OT: new laptop for wife macbook or pc?

The puter traffic is getting heavy around here. Wife needs a laptop. I have been mulling the idea of going mac, tired of spam, viruses, microsoft. But gee, the price difference for similar specs - it’s making it hard. Why in the world does apple start out with a 13" monitor. I guess that’s the big deterrent for me right now, the 13" monitor. I realize we can get a larger screen, but with a much larger price. And it kills me how the prices almost double after you add options, coverage, etc. But that is to be expected, along with the bloatware on pcs. For the same apple money we can get an 18+" pc laptop, not that that would be so practical, but… I’ve never really used a Mac. I’m thinking it would be finely suited to her needs. What do you think?

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I vote for Linux as well. I have it on 2 desktops and a laptop at my house, and I’m very happy with it. Plus, it’s free and runs well on cheap hardware.

Get a mac! It’s easy to use, no need to worry about viruses. The machine is reliable. But remember to get the AppleCare service (extended 3-year-warranty). I know it’s expensive, but it will cover the cost for repair when something does go wrong with your macbook (given that it wasn’t due to user neglect). There’s a discount for students and educational workers (only limited to their computers and laptops). Just fill in the necessary information (based on a school near your of course) and enjoy the saving: Apple Education Store

My sister-in-law works for Apple. So I can testify for their superior customer support.

I cast a third vote for linux. Regardless of what you get, it’l most likely wind up easier and cheaper in the long run. You could go through, and build yourself a nice laptop from dell or any other computer company (I’d recommend going through someone else that let’s you pick out the parts yourself, so long as you have the technical know how to pick what you need. You can get more of what you’ll need and scale back what you don’t, which saves you money, either spent on 8GB of RAM that your wife doesn’t use when listening to music and emailing, or on expensive upgrades later), and not choosing an OS to be shipped with it. It’ll cost between $100-400 less sometimes, and you can download and install any version of linux for free, with very few exceptions. Linux has a reputation for being only for computer geeks, but the learning curve is really no worse than getting used to using a Mac. Especially since there are distributions like Ubuntu or Mint (I really love Mint, it’s my second favourite after Fedora, but Fedora can be a bit more imposing until you get used to it) that were buil with ease of use in mind. Also, for the odd program where Linux has no counterpart for a windows program, you can run most of them through wine. To balance things out, I should point out, I have an intense hatred of Macs. I liked the old apple computers (I grew up playing Tetris on an Apple II well into the 90s), but now they just irk me whenever I use them. Mostly, it’s things like the uncomfortable placement of the “Apple key,” that you use in place of ctrl+ combos. I have giant, chunky fingers, so it screws up my typing flow to stop and move my hand over to it, instead of just hitting the ctrl key. Edit: As far as Macs being virus free, they don’t have viruses for two reasons, which happen to be the same reasons you don’t get Linux viruses. First, they aren’t the dominant OS on the market. It doesn’t make sense to spend time coding a virus for a system when say, perhaps only 25% of your intended victims use it. I’m pretty sure I’m being generous with that figure, too. Second, Windows has a poor privileges system. Even a non-admin user can implement system wide changes under a number of circumstances, which they can’t do in Macs. When you consider that, it only makes more sense that there will be more viruses written for the more popular, less secure OS. When you look at Linux, I think we’ve got something like less than 10% of computers worldwide running it. Add to that the differences that one must account for between the multitude of different distributions, and it becomes futile to try and write a virus, since at best, you might be able to infect .1% of computers if you got every box running one distribution infected. It doesn’t make sense to write viruses for it. On top of that, like Macs, Linux has a more strigent privilege system in place, where you need to know the admin password to do a lot of things. If Linux or Macs became dominant, you would see viruses that exploit them. As it is, I believe there are already a couple of viruses for Macs (although Apple may have resolved the issue by now), and I’m pretty sure I’ve read about at least one for Linux. Computers go against what you learned as a kid. There’s danger in numbers. The more quirky, obscure, and relatively unknown your setup is, assuming there aren’t any glaring vunerabilities in it, the safer you are. Likewise, the more standard and common it is, the easier it’ll be for skilled hackers to take advantage of it, regardless of how safe you are about things. If I could install keyloggers in 1/10 of all windows machines, I’d probably stand to gain more than if I installed one on every linux box.

Mint is what I use on our computers.

I think when I started using Mint, it was the first and only time I’ve used an OS and though, “Damn, that’s sexy.” My geekdom levelled up, but I think my manhood curled up and died.

My first Linux was Redhat 5, and I ran Windowmaker on the desktop. I thought Dockaps were the *coolest thing ever*.

Definitely Macbook! I have used Windows computers since the late 80s, and switched to Apple in 2003. I still sometimes catch myself “why didn’t I do this a decade ago?” Simple, userfriendly, virus-free and simply just doing things better. No kernel panic, no CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and no software conflicts. I never in my life want to own a Windows PC again! I just bought the new Macbook, and I absolutely love it. And as Mac computers is steadily selling more and more, they have become considerably cheaper to buy over the years. Ha ha I have the REAL iMac - a graphite 2001 633MHZ - and believe it or not, though I can’t play dvds on it, it still surfs the internet perfectly well, and still operates perfect with no crashes. I did my M Div on an iBook G4, which was on for more or less all the time for 6 years - I decided to buy the Macbook, when I had worn off all the letters on the keyboard on the iBook G4 *LOL* - no doubt in my mind what the best computer is. Get a Mac - get a life *smiles*

I bought a mac mini a few years ago and have been delighted. I went for six months ignoring software updates and it never crashed. Try that with your pc. When you uninstall a program you don’t get the mysterious warning that that continuing may make all your other programs malfunction. The difference in price is hugely in favor of the mac when you consider the cost of maintaining anti-virus software and the value of your time - and computer downtime sacrificed to defragging discs, updating software and sorting out other problems comon to the pc.

I dabbled with KDE for a while, and I loved the widgets. I switched back to Gnome, because KDE made my CPU too hot, though. It was always around 56 °C or higher. Gnome, it stays around 45-46 °C

I’d put in a vote for Linux. It’s fast, reliable and with a bit of knowledge you can make it behave exactly the way you want. I’ve got a mac, which is now running linux, and they’re not as great as they’re made out to be. Whilst they’re more reliable than Windows the value you get out of spending more money is pretty negligible. If you get a PC and look after it, being carefull what software you install and what websites you visit you wont have any troubles.

I am a PC person. I am a big fan of IBM (Lenovo) laptops…they last. I have mine docked with a full size Lenovo keyboard that everyone thinks is the best they have typed on. All of this is mated to my 24 inch Samsung monitor that for under $500 has a great picture and supports HD. You can get all of this at good prices if you look. I have had some sexy Sony laptops that seem only to last about 3 years or so. Now, just for the Wife to use I bought a $300.00 Acer Aspire One and have been pleasantly surprised by it’s ability for such a cheap price. No offense to you Apple people, I can’t live without my iPhone 3GS.

Thank you for all your comments, such great people on this forum. I’ve been a PCr forever, and I mean forever. I have only had a little experience with Macs, but it was all positive. I tried Linux years ago on the desktop. It had a problem, turned out to be a simple problem, but I was so pissed off at windows, I went and got a Linux distro, I can’t remember which one. I set it up as a dual os system. I found that distro rather problematic, and eventually we quit using it, but we still put up with the boot choice, and if you don’t select windows right away, it automatically goes to Linux. I was impressed with Linux, and the open-source concept. It just didn’t gel with us. I had so much trouble just installing a program. I imagine the new distros are better and I may try it again, for my own machine. For her, I believe I will go with the Macbook. She gets the student discount, and they have a special going on, a free iTouch! I want her to be comfortable, and I DON"T want another machine to have to maintain! I’ve been working on my son’s old Gateway. It is full of malware. Trying to save his music on the drive, before wiping it. I had to change the charge jack, and maybe still the charging board. It is uber-slow even in safe mode. If I ever get it working right, I may go with Linux, I am becoming a real hater of windows and all the crap that goes along with it. What a bloated, problematic operating system. Thanks again for all your comments!

Ah, the distro that I had tried was SuSe.

About 2 months ago, I had to replace my keyboard and bought a cordless one. Then the mouse died and I bought a cordless one. Last week I had to buy a laptop because the work was getting to much for one pc. Last weekend a monitor gave notice and I’ve just now received a 19’ flat screen monitor. I hope this the end of it for a while as I did not budget for any of these replacements.

Stitch - having thought over the matter a little more: what I love about Macs, is that they are PLEASING to use! They don’t make you angry and want to throw them out the window. You become in a good mood, working on a Mac, because it works FOR you - not against you!!! :o)

Definitely go for Mac. I used to have pc’s & ventured over to mac and never looked back. Ease of use, No crashes, viruses etc. No blue screen of death. You don’t have to constantly update things to make it safer. Plugins such as cameras etc. are automatically recognized, no need to install the products software. I currently have 3 mac machines. 1 desktop & 2 laptops. One of the laptops I bought used to have as a beater that I can take places because its the smaller version. My laptop, the computer I use most often is the iBook G4 which I’ve had since 2004. Never had one single problem with it. I expect it to last a few more years. They do keep value for resale as well.