In the market for a new laptop need opinions

Hi wantselltrade,

There are about 40 something posts about this here.

I just started a thread about laptop battery life you might want to read here.

That having been said a question like this opens up a whole can of worms as the PC's battle the Macs.

I look forward to the responses!

Hi Mike, yeah I was reading your thread that sparked my interest to find some opinions. I am just so up in the air about this. I also don't want to start a thread that will start a war of the laptops either. Mods if you need to delete this thread I won't take it personally :-)

Hey there,

If you're going to be doing IM and are interested in using any sort of IM and SEO type software, I can tell you with almost absolute certainty that the majority of the software only runs on Windows.

That being said, if you're dead set on buying a Mac, you can use Windows by utilizing Apple Bootcamp (you'll have to buy yourself a full retail version of Windows 7, not cheap), or use some sort of virtualization software to run Windows and Mac at the same time (even more expensive - parallels and vmware run around $80, and you still have to buy Windows.)

Paul

Macs are great, but if you need software for IM then windows based will do the trick!

"Wanttoselltrade",

I would say go with a Mac hands down. I was a windows guy (all my life) and was the type that said "I will just stick with what I know(windows)" but then I got a new Macbook, spent a couple of days tinkering with it and now about 6 months later I simply cannot stress how much trouble and time it has saved me.

This sounds like a shameless pimp but really, if you value your time, dont want to spend time updating the virus programs, giving crazy maintenance to keep it up to speed, patching the OS every single week do your self a favor and just get a mac.

Among other things, Im an interface designer (you can check my portfolio at the respective section) so I use the whole pack of Adobe programs and am using the cheapest 13 inch macbook with 4gig of memory and this thing is amazing. Shuts down when I want it to shut down , no lag, no loss of speed, no viruses for now, the only thing I hate is that it gets super hot sometimes when on the lap or not on a flat surface, but apart from that I can really recommend it.

The best thing is the button-less pad, and the finger gestures... I usually have more than 5-10 windows open at the same time so the expose feature and being able to work simultaneously with a number of windows is amazingly convenient. The other day I had to work on a XP laptop and was going crazy having to press on the menu bar tabs to keep track of what I was doing.

Cheers,
Francisco

I have both a Mac and Windows computer. I spend most of my time on the Mac, but like so many other people have already stressed, it's hard to find the "tools of the trade" that are built for a Mac.

If us loyal Mac users are lucky, we find software that uses Adobe Air (cross-compatibale).

I think the Mac movement is really moving fast, so maybe it's time for the developers to get started on IM apps for the mac! I'm sure there would be MANY loyal customers!

Too bad I don't have the motivation to learn a complex programming language...