So for Christmas i am going to get myself a laptop for College and i cant decide on what OS i should go for:
I need longer lasting performance, high ram, graphics that can handle a few years to come, and ports (firewire, USB, Card slots, aux)
Battery and hard drive size arent important. And gaming is something i would like to do often on it but it isnt vital.
Also i have no idea what the pros and cons are of SATA and Hard drives are. I was looking to spend around 1800 for it. Help?!
and thanks in advance for any feedback

Ew Mac? I can't stand macs. From my limited experience, you can't do much with a Mac. Macs seem to be good for people who don't use computers for constructing anything. At least, the people I know who have Macs don't do anything with them except surf the internet.

Windows is just so common, and there are so many programs and video games that are compatible for windows that I am not able to use on Macs.

But the biggest thing against Macs for me, is I grew up with windows, therefor I think with my overly biased opinion that Windows is superior.

I know nothing of Linux/Unix......

Have fun over paying by 200-1000$ because your laptop has a nice Apple logo on it. I hope it was worth it.

In all seriousness, I cannot take you seriously if you are seriously considering a Mac for anything other than being a serious musician/artist, and even then, it's still a longshot.

View everything recommended here: http://www.staredit.net/topic/7970/

I likewise can't speak in favor of a Mac.

I was actually, despite the price they seem to hold their performance over the years, they have a few built in applications that are amazing and they can manipulate a window that is forced to stay either maximized or minimized. Yet on the downside they seem to hurting in every other field.
When it comes to computer is really do have a limited knowledge of em. When i was looking at em online i got some questions, if anyone can answer them that would be amazing
Difference between a Solid State Drive or one that spins (pros n cons?)
What holds back how much RAM you can insert?
Quad or Duo?
16, 32, 64 bit? I know it refers to the screen but nothing to clarify the significance.
On the Mac you can play Starcraft in a window that only takes up part of the screen so you can tinker with other things and keep an eye on things, can you do the same with windows?

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Difference between a Solid State Drive or one that spins (pros n cons?)

A Solid State Drive (SSD) has a physical memory configuration like that of a USB flash drive or similar flash memory. I am not well versed in the specifics, but it is not stored on a magnetic disk like floppy and hard disks.

SSDs are very fast for reading and writing because you aren't manipulating a needle over a spinning disk, although they are not drastically faster than the fastest hard disks. They are also extremely reliable and sturdy; whereas hard drives are vulnerable to shock and rough treatment, SSDs are capable of enduring quite a lot without failing. Hard disks apparently like to fail a lot (never experienced this myself in 9 years, knock on wood).

The only con to a solid state drive is the price. A 256GB solid state drive will leave you about $600 out of pocket, and for 512GB you need $1,600 (that's as big as they get right now). In comparison, a 500GB hard disk can be had for as little as $50 and you can get them in sizes all the way up to 2TB, still for only about $200.

SSDs are a developing technology, and will probably replace hard disks in the future. For now, though, a 7200rpm SATA hard drive should meet your needs.

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What holds back how much RAM you can insert?

Three things:

(a) The physical number of DIMM slots. RAM is only made in single DIMMs (cards) of up to 4GB, and motherboard will have from 2 to 6 slots.
(b) Operating system address register. 32-bit operating systems can only address memory up to a certain point; the absolute limit is 4 GiB but 32-bit Windows has slightly lower limits (I don't know the specifics).
(c) Motherboard limits. I'm not enough of a hardware wizard to know exactly why, but a motherboard has an addressable RAM limit too. These tend to range from 2 to 16 GB and are listed on your motherboard's spec sheet.

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Quad or Duo?

Mostly a price difference thing. Applications developed today and going forward are likely to use all four cores, so you're not losing much getting a quad-core processor. For the most part, you're just paying more for the extra cores. If you want to knock yourself out, get a Q9550; otherwise it's probably a better bet to stay with a Core 2 Duo.

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16, 32, 64 bit? I know it refers to the screen but nothing to clarify the significance.

I believe you are referring to processors and operating systems.

Processors use what are called registers to hold data as they execute machine code. Usually there are two (I think these days) operating registers, along with a memory pointer and an instruction pointer. The size of the registers in the past (1990s and late 1980s) were 32 bits (hence 'real 32-bit processors'), which led operating systems to develop around the use of 32-bit data. It's a little complex, but essentially every single variable needed to be reduced to 32 bits or less.

In this decade, processors have been made with 64-bit registers, allowing much more flexibility. However, operating systems have been slower to catch up, and applications slower still. 64-bit computing is still above standard, and you have to seek out the 64-bit versions of operating systems to utilize your processor's full potential. More and more, however, applications are utilizing the 64-bit registers, which have a host of benefits. Note when you purchase Windows or download Linux, you can choose between 32-bit ('i386') or 64-bit ('x64') versions.

If you're interested, search the Internet for lessons on computer architecture or get a good textbook from a library.

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On the Mac you can play Starcraft in a window that only takes up part of the screen so you can tinker with other things and keep an eye on things, can you do the same with windows?

No idea, but you can use alt+tab to switch windows which works just as well for me.

1. Putting aside compatibility issues, pretty much how many slots you have, my laptop has 2 DDR2 slots and I could shove up 1GB rams on each so I have two or I could put 2GB rams on each so I have 4 and such.
2. Quad. This means how many cores you have and usually you always want more processing capabilities, having 4 cores is better than 2 cores, right? right? However, I do believe that a quad core... laptop would heat to death, heat is something you should be careful when buying a laptop as it might easily fry up your hard drive.
3. 64 bit. I think this is just the architecture of the processor rather than something to do with the screen, though. Or maybe you're talking about 64 bit color monitor? I don't really know much about this.
4. As far as I know you cannot play sc on a window in windows, oh the irony.

Now, if you consider gaming then you probably might not really want a mac. In anyway you could always just use a program for macs that let you use windows as well and use the windows part just for gaming. Other than that I really do not see a real advantage from windows over macs. But then again I study architecture and am a musician so I'd have really loved to have a mac cause they're strong in what I do but even that way, with a mac you won't be dealing with tons of companies to get techinical support from. From my experience apple gives a nice support, keep things updated and since all the programs are pretty much made by them they're somewhat incorporated between each other. I honestly don't see why people go OMG MACS SUCK or EW MACS or anything at all. Both have their ups and downs.

But like I said that thing that everything is just for windows and all of that is just BS in my opinion, yes, they're right but that shouldn't stop you from getting a mac, you could always just virtually run windows for anything you might need to use on there.

I got the opportunity just weeks ago to "trade" my laptop for a macbook for a couple of days and I wasn't really disappointed, sure it's different and it takes a while to get used to the fact that I didn't have a "right click" and that there was no minimize/close buttons but they were rather colored circles and on the left. In all honestly people that quick yell against macs in a post shorter than 3 lines are people that have never really tried them or gave them a chance.

Would I buy a mac over a pc?
Because of the work I do I'd have really liked if I had a very awesome desktop pc and a macbook for carrying it around. Why?
Because a laptop is really not for the work I do so I'd take the desktop for university works and the macbook for fun, having a computer to carry, being mac or pc, is always a pro in college/university, in my experience.

DT_Battlekruser that was amazing man, thank you so much for that.
[Corbo]:] that was pretty good insight man thanks, that was incredibly unbias. Thanks.
Thats actually a lot of help, and i think i know how i am going to build my computer too

@corbo
you can right click on mac
even on macbook
single tap is left click, 2 finger tap is right click

Or editor. Final Cut Pro is fantastic. It is the only reason why I still have my Mac (which is now an editing suite, essentially).

EDIT:
Yes. I can't remember how, but there is a way to set it to "Windowed Mode."

EDIT2:
And as for the topic at hand, it's really all preference. I use both (used to be a Mac-only guy until I wanted to start gaming), and both really do have their own pros and cons. If all you're looking to do is get a functional laptop for school, then a PC may be better based solely on economics. If you want performance, PC laptops can be just as expensive as Mac laptops, so ignore the price argument. Ultimately what functionality are you trying to get from it?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 25 2009, 9:27 am by DevliN.

Seriously, Final Cut owns any other video software you can get for Windows, however, if you're not doing any media work, would go with Windows, of course, if you kinda need both, it's not too difficult to make it dual boot.

Well technically you can put AVID on a Windows, and AVID is the best, but it was made for Mac and no one really wants to fork out that kind of money for that system anyway.

Can you explain to me how is that right click at all?

On a laptop, you have to ctrl+click for right click (if using the track pad still). But two-button mice work on Macs, so the "right-click argument" has been nullified for some time now.

no context menu=fail.

Get a dell mini and put osx on it if you really want to. Sick with windows/linux desktop tho.

What kind of laptop do you have? ;o I have two buttons and scrollbars on my touchpad.

I bought a MacBook Pro and I love it.

This is the wrong website for that kind of talk though. You guys will eat me alive.

There isn't anything wrong with Macbooks per se; you are just paying more for the same level of performance in order to have slightly better form factor specs and a nice apple on the front of your laptop.

That being said though, if your primary use for a computer is any kind of media editing, the Mac tools are vastly superior.

I could go on for quite a while about why I treasure Apple's computers to others. After growing accustomed to their setup I must admit that I was hit very, very hard and fell madly in love. It becomes obvious that they take great care in every single aspect of their products.

Mine is still kind of new. It came mid-June.

All in all it clicks in my head that Apple is the only company to just get it. It became very easy to see why so many of their users are huge advocates.


The Apple tax can get very steep and in some places outrageous -- agreed.

I was talking about Mac laptops, since that's that Praetor and Corbo were referring to.