A non-Apple laptop equivalent to a Macbook?

June 3, 2007 12:50 AM

My Windows-centric wife wants a laptop. I (her very Apple-centric husband) recommend she get a Macbook. To be fair to her, what other non-Apple laptops should we be looking at?

Our benchmark is the black Macbook (13.3" widescreen display, 2.16 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 160Gb HD, 1 Gb RAM, SuperDrive, built in webcam, 802.11 draft N) for about $1300 take home price from Amazon.

We can go slower on the processor, less on the HD, we can settle for just a DVD-ROM drive, don't need 802.11n or the iSight camera. The low end Macbook (running Parallels or Bootcamp) would be just about perfect for her, except she really wants a black laptop.

What are the high quality, non-Apple laptop manufacturers/models should I be looking at? I don't have a clue.

posted by jaimev to computers & internet (34 comments total)

IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads are nice, black, but more expensive than the equivalent MacBook. ($1383 for a Z61t with a smaller hard drive and a 1 year warranty.) Stay away from Dell.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:57 AM on June 3, 2007

If she is pro-windows, why not just get a MacBook and run windows on Bootcamp? Laptop is a laptop at that point. If it is a price issue, high quality PC laptop will be very close or higher cost than the Macbook (I'm thinking Thinkpads, VIAOs, etc).

I priced out a MacBook to a comparable Sony and even with AppleCare the Mac was cheaper than the VIAO. That was here in Australia, but I can't imagine it would be much different anywhere else.

If you want cheaper, get a Dell.
posted by qwip at 1:06 AM on June 3, 2007

Macbooks are also available in black, after you pay Apple's black tax.
posted by maremare at 1:08 AM on June 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

It depends on budget, but I would stick with IBM or Dell, and pay a premium for a well-made machine. Even the "big" brands have some dreadful machines nowadays.

Sony are very good but, again, you're paying over the odds.
posted by humblepigeon at 1:13 AM on June 3, 2007

I was planning on getting a black MacBook soon. Until I went to the Apple store and saw how grimy they look with fingerprints! The white ones have a glossy finish. The black ones are rubberized and show every smudge. I'm not saying it should be a total deal breaker, but if you haven't taken a look in person, then just be aware. Do some Googling too.

I agree with your idea of running Windows on the MacBook. Cool Mac style, yet running Windows.

Have fun.
posted by The Deej at 1:40 AM on June 3, 2007

I bought a refurbished white Macbook from the Apple store, but was able to bump up to the mid-range model because I was saving so much money. I have yet to find out what was originally wrong with it, as it looks and functions perfectly; I also was able to get Applecare as well. That might be the way to go. It's been discussed here before.
posted by mdonley at 1:48 AM on June 3, 2007

As I'm sure you're aware, Boot Camp makes this a false dilemma. However, if you must have a laptop which isn't capable of running OS X then I'd recommend a Thinkpad. They're tanks.
posted by mullingitover at 2:23 AM on June 3, 2007

Dare I agree with Blazecock Pileon wholeheartedly? Buy a ThinkPad. Don't buy Dell.
posted by grouse at 2:25 AM on June 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

Lenovo has excellent sales on most everything several times a year. You could probably get a excellent T60 for $1200 to $1400 if you check back once every week or two for a few months. When they're not having excellent sales, the telephone sales people can be haggled down. 7 months ago I got a very nice T60p for around $1700. Plain T60s, which were different only in having a not as good video card and no cell modem were around $1300.

If you're buying a Lenovo, wait for the Thanksgiving sale if at all possible. If not, wait or haggle, either for a lower price or more stuff for the money.
posted by wierdo at 2:27 AM on June 3, 2007

Amazon doesn't seem to have that item in stock right now. It's $1,499 from Apple. Another plus with the ThinkPad is that you get phone support for the full warranty period (unlike Apple's 90 days unless you shell out another $249 for AppleCare).
posted by grouse at 2:33 AM on June 3, 2007

(unlike Apple's 90 days unless you shell out another $249 for AppleCare)

Apple gives phone support for a full year on hardware issues, and AppleCare is $199 for a MacBook at Amazon, not $249.

IBM/Lenovo charges another $279 for a three year hardware warranty plan on the Z61t I mentioned above.

A MacBook is cheaper than a ThinkPad and runs Windows just fine. But if you must run Windows only and don't want to use an Apple product, you can choose to spend more on a ThinkPad.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:02 AM on June 3, 2007

Yeah, but you can't get this model from Amazon right now, as far as I can tell. I just get "This item is currently not available." Can't even backorder it. If I am missing something, please post a link to a page where you can buy said MacBook from Amazon.
posted by grouse at 3:15 AM on June 3, 2007

Stay away from Hewlett-Packard. I've owned two and regretted it four times.
posted by three blind mice at 4:54 AM on June 3, 2007

Dells are okay now, actually quite good with their latest designs - robust construction, and with the choice of an unparalled accidental coverage. I am hell on laptops and use mine for hours a day in not very good circumstances, and it's running well - well, except for the screen that was shattered by someone tripping and putting his foot right through it - but that was replaced within days. But considering how I use it, the screen should be looser, the keys more damaged - my husband's older Dell isn't as good as mine, they have really improved. They aren't as well designed as Apple notebooks, but I don't see that they are much worse designed than any other mainstream PC laptop (and they are better than many), and certainly better than other laptops in the low price range. But the accidental coverage with next bussiness day replacement is what makes them stand out.

I've got an Inspiron 630m (a make that may have only come out in Britain/Europe, but will have NorthAm equivalents), 14" widscreen. There are smaller ones available. However, they do not come in black.

Apples strike me as still the best of the laptop design - coverage isn't as good as Dell, but the design is wonderful -robust, simple, few parts to get into problems (I love their new magnetic closures). Of course, you wouldn't be able to accessorise as cheaply, but being an Apple person you know that already.

Except for the fact that I needed the Dell coverage and the cheaper dual-boot Apples weren't available at the time (and I do need Windows for work), I would have gotten an Apple.
posted by jb at 5:49 AM on June 3, 2007

Be sure to check eBay for Applecare. I got it for my MacBook for $159.
posted by monkeymadness at 5:52 AM on June 3, 2007

I recommend Lenovo Thinkpads if you don't go the Apple route. I worked as an IT hardware support guy for a year and a half and worked on HP and IBM/Lenovo hardware. The Lenovo hardware is just a dream to work on, relatively speaking. Simple, sturdy, modular construction for the win. Just don't spray turkey grease all over your keyboard, and you'll be fine.

That said, mac, bootcamp, Windows. I suspect the macbook is actually cheaper than the equivilant-power Thinkpad, partially because they aren't so thoroughly armored. If your wife is not going to be a road warrior, that shouldn't even matter.
posted by Alterscape at 5:56 AM on June 3, 2007

The Dell Inspiron 6400/1505 is a nice, cheap laptop. Some are sold through resellers on ebay. I just picked up a new one for $650.

Apple: What are you thinking? Take away a Windows user's right mouse button, they will hate you forever.
posted by mrbugsentry at 6:13 AM on June 3, 2007

I tend to be of the opinion that it's best to run OSX on Apple laptops, for the simple reason that they don't have two mouse buttons. Windows really likes having at least two. You can futz around with clicking on the pad and stuff, but I greatly prefer just having two damn buttons in the first place.

Thinkpads tend to have similar specs to Macs, in that they have fast processors and lots of RAM, but weak video. But I think they're better-designed and better-built than Apple laptops. There have been a LOT of complaints on the forums about Macbooks. They appear to have numerous design flaws. I have gathered the impression that the Macbooks were mostly designed by an outside company, possibly Acer, and then tweaked a bit by Apple from there. They've had severe problems with overheating and with plastic discoloration.

With the Thinkpads, it's all in-house, and they have profound experience in making rugged, durable laptops that function well for businesses. And in the IBM days, Thinkpad customer service was probably even better than Apple's. I haven't heard anyone complain that it's gotten worse since the Lenovo buyout.

Your wife prefers Windows, and it's gonna be her laptop. A Thinkpad T60-something should make her happy, shouldn't offend you too much, and likely won't spend much, if any, time in the shop. They're good machines.
posted by Malor at 6:25 AM on June 3, 2007

Notebookreview.com is an excellent resource for everything about notebooks. Do some research there.

Asus, a Taiwanese manufacturer, offers well spec'd laptops at extremely reasonable prices. They're mostly known for their motherboards. They also manufacture a large percentage of Macintosh computers. Asus' laptop line is pretty extensive.
posted by BeaverTerror at 6:35 AM on June 3, 2007

VAIOs are nice. I agree with the stay-away-from-Dell comments
posted by matteo at 6:42 AM on June 3, 2007

This is addressed to Jaimev's wife, who appears to be in the same position where I was six months ago.

We ultimately went with the black macbook, more or less as you describe as your benchmark, because back then it was simply the best available hardware. It's also the only laptop, last I looked, that can really handle going to sleep and waking up the way it's supposed to. The odd crashes are nothing like the complete reboots required on other people's laptops.

The macbook arrived late in the afternoon (mail) and my husband worked all evening to get bootcamp running so I could use windows at work the next day.

Since that one day at work, I haven't booted into windows once. The whole windows/osx debate just went away. Well, except that 60% of my computer is behind a wall at the moment.

As far as the fingerprints issue - I have dry hands, so my macbook looks fine. It looks pretty gross after my husband with normal hands uses it.

As far as the no right mouse button issue - we got the wireless mighty mouse. Be aware, if you go that route, that it works on galvanic skin response and a right click necessitates completely removing the left finger from contact with the mouse. OTOH, you get sidescrolling and after a few weeks of that, you'll be very confused that you can't do it with other mice.

One possible bug - although a friend of mine reports it as a feature. If you use it in coffeeshops, you may be approached by vaguely annoying older men hellbent on stopping you from working. My friend says that he gets approached by hot young women, so I'm hoping they fix this in an update.
posted by arabelladragon at 7:06 AM on June 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

I own a dell XPS M1210, I love it.

Buy a Mac and replace bootcamp with parallels when v3 comes out.
posted by Mick at 8:00 AM on June 3, 2007

I use a black MacBook for work - I inherited it from another guy who used it heavily for field work. I use it nearly every day. I have to disagree with The Deej. Though it does show dirt more than the white or silver laptops, it's definitely not a deal-breaker.
posted by odinsdream at 8:20 AM on June 3, 2007

Apple: What are you thinking? Take away a Windows user's right mouse button, they will hate you forever.

Notwithstanding the fact that anything requiring a second mouse button just to get to everything isn't designed very well, you can still right-click on MacBook and MacBook Pro trackpads.
posted by oaf at 8:36 AM on June 3, 2007

It makes me sad that we took so long in this thread to get to an Asus mention. Their laptops are consistently well-reviewed (though the high-end laptops are docked a few points for poor price-performance ratio) and well-built. I'd recommend LG laptops too, except that they're not available in the United States (due to an OEM non-compete clause, I believe—like Asus, LG builds laptops for other companies as well).

It's also worth noting that both Asus and LG offer longer warranties than Apple's pitiful 1-year warranty (which all but demands you buy Applecare, a hidden extra cost) LG doesn't load down the Windows install with lots of superfluous trial/crap software (30-day trial of Microsoft Office! Free AOL installer!), which means you probably won't have to uninstall anything or, worse, reformat the drive just to get a clean install. I'm pretty sure Asus does the same.

Looking at Newegg's listing, there are several laptops at the $1300 price point that would fit your needs. 12"-15" screens, lean graphics cards (Go 7300s) or "I can play Company of Heroes with decent framerates!" (Radeon x1700), etc. If your wife isn't a big gamer, the A8JR should suit her just fine.
posted by chrominance at 10:27 AM on June 3, 2007

Is bootcamp really that stable/functional? I was in this situation a year or so ago, was tempted by the Macbooks but wound up going for an on-sale Thinkpad. (z60t) At that point bootcamp was pretty new, I think, and I wasn't sure I trusted it to really replicate Windows (which is to say, run all the Windows/IE only crap required by my company).
posted by yarrow at 1:15 PM on June 3, 2007

@yarrow - Bootcamp is as stable and functional as any other Windows/Intel laptop is. It's not a parallelization solution, like VMWare or Parallels, it's a dual-boot solution. When the computer is booted into Windows, it's a Windows machine. Full stop.

@jaimev - nth-ing Thinkpads, if you can afford one. As a Mac user, they're one of the only PC notebooks I've ever picked up and liked ... dare I say, almost envied? (The keyboards, at least the older IBM ones, are nicer than Apple's. I can't believe I just said that, but it's the truth.) Stay away from any product line that's been created since they were split off from IBM (the "3000 Series") if you want to get a sure thing, since I've heard mixed reviews from hardcore Thinkpad fans about them.

If you know someone that works for IBM or Lenovo, they have good deals on refurbs occasionally.

And yes, avoid Dell and Compaq like the plague of vermin that they are.

(I've never seen an Asus in person so I can't say anything about them ... but they sound really intriguing. If it were me, though, I'd want to see one in person to touch the keyboard, check the fit-and-finish, etc., before I bought.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:04 PM on June 3, 2007

yarrow, Boot Camp doesn't replicate Windows, it just creates a partition and allows you to run your own copy of Windows, so it's really no different from a Lenovo machine or whatever (leaving aside issues of hardware support, drivers, etc.). This also means jaimev's wife needs to factor in the cost of a Windows license to the cost of the Macbook.
posted by lackutrol at 2:17 PM on June 3, 2007

(Or what Kadin2048 said. I should really learn to preview.)
posted by lackutrol at 2:19 PM on June 3, 2007

I'm on my 5th or 6th Dell over about 10 years. Most of them were provided by work, but I've purchased 3. My wife currently has a 700m, and I have a D610. Each are 2 years old. I've been craving a D620, which I'll get in the next few months now that the D630 is out and the D620 price should fall a bit.

I won't buy anything else because I am totally spoiled by Dell's next-business-day on-site service. My 2-year-old has knocked each of our laptops off of tables or ottomans, landing on the power adaptor where it plugs into the device, cracking the port (part of the motherboard). This has happened to my wife's laptop twice, and mine once. Each time, Dell had the motherboard replaced by noon the next day. When it happened to mine, I was leaving the next morning for a business trip, and Dell overnighted the motherboard to a contract tech in my destination city, who came to my client's office about an hour after my flight arrived. 20 minutes later, I was up and running perfectly.

A few weeks ago, a lightning strike near our house caused my wife's screen to exhibit funky 1-mm wide lines (about 10 of them, 5mm apart) on one side of the screen. Happened on Friday, fixed on Monday. Dell shipped the screen to me, and a tech came to the house to fix it.

The older C6XX series Dells had issues with their keyboards. A whole row of keys would stop working. Happened to me twice, but each time Dell just overnighted me a keyboard (they're easy to replace), and I survived overnight by plugging in an external keyboard.

My livelihood depends on my laptop working. If it doesn't work, I'm not billable. I trust Dell above all others.

I did notice while researching recently that HP has a "next day" service option on their devices now. This is apparently a recent (in the past year) development, and I don't know if it matches Dell's service.
posted by Bradley at 4:04 PM on June 3, 2007

I just went from a G3 a T40 over the weekend. Echoing above, the Thinkpad's a dream, hardware/fit/feel wise: if you do support for her hardware, look at the manuals.

I also need to mention the ThinkLight - Seriously, Apple: Lose the webcam if you have to. Not having this would be like going back to smoke signals.

I'm totally impressed by Bradley's Tech Support tale above, but it's absolutely not my experience with Dell. Maybe I was the unlucky 13th caller, or something. I do think there's a difference between their 'Business' and 'consumer' levels of tech support, however.
posted by Orb2069 at 10:23 PM on June 3, 2007

I recently bought a Macbook. My Windows-user husband, after initial trepidation, now adores it and swears next time he needs a laptop he's getting a Mac.

Get the Macbook.
posted by corvine at 5:13 AM on June 4, 2007

I think Bradley got the good customer service because Dell considers him a "business user." If you purchase your computer through the "home user" section of Dell.com you're in for much worse customer service.

Just another anecdote, but several years ago I purchased a Dell Inspiron 5100. The laptop was stolen from the Airborne Express truck before they delivered it to me. It took Dell six weeks to send me a replacement, despite at least a dozen calls to their customer support center somewhere in India and posting on their online help center. It was absolutely ridiculous.

Six months after receiving the laptop, the hard drive failed, and I had a similarly awful time dealing with their Customer Support. Two of my friends also had the hard drives fail on their Dells within a year of purchase.

Never again.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 11:48 AM on June 4, 2007

Dell Inspriron 5100 was a lemon. It nearly destroyed their business (not undeservedly).

The Inspirons since are entirely a different quality of design - much higher.

Dell's call centers can be a problem, and my husband and I have had our fair share of argument with them. You have to be very firm, and their contracted out call centres are worse - I think they are given quotas to avoid service. I call during business hours to get the local call centre, and yes, it does help to buy through their business site. You don't have to be a business to buy through their business site -- I'm a student, and I did. My laptop is also my life, and my thesis (same thing), and one or two days without it really cripples me. But that next business day repair has kept me going.

Never buy anything through the home user site - they are more expensive (bundled up with crap printers, etc) and get worse service. Everyone has a job/work to do, therefore anyone can be a business user.

I may "hate" Dell, the way I hate Windows, but I still would go for Dell everytime, because of the coverage. Also, my machine seems to be as robust as other people's Thinkpads, and more robust than my housemate's Toshiba, while being cheaper.
posted by jb at 3:08 AM on June 6, 2007