What's best for me? Mac or PC?

October 16, 2005 2:28 AM

Can you advise me on getting a laptop? Mac or PC?

My main use of the computer is for media/entertainment (although not high end games). I also want to be able to use Photoshop or something similar. It will also be used for word processing and other sundry functions.

I want to know what are the advantages of a Mac Powerbook over PC (IBM Thinkpad T42 looks likeliest option in that regard). I know this is a contentious issue amongst some Mefites but I would hope that I could get some advantages for choosing a Mac over a PC based upon facts rather than it turning into an ideological bitch fest. (If possible?)

My budget is £1200- at the very, very most- and I live in the UK. If there is a laptop that can do this cheaper and is relatively solid I will appreciate that all the more.

I have a Dell D600 for work and am pretty sick of it (so I would rather not have a Dell if thats ok).

posted by ClanvidHorse to computers & internet (33 comments total)

Do you already own a copy of Photoshop and/or Office (and any other expensive software you plan to use)? Because if you own the PC version but buy a Powerbook you'll need to buy them again and that would decimate your budget. That is, assuming you *ahem* want to be legal about this.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:13 AM on October 16, 2005

PC
Pros:

Offers you more software if you decide to branch out beyond PhotoShop/word processing.

You're more familiar with it.

If you're savvy, you can find something cheaper than you would with Apple.
Cons:

The hell that is spyware, adware and virii on a net-active user today. Unless you know your shit and run rigourous, regular checks (with the appropriate softwares), your computer lifespan will be much lower than in you had a mac.

Mac
(First of all - why a powerbook? An iBook seems much more in line with what you want: if you don't need heavy processing power, iBook + RAM seems perfect...)
Pros:

Once you're used to it, a much more intuitive and unmaddening UI.

system doesn't crash, and otherwise very reliable laptops

excellent support under AppleCare

no viruses
Cons:

You're not familiar with it.

Less competition for price.

Some options you may way - blue-ray, floppy drive, etc, may not be available.

I'm (I guess obviously) a very happy Mac user. I essentially browse the web, write, fiddle with graphics, do email, download and watch movies, and my iBook + 3rd-party-ram has been a joy. Watching my friends, I have to say that the adware stuff is the #1 reason to go with a mac these days: I know so many people who go crazy with machines slowing down, popups and weird search results, forced to either spend whole days cleaning things off, to pay someone to do so, or to buy a new machine. Macs have none of these problems - I can go to any lyrics website on the net without worrying. :)

posted by Marquis at 3:30 AM on October 16, 2005

If you want a powerbook, wait until after the 19th to see if new ones are announced. Until they're updated, now is a bad time to get them.
posted by maledictory at 3:45 AM on October 16, 2005

Between Mac and PC, get a Mac. I've used a Powerbook for the last 3-4 years, and my only complaint is that it's not good for games. A Mac won't get bogged down with adware and viruses and the like, and 2 years after buying it, it will still be running smoothly. That's my experience, at least.

If you were going to get a Mac, I'd second the iBook + RAM option. Cheaper than a Powerbook, and it will still do what you need it to do.
posted by teem at 4:03 AM on October 16, 2005

For what it's worth I switched from a Dell D600 to an iBook and I hate the Mac, and I really really regret the decision to "switch". I never had a problem with spyware/adware on a PC on account of the fact that it's really easy to prevent that sort of thing if you know how. The performance of the iBook seems poor compared to the PC, it's got half a gig of RAM which should be plenty for running something like Photoshop, but apparantly not.
In terms of accesibility, which is important on a laptop as you don't have a mouse and the laptop equiviliants such as the trackpad are hard to use, the Mac just plain sucks IMO, unless I'm missing something big, and having read the "Missing Manual" book I don't think I am. On the PC laptop, I rarely had to use the trackpad for day to day operation, almost everything was controllable from the keyboard, but with the Mac I am forever having to switch from keyboard to trackpad. God I hate it.
And the Mac has this ridiculous thing whereby when you have file safe enabled add delete something from the trash, it doesn't free up the space on your harddrive, you have to run a clean up opertation operation on shutdown, which can take ages to complete.
But, I understand I'm in the minority in this view point.
posted by chill at 4:13 AM on October 16, 2005

Oh, and this "Mac's never crash" line you often here - that's bollocks.
posted by chill at 4:14 AM on October 16, 2005

Mac, definately, for all manner of good reasons.

A PowerBook would be a better idea (Especially if you're doing anything remotely serious in Photoshop), but your budget only permits a 12" model, which (although seriously nifty lookin') is a bit too small for imaging.

Get a 14" iBook with an extra 512mb of RAM (£999). Photoshop CS2 for the Mac is £499. If you're a student, or an educator, it's £205. It's quite likely that you'll decide to pirate it, which is (sorry Adobe) fairly common, and relatively easy to get away with, although significantly easier with the previous version (CS1). So, the remaining £200 of your budget can either be spent on accessories (there's no mouse in the box with an Apple laptop, for example, and you may also wish to get a decent laptop bag), software (Office 2004 for the Mac is £349, but the Student/Teacher edition is exactly the same, comes with three licenses [you can install it on three different computers legally] and you don't have to prove that you're a student or a teacher to buy it), or - my personal recommendation, the AppleCare protection plan. You get a years parts and labour on your iBook as standard, along with 90 days of free phone support. £199 brings both of those up to three years, which you'll be grateful for if something ever goes wrong.

That's about it. If you're anywhere near Leeds, the boys I used to work with at the Apple Centre there will be good to you. Tell them Ant sent you there.
posted by armoured-ant at 4:22 AM on October 16, 2005

And the Mac has this ridiculous thing whereby when you have file safe enabled add delete something from the trash, it doesn't free up the space on your harddrive, you have to run a clean up opertation operation on shutdown, which can take ages to complete.

The file vault. thing is a security feature, and I believe that it's doing a Secure Empty trash when you shut down. When you delete files normally (on a PC or a Mac), the information is still resident on the hard disk, it's just being treated as blank space by the computer. When the computer needs to write some data somewhere, it might land it on the files you just deleted. It might not. The secure empty trash command writes zeroes to the deleted data areas of the disk; meaning that if some evil minger wants to get the important files you wanted deleted, he can't do it just by scanning the disk for lost file fragments.

If it bothers you that much, and you don't need to be protected against industrial digital espionage, chill, you can disable it in System Preferences > Security.
posted by armoured-ant at 4:27 AM on October 16, 2005

If it bothers you that much, and you don't need to be protected against industrial digital espionage, chill, you can disable it in System Preferences > Security.
The porblem is, in order to do that, it has to make a complete mirror image of your hard drive, which means you have to have enough drive space, and I just don't right now.
posted by chill at 4:51 AM on October 16, 2005

Oh, and this "Mac's never crash" line you often here - that's bollocks.

That's right. They can crash. At least, I've heard that it can happen (kernel panics or something?) but none of mine have crashed in the last two years. Quite a record compared to the PCs around here.

A PowerBook would be a better idea (Especially if you're doing anything remotely serious in Photoshop), but your budget only permits a 12" model, which (although seriously nifty lookin') is a bit too small for imaging.

The 14" has exactly the same resolution as the 12" providing no benefit if you're under, say, 30 (eyesight).

You can get a 12" for cheaper, then run Screen Spanning Doctor, plug in an extra TFT screen when you're at your desk, and bam, you can have the iBook's 1024x768, and a cute 1280x1024 (or whatever) second desktop right at your finger tips :)

Oh, and buy a gig of RAM from Crucial for £97 (or 512MB for £46.99) .. and you got yourself a fast machine for £750-£800. If you need the SuperDrive and a bigger hard disk, get the 14".. but add another £200. If you just want the hard disk, save your £200 and buy an external or upgrade the smaller one.
posted by wackybrit at 5:58 AM on October 16, 2005

A 12" iBook is about £700. Add a gigabyte of RAM and you'll be able to do anything.

chill: File Vault sucks and has never worked properly. They should never have included it.
posted by cillit bang at 6:12 AM on October 16, 2005

None of my PCs have crashed since XP came out.
posted by sageleaf at 6:33 AM on October 16, 2005

If you're going with a PC, you can use Paintshop Pro, which I hear it good enough for most lay people.

As for Mac or PC, go with whatever you're comfortable with AND whichever one you aren't sick of.

Also check out Ebay for used Macs. You can find some nice deals.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:41 AM on October 16, 2005

For all the talk of iBooks, they really aren't as useful as comparably priced Windows notebooks. iBooks have 1024x768 displays and cannot typically drive external displays at higher than that. They have no media or PC-Card slots. Oh, and their external display support is for mirroring the internal display only not monitor spanning.

A PC Notebook compares more favorably with the $2000 15.4" Powerbooks in terms of screen size, expansion and other features. Keep that in mind when shopping because the difference between a $1200 pc laptop and a powerbook is a copy of Adobe Creative Studio in magnitude.

That said, I have a total love/hate relationship with my powerbook. I like the machine well enough except for certain things that result in stalls and I see regular kernel panics when I plug in an external mouse. (I also have an older powerbook running osx that has seen uptimes of over 400 days)
posted by shagoth at 7:23 AM on October 16, 2005

I haven't had stability issues on my PC with win2000 or winxp. Not to get into a pissing contest, or anything ;)

I'd get a PC, but thats just me. I decided a while ago that I'd put a true UNIX on whatever laptop I got, & I'm used to working on a PC.
posted by devilsbrigade at 8:25 AM on October 16, 2005

recent threads discussing this topic
posted by Popular Ethics at 8:34 AM on October 16, 2005

I made this decision last year (With a lower price point), and came up with a G3/700 iBook instead of a T23 Thinkpad - More because of the User Interface than anything else (I was biplatform - XP/Linux - until I had to use a mac for some freelance work, and OS X rubbed off on me)

If you want to go with a used Mac, you might want to use the prices at Low End Mac as a deal benchmark.

Screen Spanning Doctor was mentioned above, and it's lovely. Check to make sure that the model you're considering can run it, if you want it, though.
posted by Orb2069 at 8:39 AM on October 16, 2005

I have VERY little Mac experience that was with an IMac.

Most of my work has been with the PC side. I have had a Winbook (stolen) and an Averatec cheapie. For what it has been through, I am impressed with the Avertec (I work for the railroad) and it travels in my 'grip' (railroad for bag). It looks like crap, but still works!

The Averatec took Suse Linux in a dual boot mode with no hassle, and was recently wiped an upgraded to XP Pro and it runs well, very well. I did add some memory (512 meg), which improved the performance.

I guess it boils down to what floats your boat.
posted by raildr at 8:48 AM on October 16, 2005

I echo what Marquis says in the third post above. If you have the time to always keep up with the latest spyware, virus and numerous other hassles that plague the PC platform, then be ready and go that route. BUT, if you want literally "plug 'n play" right out of the box, no worries about the mentioned demons, not to mention easy of use with navigation of programs and the OS iteself, then an iBook or PowerBook is the route.

Macdictory also has sage advice in waiting until the end of Wednesday, Oct. 19th due to some more updating from Apple regarding laptops and other models. After that, check places like Craigslist, blow-out sales at computer stores, eBay, etc. Even Apple's website for refurbished products sells previous models, warranteed refrubs, and other "sleepers," but you have to check frequently and strike when you see the deal, 'cause they "go in an eye blink." Good luck!
posted by thebarron at 9:49 AM on October 16, 2005

I switched a few months ago, and I tell you this: I will never ever go back to the hell that is Windows.

I was a masterful Windows user. I knew that system inside and out. I installed only quality software, most of it professional-class (my computer is mainly for business use, so I write off the software purchases). Knew the registry and services inside out. Could fix any problem.

I am an novice Mac user. I'm still trying to learn how to use it. I'm installing only quality software, of course, but I know nothing about troubleshooting it, nothing about tuning it, and very little about how to make it work most efficiently for me.

I love the Mac. Even at this novice stage I'm am a confident user. I can see several means of leveraging the technologies in this system to my advantage (the Automator scripting, oy! cron! A real OS underlying the GUI! Spotlight! Seriously great widgets and whatnots!)

The Mac just worked right out of the box. I have a half-dozen apps that are never closed because the OS just handles them well, switching them in and out of memory as needed. It responds instantly to my commands. It's tightly integrated all over the place. It feels like a real computer.

I didn't think it would happen, but I've become a Mac fanboy. It really is as good as they say.

I suggest going with a 12" iBook with built-in everything and the largest hard drive. Upgrade the memory yourself. It'll be the cheapest entry point, and holds enough value that if you're one of the rare people who doesn't end up loving his Mac, you will be able to sell it at little loss.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:07 AM on October 16, 2005

Everyone else has posted specs; Get yourself a mac and never look back. I was a PC guy since 1989 (tandy 1000 anyone?) I used macs periodically in school and recently switched.

I see. I'm mirroring FFF's comment. He is dead on. I'd say there is a week learning curve, get yourself quicksilver, and you'll quickly find what you are looking for (net utils, etc, since things aren't in locations that you're familiar with)
posted by AllesKlar at 10:40 AM on October 16, 2005

Shagoth: For all the talk of iBooks, they really aren't as useful as comparably priced Windows notebooks. iBooks have 1024x768 displays and cannot typically drive external displays at higher than that. They have no media or PC-Card slots. Oh, and their external display support is for mirroring the internal display only not monitor spanning.

iBooks are deliberately crippled so that they can't do monitor spanning, but many thousands of people (including myself) run a programme called Screen Spanning Doctor that gets around that restriction. It works perfectly well. Additionally, my old iBook G4 800mhz with 640MB RAM drove an external 20" LCD (1600 x 1200) perfectly well. It's still stupid that it's deliberately crippled though.

While the iBooks do not have a PCMCIA slot, the vast majority of users have absolutely no use for them. New iBooks come with wifi and bluetooth built-in. Still, it is something to bear in mind.
posted by adrianhon at 11:08 AM on October 16, 2005

I've been using PCs for a numbers of years now but I'm about to go out and buy a 14' iBook. I had one at work and I absolutely loved it. For me, the iBook is what a laptop should be. The battery life is excellent and when you close the lid, the computer goes to sleep almost immediately and wakes up just as fast (which can't be said for the PC laptops I've worked with). Also, the weight and size of the iBook are pretty good and can easily fit in a briefcase or backpack.

Also, I recently convinced one of my PC friends to switch to an iBook and he's loving it.

shagoth: When I was using my iBook, I regularly ran the external display at 1280x1024. Also, the external display can do monitor spanning which I was also using.
posted by yasny_jp at 11:38 AM on October 16, 2005

On posting: sorry, iBook does NOT support monitor spanning, i.e. you cannot have a window that spans the internal display to the external display. However, it does more than just mirror the internal display (which, if that was all it could do I would be seriously upset). Within the display preferences you are able to enable/disable mirroring as well as set different resolutions for the external monitors.
posted by yasny_jp at 11:43 AM on October 16, 2005

Ok, my bad, factory ibooks can apparently now drive higher res external displays. The spanning is still unsupported and frankly using hackware to enable it is nice but not part of the documented feature set. Further, what happens if you have issues and it goes back to the factory hacked? Does it void your warranty?

Again, though, the screen resolution of ibooks is archaic. 1024x768 just doesn't cut it at all anymore. Thos extra 150 pixels of width that a wide PC laptop offers makes a huge difference when running nearly anything including web browsers. Of course, with macs wide comes at a $1k premium. Don't get me wrong, in this room I've writing from there are six macs including a server and only one intel box, but iBooks are not Powerbooks by any stretch of the imagination.
posted by shagoth at 12:17 PM on October 16, 2005

I recently bought a new 14 inch iBook and love it. I use the Screen spanning hack, which as far as I know, has never caused a problem on anyone's system. Shagoth- People have sent iBooks into apple with the hack still on, and not had a problem. The hack can be disabled by reseting the PRAM when booting. That'll remove any traces of using the program.

I love my iBook, it does everything I want and more. Just to let you know, some folks are experiencing a problem with the airport (WIFI) card. You can read about it here
http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?[e-mail].85126@.68b7c1b7

Even with a slight problem here and there, the stability, quality definately beat out any PC. On a PC I feel like I'm always struggling to keep it working (spyware, adware, virus, ect..) on a Mac you'd have to really try to break it.

Go for the iBook! You won't regret it.
posted by Jomoma at 12:51 PM on October 16, 2005

Another potential advantage of a PC laptop - you can get the wacom pen digitiser built right into the screen, and then draw right onto the screen when using photoshop. Convertible tablet PCs can be awesome, but they're sometimes overpriced. There aren't many models that I would like much, but the one I do have I love (M275), and since it's older, is in budget. Beware of tablets that use finepoint instead of wacom, as those lack pen pressure sensitivity, avoid the slate models, since they're designed for non-laptop purposes.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:36 PM on October 16, 2005

Something that might or might not help with interpreting the answers, I've noticed that on Ask Mefi, the questions about how to do/fix something on Mac are about bang-on equal in frequency and difficulty to the questions for Windows.

This vaguely suggests that either MeFi users are disproportionately Mac users, or that there is little to no difference in ease of use. Or possibly that Win users don't like asking questions :-)

(I've always assumed it was the first one)
posted by -harlequin- at 1:44 PM on October 16, 2005

I used PCs of various flavours for 20 years and three months ago switched from a Toshiba Satellite 1700 to a Powerbook g4. A few pros and cons from my perspective:

Mac-Pros:
- as advertized, lots of things just work. I had a very tempermental external HD that never worked properly on XP. Even formatted as an XP drive, the mac recognized it, slurped over the data, with no questions asked
- the mac is so much more portable. It isn't even close. Admiteedly, the Toshiba was a big laptop, but the mac is so much lighter, slimmer, etc. that I routinely carry it around and do my work in cafes and so forth. Very liberating that way. This is maybe the biggest upside of all.
- the screen is excellent, the keyboard is very tactile, the lighted keyboard is great. Maybe these are available on PC laptops now, I dont know.
- near complete lack of worry about trojans, virii, spamware, etc.
- "spotlight" is probably the greatest thing that has ever happpened to me
- built in wireless and bluetooth worked flawlessly on all sorts of situations
- running remote graphic unix applications very easy (as expected)
- the unit recharges at least twice as fast as the Toshiba did
- the mac wakes up from sleep instantly. This is really nice, you'd be surprised
- very few crashes (but some) and doesn't need the cleansing reboot after a few days the Toshiba always did -- I presume this is better memory management

Mac-cons
- obviously having to learn a whole new OS is hard. 95% of what to do is clear and transferable easily, but the remaining 5% is a bitch. sudo? wtf?
- the mac trackpad is not as good as the Toshiba, and is less configurable
- the built in speakers are not as good as Toshiba, not even close
- the mac came with a power adapter that blew up (smoking) after three days. The headphone jack is already toast despite being used very seldom. The entire notebook is somehow bent. One reason I bought it was a series of hardware faults on the Toshiba -- so far the mac is not discernibly better quality.
- would not recognize my laser pointer/presenter. Unlike for XP, couldn't just find a driver. A fact of life is the OS is running on a very small percentage of laptops overall.
- OS has a bug re: screen dimming and external projectors. Very difficult to fix this myself, had to get tech in, still not very satisfactory. When it doesn't play with a peripheral then OS is harder to play with than XP, which lets you get in and do whatever you want whenever you want. May be a familiarity issue, but when there's a problem it tends to be a bigger one.
- overall, while less software available but not nearly as much a problem as I anticipated.

In sum: the things about the mac that I like, I really LOVE. The things I don't like I can either live with or I can learn.
If you get the 12 inch ibook with lots of ram and a slimline carrycase I doubt you will be sorry.
posted by Rumple at 4:50 PM on October 16, 2005

This vaguely suggests that either MeFi users are disproportionately Mac users, or that there is little to no difference in ease of use. Or possibly that Win users don't like asking questions :-)

Or that there are a number of Windows users on Mefi switching to the Mac platform.
posted by Rothko at 5:07 PM on October 16, 2005

The virus and spyware things are red herrings. It's not a hard job to install AVG and MS AntiSpyware. It's not like you have to crank a handle to make them run. And they're both free.

My suggestion is to visit a big retail store which has a bunch of different laptops, including Apples, and spend some time playing with them. Then go ahead and buy a PC. I really love my IBM ThinkPad - though it's now getting very long in the tooth -

Oh, and if you have to learn to use an interface before it's intuitive, it isn't fucking intuitive. I mean, having to choose 'Connect to Server' in a menu to browse your peers on a LAN? Are you kidding me? Look at the desktop of most Windows boxes and you'll see 'Network Neighbourhood' or 'Network Places' and know what it is immediately, right?
posted by The Monkey at 7:52 PM on October 16, 2005

Hey, too many hyphens! Must mean I meant to say something else...

I really love my IBM ThinkPad - though it's now getting very long in the tooth - but I don't think the styling is for everyone. I like the matt black 'this is for work' look. Of course, I think my partners widescreen HP laptop is damn sexy too.
posted by The Monkey at 7:54 PM on October 16, 2005

I recently bought a Fujitsu Lifebook P1510D. My other machine is a dual-processor liquid cooled G5. So I should want a Mac.

But the Fujitsu is smaller than any Mac portable (I can hold it securely in one hand), gets outstanding battery life, has a widescreen touch-sensitive display (it doesn't recognize levels of pressure and the right-click equivalent is a taskbar icon, but then it doesn't need a special stylus either, you can use your finger), and is convertible between notebook and tablet form factors. You can even switch the display between portrait and landscape modes. It has a fingerprint scanner you can use in place of entering a password for login. Oh, and it has CompactFlash and Secure Digital memory card slots built in. (Guess what memory formats my two digital cameras take?) The only thing it doesn't do is Bluetooth, but what the heck, it has no fewer than four slots (CF, SD, two USB) that will take a Bluetooth dongle.

If you're willing to put up with Windows -- and XP SP2 is a good deal less annoying than previous versions -- the variety of Intel and AMD portables is such that you can get pretty much exactly what you want. I wanted a tablet that was small and light enough to carry everywhere but had a decent keyboard for when I needed to enter text -- and I got it, with virtually no compromises.

Base price on this machine is about $1500. Equipped the way I bought it, right around $2000. More expensive than an iBook, but right in there with the 12" PowerBooks.

I am still a Mac fan. I love my G5. But I love this Fujitsu just as much. Did I mention the dealer I bought it from threw in a three-year warranty at no charge? Try getting Apple to do that. Apple needs some serious updates to its portable line. They have no tablet despite the fact that they have a perfectly usable handwriting recognition technology built right into their OS. WTF?
posted by kindall at 8:52 PM on October 16, 2005