webcam to match the MBP. These three options alone add another exactly $200 to the total. (Although I don't blame you if you got tired of clicking through all those damn screens Dell has on their website for configuration and upselling all kinds of crap. I think I counted over 30 "Continue to next component" clicks -- ridiculous!)

$1793+200 = $1993 and $2268+$200 = $2468.

Sooo... $1993 vs $1999 and $2468 vs $2499

All of a sudden the price is within a few dollars of the Mac's EXCEPT that you have much slower graphics, cheaper RAM configurations and significantly smaller screens with lower resolution! WHOOOPS! Thanks for proving my point for me: Pay the same amount to Dell for an inferior computer -- No thanks! (We'll also ignore the fact that the Dell is missing things like FW800, backlit keyboard, drop sensor etc)

 

[rickysals]

Good thing it doesn't have Replica Windows® Vista Home Premium

What is the display on those Dell's? Macs have very nice displays, and those are expensive upgrades... was curious about the Dells.

 

[SilverStone05]

Uh, no. You complained about the Mac not having those buttons.

Yes, and it doesn't have dedicated buttons for these functions. End of story.

As for your price comparison .. I can see why you're confused: You're comparing two completely different things!!! You're comparing the 12" M1210 to Apple's 15.4".

No confusion here. I compared the XPS because it targets the same clientele that the MacBook Pro does. The XPS is designed to be small, lightweight and portable, the most attractive feature of a laptop. That's why the screen is smaller.
But either way, here's the price with a 15.4 display. You'll notice, once again, a better video card. Not to mention the faster DVD drive and double the RAM. And it is still $400 less. I will admit however, that the processor is just a 2.0 and not a 2.16.

Maybe you also didn't know that 2x512MB dimms are cheaper than 1x1GB dimm and that if you only have 2 dimm slots you are effectively screwed when you go to upgrade memory because you have to throw away your existing dimm?

The difference in price from a 2 DIMM kit and a 1 DIMM kit is negligible, especially for a manufacturer. Upgrading when you have to fill two slots is not a problem, i've done it plenty.

I'll also give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you haven't researched your GPU's so I'll just tell it to you straight. "TurboCache" means that it uses system memory for video so the video memory amount is deceiving. The 7400 is also based on the G72 architecture which is significantly slower than the M56 architecture of the Mobility X1600 in the Mac. There is no comparison between these two GPU's -- one is a low-performing GPU, and the other is a high end GPU (for mobile). I happen to work in the industry, so trust me on this one, but if you'd like benchmarks, I can provide those for you.

I know what turbocache is, its similar to ATI's "hypermemory." The video memory on the card itself is 128MB, but the total memory is still 256MB. Either way, how you can call that card "low performing" is beyond me, they definitely can be called comparable.

All of a sudden the price is within a few dollars of the Mac's EXCEPT that you have much slower graphics, cheaper RAM configurations and significantly smaller screens with lower resolution!

Lol. See above. You're saving $400 on a machine with BETTER graphics, the SAME ram configurations, with MORE memory I might add, and the same screen size. Any way you stack it, the PC machine is cheaper and performs just as well if not better. And i'm through with this thread. :wink:

 

[Arshad]

Argh.

I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall!

No confusion here. I compared the XPS because it targets the same clientele that the MacBook Pro does.

Please don't tell us why YOU think they are the same even though they are not. Let's stick to the facts and make the machines as comparable as possible based purely on spec, not why you THINK they have the same clientelle.

Why do you think a 46" LCD TV costs more than a 32" LCD TV? They both play back the same channels and may even have the same internal processing and the same input/outputs. The reason is that the LCD panel is the single largest component cost in the TV, AND in a laptop. It's not a trivial feature that you can just ignore.

The M1210 does not compete against the 15.4" MacBookPro -- it competes against the 13" MacBook. I already configured the two to comparable specs and the M1210 worked out to $2010 and the MacBook to $1399. I can post up the pictures if you'd like.

You'll notice, once again, a better video card.

No, it was not a better video card before and it's not a better video card now. I could sit here and give you a big long explanation of why it's not better, but I suspect you'll just ignore it. Let me just be blunt here. I work for ATI. One aspect of my job is competitive analysis and I spend a lot of time looking at benchmarks and features/capabilities of the various GPU's out there. You can either trust me on this or I can sit here and give you pages of benchmarks and technical reasons why one is much better than the other.

BTW, TurboCache and HyperMemory both share system memory, which obviously implies that you lose that much system RAM instead of having dedicated video memory. Dedicated video memory also has MUCH MUCH higher bandwidth and hence much higher performance.

I will admit however, that the processor is just a 2.0 and not a 2.16.

Why the rolleyes? It's not an insignificant price difference. Dell charges $175 for 2.0 -> 2.16 (which is not even an option on this laptop since it's part of their budget lineup)

The difference in price from a 2 DIMM kit and a 1 DIMM kit is negligible, especially for a manufacturer. Upgrading when you have to fill two slots is not a problem, i've done it plenty.

The point is that it's cheaper with 2 DIMMs, so it again factors into the price. Secondly, yes it's no problem upgrading BUT you effectively throw away one of your DIMM's. Let's say you got 2x512 and you wanted to add another 512MB of RAM. You have to throw away one DIMM and replace it with a 1GB. If you wanted to upgrade to 2GB, you have to throw away both of your DIMM's and get 2x1GB. On the other hand if you had a 1GB DIMM to begin with you wouldn't have to throw anything away for either scenario. From an future upgradability perspective, it's a much better long term investment to get the single DIMM where possible.


Anyways, I'm pretty tired of doing these comparisons because you just don't get it. I've proven it to you numerous times by comparing similar specs on several different machines and you keep coming back with prices for machines with different specs. I'm not sure how much clearer I can be: If you're going to compare, please compare the same thing. It's getting tiring spelling out the differences for you. It's abundantly clear to me that Dell charges significantly more than Apple once you configure the machines to have similar specs/features.

 

[rickysals]

Most people should be looking at standard Macbooks. Macbook Pro's are built for... well, Pro's. With the exception of gamers (better graphics stuff) the Macbook Pro is overkill to anyone using the laptop for standard computing. The Macbook is more than enough. I'd do comparisons on that, not the Pro.

The Pro is big too, 15 and 17 are not tiny laptops. For small portability - 13" Macbook is the one you should be comparing... That is, until the ultra-light-ultra-sexy-ultraslim 12" Macbook Pro arrives

 

[NSXrebel]

Arshad, I hear ya brother. He must be in denial to keep coming up with these bogus comparisons.

Rickysals, the only reason I bought a Sony VAIO was because I wanted a Macbook Pro, but couldnt afford it. I do the occasional home video editing, so I was sure I needed the Macbook pro. Had I known a Macbook would have sufficed, I wouldnt have bought the VAIO. I did eventually buy a Mac mini, first time I had used Mac since the parents bought a Mac back in early 90's. I immediately fell in love with OSX.