An impossible Apple

October 26, 2009 2:15 AM

What's the best Apple laptop for £500?

I am, of course, looking for the impossible; something modern, with a big screen, reliable and, of course, cheap...

My wife is an acolyte of the dark side; she uses Apples and is looking for a laptop. We've got about £500 to spend and are, basically, looking for something with a 15" screen.

Being used to PCs I am absolutely horrified at the price of Apples. £500 seems a reasonable ammount but I'm having to look at second hand older machines. I dont know anything about Apples so would really appreciate any pointers about what machines I should be looking at and where I should be looking to buy one.

There are no particularly demanding applications which it would have to run; it'd be a general workhorse maching. Reasonable performance would be useful but there's no need for it to be super quick, likewise a reasonable hard drive would be useful (is min 50Gb reasonable?).

I dont want to buy privately; I've had problems before and it's too much of a risk for something like this. Given how in demand and how expensive these things are, there seems to be a real dearth of reliable re-sellers. Any suggestions about what I could afford and where I could be looking would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

posted by BadMiker to computers & internet (7 comments total)

It might be possible to buy privately and buy a machine that is still within its AppleCare warranty assuming the seller bought the extended cover.

So if something does go wrong with the laptop at least you would have the option of taking it in for repair.

Failing that might be worth taking a look at a Mac Mini?
posted by moochoo at 2:21 AM on October 26

(is min 50Gb reasonable?)

Of course, unless you're DLing media every day and are behind in your burning.

The cheapest MacBook is £800 and I'd just get that. Complaining about Apple's pricing is like complaining about BMWs or Mercedes. Sure, Apple is running 30% profit margins compared to Dell's 10%, but at the end of the day for something I use every goddamn day for multiple hours I don't mind getting anally abused for a better overall consumer experience.

Apple's have higher resale value so treat it well and you'll be able to sell it for £300 sometime next decade and meet your limit.
posted by mokuba at 2:43 AM on October 26

Yeah, Mokuba raises a good point. I regularly dispose of my older (two years or so) Macs on eBay or CL, and I always get pretty much the same thing I paid for them. 80% at worst. The MacBook I paid $1400 new for two years ago just sold for $1200... I took that, added a few hundred more dollars and got the latest MacBook for myself. It's a cycle I've repeated maybe fifteen times over the decades. Serious resale value.

That resale value alone makes up for the price difference, IMO, since any other PC seems to be worth about half what you pay for it a month later.

If you do go the used route, the only criteria you're not including is that you must, must, must be sure it is new enough to have an Intel processor, not one of the older PPC processors. Apple is just now finally phasing out support for the older processors, and it'd be a shame to start just as they're dying. You will also need a minimum of 1Gb memory, and 2Gb is smarter.

A robust installation of any recent MacOSX, plus a collection of a dozen or so "large" applications like Word and Photoshop will consume just under 20Gb of space in total. Everything above that is left for your files, movies, music etc.

15-inches is the common "midsize" Mac model, but to be inexpensive, you might need to step down to the 13.3 inch models. I have used both and there's not much detectable difference, really.
posted by rokusan at 3:16 AM on October 26 [1 favorite]

To be honest, I think you'll struggle to get something within your budget that doesn't leave you feeling let down, especially if you're avoiding private sales. A G4-based machine or one that's had a hard life would make for a second-rate Mac experience and probably not prove cost-effective in the long run.

If the Mac Mini is no good to you then your only options may be to keep saving or install OS X on a non-Apple laptop to create a 'Hackintosh' (choose a popular model that's known to work well for this).

(Even my ancient 12" Powerbook is probably still worth 250-300 quid, and that's barely capable of word processing and web browsing)
posted by malevolent at 3:55 AM on October 26

Keep checking out the Apple refurb store, where you can get up to 30% off perfectly good new machines. There's a high turnover rate, especially on the macbooks, so you have to keep checking.
posted by hannahlambda at 6:44 AM on October 26

I just spotted this Hackintosh guide to installing OS X on a Dell Mini 10v, which costs something like 200 quid. It's well below your desired spec, but the guide should give you an idea of the best case scenario for this approach.
posted by malevolent at 9:31 AM on October 26

BadMiker, check your MeMail for a pretty time-sensitive sale on refurbished macbooks I just stumbled across. I'd post it here, but that seems spammy and lame.
posted by felix betachat at 1:32 PM on October 26