cheeky16

So since this topic has a lot to do with gaming builds I have a quick question that someone may be able to answer. I just build my first system a few weeks ago and I'm getting blue screens, internet explorer closes, the runescape client will randomly close, and the system is a little unstable. I'm starting to believe it's the graphics card driver after doing some searching around. Others have apparently had some issues as well. Gygabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H AMD Phenom II X6 1090t 8Gb Patriot 1333Mhz Asus HD5770 OCZ 60Gb SSD - OS and programs 2 1Tb Caviar Black/Green for files set in Raid 1 through windows 7 Bluray burner, DVD drive I also added an old nvidea 7600GT into the second PCI Express slow to support a third monitor as the asus 5770 does not support eyefinity. The crashes were occuring prior to the addition of the second graphics card. Any Thoughts?

These ratings aren't necessarily all based on customer opinions. They base the amount of repairs and failed components with stats of each company. I think Dell is potentially rated low because their business line ups use cheap parts to save money. With their on site tech support for business they just go and replace failed parts. Depending on the company this may be acceptable. I have seen some XPS systems they sell and haven't heard much bad about them. Everyone I've seen has been running strong. Hard to say though as none of them have been stressed very much. Reliability of the machines is likely based on pure statistics. Service measures is likely partially based on services that the manufacturer offers and partially on customer opinions. Apple destroys everyone for service but you pay for it in their products, service isn't really free. But I have to be honest, sometimes you don't always have time to query the net for answers to tiny issues on your machine. If you have an Apple retail store near your route home from work or school they will quickly diagnose any issues you may be having. I've even seen them upgrade the OS for friends hoping they could solve an issue. Unfortunately I believe the issue had to do with a failed hard drive or mobo. It was a few years old at the time. I personally use a Macbook Pro due to the convenience. Today in lecture my prof decided to start lecturing on random stuff that was not on our notes. I only missed a couple lines taking my laptop out of my bag and opening a word document. I'm not sure if it's still the same with windows, but it used to take 15-20 seconds for windows to resume from sleep. Yet in under 10 seconds I had a document open and was typing away. Then again the decision of which brand of laptop to buy will most likely come down to what you're familiar with and has the features you desire. Most of us haven't had more than a handful of laptops and can't really relate our individual experiences on the overall value of the brand. Sure most Dells I've seen have been good, so are the Apples, HP hasn't been so good from what I've experienced. But these studies are done on a massive scale. I'm not surprised to see Apple at the top, but if you take into account the price of them they should be at the top.

I personally disagree that SSD are overrated. I truly do like mine, it holds my OS and programs. It could be that I'm a little biased because of some programs I run. Video Editing software tends to be a little larger and I notice the faster load times but for most people it's not that noticable. Unless you're concerned about super fast load times for bragging rights or it's actually useful I wouldn't spend the money. My 60Gb SSD was $130, while my 1Tb Caviar Back was $65 or $70.

Gotta be honest, the ssd isn't really worth it to the average user. Its extra money you wouldnt need to spend. But if you got an extra like $130 get one for sure. Makes boot times and program launches super fast.

I have 3 Western Digital and an OCZ, all have been great so far. 1Tb Caviar Green, 300Gb something(it's a little older), 1Tb Caviar Black 60Gb OCZ SSD Solid State is nice for the OS and programs. :)

Some Dells end up being pretty good but their track record hasn't been very good. But if you think about their business side they tend to offer full on site tech support for businesses and will replace anything gone wrong. Kind of like the large photo copies in larger offices. Often they are leased out from a company like Xerox or similar.

If I was looking for a new laptop running windows ASUS would likely be the brand I would go with. Lots are recommending Dell though.

Just a quick question, why stay away from AMD? Is it just a gaming issue? I have the 1090t and it's awesome. Mind you runescape is the only game I really play much.

Seems Apple is at the top while Dell is at the bottom. I find it strange that PC magazine and CNET rates the macbook pro as one of the best laptops out there. Im sure they take into account the price of the machine. With regards to the programming class... Why would anyone buy a mac to go into programming. Unless you're planning on programming for mac software. There are lots of degrees that require windows because of some of the programs used.

I'm sure both are good. The screens from what I've heard are very expensive to have fixed. I wouldn't hesitate with the new i7 processor. Good Luck.

You keep saying 'macs are good, you just have to have used one', yet you never add any substance to this argument at all >.< Please, explain, I'm curious to know. Macs are overpriced, just look at the Mac Pro. They're quite hard to crash them. They boot up very quickly. Hardly ever have any hickups with any software. They're reliable and do not slow down over time. The hardware and OS are designed and built specifically to work together right out of the box. If drivers need to be updated it's all done for you. It's a simpler computing experience all together. 2 years ago I couldn't see a reason to spend the extra money on the mac either. But ever after spending as much on my windows machine as I did the macbook pro it still locks up and freezes sometimes. The mac doesn't. It's about the ease of use and expeience when you're at school in class. You can't afford for something to freeze up just before class and have to reboot.

Glad to have helped. I always love how people bash macs for being overpriced when they have never used one. Best keep driving the Kia and leave the Cadillacs for everyone else.

Try checking around on some forums bout osx on other machines. Ive seen some run on amd processors and stuff. I'm going to try to run it on my AMD Phenom II X6 in the summer sometime, just to see if it works. I just find windows crashes lots. Even internet explorer keeps crashing on my new system and there is not reason that it should be crashing. That is a nice laptop youve built there. And you are absolutely right, gzming on a 13" sucks, thats why I use it for school and music anf have the big powerful desktop for runescape.

Just to clarify the mac I priced out has an AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1Gb GDDR5. So it is not running the intel off the motherboard. Most people looking for a laptop for school tend to go with the smaller 13" models. The one I would go with is the 13" 2.7Ghz Dual Core i7. 4Gb Ram, 500Gb HDD. OSX tends not to gobble up ram like windows does. Looking at that laptop having a pricetag of 1449.99 is a little better than the 15" model at $1000 more.

I'm sure none of you have ever used a mac for an extended period of time. I'm not going to post anymore. They simply just work. No scanning for viruses, restoring, or fresh installs. It takes a few hours to do a fresh install on a pc and when you're a busy student in the middle of a semester you just don't have time to be reinstalling everything to get your computer to work again.

In the end it comes down to what is important to you. It's a very personal device that needs to suit your needs. There are many things on my mac that I find nice that others would not care for at all. I had an HP laptop before this one and there was nothing really wrong with it I just wanted something faster.

Also check Memory Express out. If you can get to one of their shops they're really good to work with. www.memoryexpress.com

And you would buy a Dell? I've never met a computer tech that would ever recommend a dell. They actually say to stay away. The least reliable computers out there.

I've posted my reasons as to why I would buy another macbook pro as a student. Yes they cost more, which I think is worth the price. Most of the money for the computers is spent up front. When the new OS comes out it's like $25 vs Windows at say $150+. Being a student you can grab Windows 7 for around $100 right now. Checking Microsoft they charge $60 for a phone call to get some support. Apple meanwhile has a free geniusbar at the back of every store that is free for all diagnosis and repair if under warranty. For windows this all depends on the manufacturer, most often resulting in shipping off the computer for weeks. The laptop design and build is superior to most other brands out there. Having seen several hinges, buttons, power cords, etc break on other brands. The apple charger is virually impossible to wreck under normal circumstances. No pulling the laptop off the desk in lecture. The backlit keyboard is wonderful for everyone that doesn't necessarily use a computer for hours per day. The audio output jack doubles as an optical audio output to hook up directly to your surround sound. LED screen on every Macbook Pro. There is no real need to run antivirus unless you are going to lots of websites you shouldn't. Windows if you don't have antivirus sooner or later your system will be crippled. If you really take into account all of the features that are included and compare it to a laptop with similar features it will not be too shy of the price of the mac. Which for most users can be made up for with the customer support. Sure if you don't have an Apple store near home the support isn't going to do you any good. In that case you're better off buying another brand and sticking with Windows. There tends to be a lot more shops out there that have more experience with the windows operating systems. This is all my personal opinion obviously. But when comparing the numbers of issues I've heard from people around school about laptops the macs tend not to have as many. They do still have problems though, one girl I know replaced her hard drive 5 times, all under warranty though. That was back in 2008 though and I haven't heard of any other issues with hard drives since. It still comes down to your budget in the end though. If you can afford $1300 for the Macbook Pro I would spend it. If not go buy a windows machine for $700 and replace it every couple of years. I don't know many people running windows on a machine much more than 2 or 3 years old that isn't so slow you want to pull your hair out. Yet some people are still running macbooks that are 5 years old with no issues. I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm trying to bash windows or anything but try starting with similar quality products when comparing prices and features. There are many underlying benefits of owning a mac that windows users just don't understand until they own one. Two years ago before I bought my first Macbook Pro I was in the same boat, thought they were overpriced and it would be ludacris to spend that kind of money on a 13" laptop. Even when I purchased the laptop I had doubts. I've since changed my mind about them and would buy another if I had a need for it in the future. So just to compare some top end Windows computers with the Apple I decided to build a couple almost identical. From Dell Alienware 15" laptop: $2699.99 2.17Ghz i7 Apple Macbook Pro 15" $2649.00 - 2399.99 with 2.2Ghz i7 2.3Ghz i7 Both with similar processors, 8GB Ram, 500GB Sata II 7200rpm, DVD burners, Backlit LED displays. It is tough to find any other brand with similar spec processors. Others offer similar processors but don't offer backlit keyboards and other things, Alienware was the easiest to compare with the Apple. Also once all of this is said and done, Dell wants me to add a subscription for Antivirus, basic service so they will answer questions over the phone. All of these things tend to add up in the end. I do run a windows desktop also so I'm not purely mac. There are also a few compatability downsides with the mac as well, definately get Office, Pages and Numbers just doesn't cut it. Well at least in University it doesn't.

I'm assuming that you'll just need the normal internet and word processing capabilities, unless you need specific software? That would definately be something you would want to check with your Uni to see if it is exclusive to either mac or windows. If you don't need specific software, then why get a mac when pc's are much cheaper? I would question the point of getting a mac and then going and installing windows. Windows laptops can be and a majority of the time are much cheaper than mac laptops, so if you're going to get a mac laptop just to install windows, that would seem pointless and a waste of money to me. I would strongly advise against buying a mac simply because of its looks. Perhaps windows doesn't come with good virus scanners, but there are many many out there to download. Programs such as avast, avira, avgand microsoft security essentials, as well as malwarebytesand ad-aware are all out there to download for free. Linux very rarely gets viruses, if you were wondering. Macs can get viruses but due to the smaller proportion of market share there aren't many (it isn't worth the coders time). See above See above. Macs do have security software available, and it is definately advisable that it is installed. If you don't need a mac for a specific reason, such as the OS, I would advise against buying one. I would be cautious if the single reason for getting a mac was simply for looks. They are quite a bit more expensive than equivilant PCs, Apple has really ludicrous prices sometimes. PCs have more compatibility among programs, because of the higher market share. The community is bigger than that of macs, so if you do encounter any problems you can get help quite easily. Laptops generally aren't upgradable, so that shouldn't be something to take into account. There is the threat of getting a virus, but so long as you are smart and don't download anything dodgy or go on bad websites, and have a quality anti-virus and anti-malware, you should be fine. Personally, I would draw up some kind of pro/con list to having a mac and pc, reasons specific to you. If there are no strong specific reasons to getting a mac, go with a pc. They really are quite a lot cheaper a majority of the time. I also don't particularly like the closed environment of mac os, but that's more a personal opinion. There may be a smaller community, but this is based on the fact that the market share of Linux is small compared to windows. However, the average tech-related knowledge of Linux users would be higher than Windows or Mac users, and also more of them would be involved in some kind of community. You day-to-day user of windows/mac who use their computer for mundane things will not be part of the community, yet they are still part of the market share, whereas I would guess that a majority of linux users are involved in an online community. With regards to office software, that is completely untrue about there being no office suites on linux. There's Openoffice, Libreoffice, KOffice, and more. They are all good alternatives to MS Office. Oh, and they're all free. Office on Mac is also a pain, TBH. I've tried to be as un-biased as possible with all of this, by the way. I must agree with your post. You bring in many good points. I completely agree with making a list of pros and cons for each laptop. Being the basic computer user as it seems the person who made the original post seems to be I would stay away from Linux. I myself would like to start venturing into different distributions but don't have an extra computer to test it on. I do know there are boot discs etc, but school keeps me a little too busy to be playing around much on my computer right now. If you do have a laptop that lasts 7 hours I'd be amazed. The only laptops I've ever seen get that much battery time are macs. Don't get me wrong I prefer to use windows over osx. My experiences with laptops have only been good with the mac. But like I said it depends on your personal needs. I'm still unsure as to why everyone is against macs because of their high price. Anywhere I've looked to get a similar quality laptop the prices are comparable. If you've never owned or used one you may not exactly understand the benefits of owning a mac, there is a reason so many are being bought right now.

I also was not overlooking the Linux distributions but most people are not comfortable using it. I for one have not spent much time with it and would likely not head down that path. There is a smaller community for Linux and I don't believe there are Office products for Linux out there. The reason the topic started for was for a student heading to school. I would definitely make sure that I was running the Microsoft Office Suite. It's a lot easier for notes, course outlines, projects, etc. Powerpoint itself is more than worth buying.

The macbooks are still overpriced for sure. But for me the ease of use it worth it. I'm not saying the Asus laptops aren't good, I've just never had one. And I would not buy an iMac because I have also built myself a pc. AMD Phenom II X6 1090t 8GB DDR3 1333MHz 60Gb OCZ SSD 1TB Raid 1 Bluray burner 3 monitors lots of other stuff Still the one thing that sets the macbook pro apart for me is the battery. Light up keyboard being next probably. Optical audio output is also nice. And the LED monitor. Most other brands with these features are over $1000 last I looked, my macbook was like $1300 I believe.

I've never had any issues on Windows or Linux based computers, why would I pay more for a Mac? I thought my reply was pretty obvious. Cheap OS upgrades, battery life that destroys any windows machine, top notch hardware. If you've never owned a mac you wouldn't understand. I was the same way before I bought mine. I went and spend $1500 on an HP tower and crashed it 6 times in 4 days and decided I wasn't going to fight with it anymore. I went to the apple store and won't look back. The customer service from Apple is 10x better than any other company out there. They diagnose for free. Windows charges you $60 to call them for support for Windows 7. I suppose you could take it in to a computer shop and pay them the $60 to look at it.

The new macbooks get 7 hours. No matter how you look at it you get what you pay for. You can walk into apple with any issue and it's free. It's a premium product, that's the only way to look at it.

I am far from a mac fanboy, I prefer to use my windows desktop if I have the choice. To get a comparable laptop with the same features as the macbooks you're looking at over 1k. There's no other way to look at it. The keyboard is not important to all but may be for some. I didn't even think about it until I had a laptop with it on there. I refered to my desktop as being pc based because it is not a brand name computer, it was custom built for my liking. I also find it hard to believe that the battery is as good as new after 3 years. I am yet to find a battery that does not display loss over time. Although if you use your laptop primarily plugged in then you're not going through charge cycles. I'm not trying to get into an argument over which one is better. I'm simply stating the experiences I've had with both. If I was to purchase another windows laptop I would look into Asus or Alienware. My entire response was based for someone attending University. When I look around any lecture theatre at school it is obvious which is prefered among students. Since the Unibody Macbook Pro was released it is taking over. As you look around some more the people running windows are always trying to find that one spot with the plug in so they can make it through the lecture without a dead battery. Yet people running OSX don't seem to care where they sit. It's not necessarily the hardware between windows and mac laptops but the OS they are running.