Yet Another... Mac or PC?

noktrnl · Post by **noktrnl** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:59 pm

so i have searched around all of the interwebz and still have not made my final decision.

What better way to kick off the new year with a new DAW laptop. I finaly grew the nads to get off my old ass AMD 2800+ Desktop and get something more fitting to my Live 7 needs.

soooooo.....

I really like the new(almost old) Santa Rosa (crestline?) chips. and i think that the t7700 (2.4, 800fsb, 4mb L2) will best fir my needs. or at the bare min. the t7500 (2.2, 800fsb, 4mb L2).

I would like the laptop to have some dedicated video memory, 128 at the least.

so it all comes down to the $$

for a T7700 equiped apple, I would have to atleast get the Macbook Pro. $2500~~ for the t7700. with only 1gb ram and a crapy 5600rpm HDD

Now for half the price, HP, Dell, Asus, and Sony have some pretty wicked PC laptops with a t7700, 2-4gb ram, 7200rpm HD, dedicated video ram, and all the works.

I also plan on using XP 64 for the OS, IF i do end up with a PC.

questions, comments?

Who Bought a PC over a MAC

Who got the Mac over the PC?

Who was pissed with their decision?

Who wants to help me make mine?

I dont plan on making the purchase until the end-ish of Jan. I would like to see what new products Apple comes out with also before making my decision.

PLZ HELP!

bytheriver · Post by **bytheriver** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:49 pm

I needed a laptop for teacher training and as a music workstation, so I had the educational discounts open to me on Macs.

Looked around, scratched my chin some, and went for a Dell laptop with Vista. Totally hated Vista, so I put XP on it, and now i'm over the moon with it.

Wickedly quick and programs to do everything imaginable are downloadable from within 2 pages of google.

Even with the educational discount, to get a macbook equal to the laptop would have cost a massive amount more, and all I can see that money really buys you is membership into the 'look at me being creative in starbucks' club and a healthly -75% to the amount of great free software you can play with.

If you have the cash and dont already have any external hardware, get a laptop + some hardware with lots of knobs to play with and it'll kick the nads out of a macbook.

robbmasters · Post by **robbmasters** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:04 pm

Based on your requirements, it sounds like a PC is a better option for you.

(I'm not saying "PCs are better"; based on my requirements, I decided a Mac was better for me.)

But here are a few additional questions...

What OS do you prefer to use? Do you want to be able to use OSX and XP/Vista?
Do you want to be able to run any PC-only or Mac-only applications?
Have you read the thread about the performance of Santa Rosa MacBooks on this forum?
Would the graphics corruption that many users of 17" MacBook Pros experience when using Boot Camp be a problem for you?
Do you want to bus-power any Firewire devices? (Very few PC laptops have 6-pin Firewire.)
Do you want a DVI or VGA monitor connection? (Not many PC laptops seems to have DVI.)

As I wanted 6-pin Firewire and DVI, and the ability to do cross-platform testing would be a nice bonus, I went for a MacBook Pro this time. The time before I went for a PC. Who knows what I'll do next time...

chis · Post by **chis** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:38 pm

noktrnl wrote:I also plan on using XP 64 for the OS, IF i do end up with a PC.

If you go that route, do double-check the drivers that are available for the audio interface you have / intend to buy. XP 64 still suffers from some "driver hell" - chipset, video, consumer audio are less of an issue, but pro audio interfaces may not necessarily have 64-bit drivers for XP.

Otherwise, XP 64 is a good choice, especially if you want to bung in a lot of RAM and do tons of sampling. No 4GB limit!

jamief · Post by **jamief** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:41 pm

ive used mac for over 12 years for all sorts of musical projects.

2 years ago i bought my first ever pc laptop from dell 17inch inspiron 2.16ghz duo core. It has been excellnt.
I hated the interface at first - i was use to mac and vey familiar on the system archeticture. They are quite abit different. i am finally becoming use to running pcs and its good again.

i priced up a mac a desktop with 1500 gb 4 gb ram and apples fastest avavilable cpu and it came to £4700 uk. I priced a faster sysytem with dell and it came t £2600 uk same ram same HD space.

i will by another mac this year for our home. But i think for music ive made the unsusal switch the other way from mac to pc. My 2 year old inspirion has loads of power on tap for me to use and i,m really happy with it. I remember spending asboloute fortunes at the time for macs and being shortchanged in the power output all the time in comparrison to pcs. It seems it ahappening again with the new mac laptops.
i fact i bought a 8GB nano for my wife for xmas and these arent working loads of people are having problems.

macs are undoubtedly smoother cooler and work well - but i love my pc

dysanfel · Post by **dysanfel** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:57 pm

bytheriver wrote: and all I can see that money really buys you is membership into the 'look at me being creative in starbucks' club

bytheriver · Post by **bytheriver** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:10 pm

dysanfel wrote:
bytheriver wrote: and all I can see that money really buys you is membership into the 'look at me being creative in starbucks' club

I'm sure people feel they get something else for the extra cash, I just cant see it myself.

People spend insane amounts of money on fashion items, designer names and so on all the time, I do it myself occasionally. I'm not saying its a bad thing to do, if your spending that sort of cash though you ought to have it clear in your own head why.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:20 pm

bytheriver wrote:
dysanfel wrote:
bytheriver wrote: and all I can see that money really buys you is membership into the 'look at me being creative in starbucks' club

I'm sure people feel they get something else for the extra cash, I just cant see it myself.

People spend insane amounts of money on fashion items, designer names and so on all the time, I do it myself occasionally. I'm not saying its a bad thing to do, if your spending that sort of cash though you ought to have it clear in your own head why.

I may be mostly "pro-pc", if ever I was to make the distinction, but I can soooo see the benefits of a mac - particularly; OSX. There, I said it. It is a far superior OS in my mind, I'm just not willing to pay the premium for the hardware.

Now, that still doesn't rule out me ever getting a macbook, far from it... but then the macbook has that horrible screen.

suburbanbather · Post by **suburbanbather** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 11:58 pm

Machinate wrote:... but then the macbook has that horrible screen.

No spare screen laying around? JK. Ease of OSX and the reliability of everything just working out of the box are what sold me on the G4 generation, I'm still not confident with buying a new Intel Mac(Santa Rosa chip-set).

dysanfel · Post by **dysanfel** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 1:55 am

bytheriver wrote:
dysanfel wrote:
bytheriver wrote: and all I can see that money really buys you is membership into the 'look at me being creative in starbucks' club

I'm sure people feel they get something else for the extra cash, I just cant see it myself.

People spend insane amounts of money on fashion items, designer names and so on all the time, I do it myself occasionally. I'm not saying its a bad thing to do, if your spending that sort of cash though you ought to have it clear in your own head why.

There is not that big of a price difference between a high end PC notebook and a Macbook Pro. Some are willing to pay a couple hundred extra for the thinner and lighter design, plus the ability to run OSX or Windows. It has nothing to do with coffee vendor choices.

dcease · Post by **dcease** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:01 am

^^word^^

shaneblyth · Post by **shaneblyth** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:14 am

For the 50 millionth time a Mac now is a PC..
The real question should be what OS should I use
or what hardware brand should I buy or some combination of both questions

condra · Post by **condra** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:25 am

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:29 am

shaneblyth wrote:For the 50 millionth time a Mac now is a PC.

A Mac is a Mac. Mac is a brand name used by Apple Inc.. PC(-compatible) is a catch-all term for descendents of the IBM PC with an Intel 8086-derivative processor and BIOS firmware, designed to run Microsoft Windows. Not only is a Mac not designed to run Windows (it just happens to do so, like a PC happens to run other operating systems like FreeBSD), it also does not have a BIOS, ie. it goes bong instead of beep when you turn it on.

In spite of their being nearly identical internally, It is quite obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes connected to a brain that a Mac is more different to any other PC than any two PCs are to one another. Therefore it is quite sensible to use the term 'Mac', instead of the term 'PC', when one is in fact referring to a computer made by Apple to run the Mac OS and not a standard PC.

condra · Post by **condra** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 2:34 am

Yet Another... Mac or PC?

Yet Another... Mac or PC?

Re: Yet Another... Mac or PC?