please advise - PC vs. OSX/PC

[Dmytro]

guys,

i'm considering getting a laptop, and would appreciate your opinion. :-k

i'm considering dell's xps m1330, which, surprisingly has a very impressive specs list for a decent price (~$1,600).
the other option would be getting apple's ibook, with its great OSX, plus, with the bootcamp, allows having windows xp on the same machine (which, with the student discount would set you back by ~$1,400).

with that in mind, here are my questions:

1. right now, what would you choose between the two laptops?
2. what would your choice be if i were to buy the new ibook after the leopard os has been released?
3. in general, what has your experience been with using apple machines for both osx and windows? any glitches with switching, ms office, installing 3rd party's soft/freeware, etc?

any pointers would be appreciated,


thank you,


dmytro

 

[alain]

as mentioned before in QN before... don't buy a Dell :smt018

 

[alain]

and if you want an iBook... talk to Woody or Bob

 

[Jacob]

my .02

I have a Mac laptop and I think it's a great way to go, that's what I'd recommend.
You really have the best of both worlds since you can run windows so easily. The best way to do that, btw, is Parallels Virtual Desktop, not Boot Camp. Boot Camp requires partitioning your HD and rebooting every time you want to switch OSes. The Parallels solution lets you run Windows (or Linux) inside of OS X, with no partitioning. It's very smooth.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

In either case, you essentially pay for the hardware and support cause you can install MacOS on a PC laptop and Win on a Mac. Either one can be easily done. The first via http://www.osx86project.org/ the second via BootCamp. I'm not a Mac guy but if you need some software only available on Macs for work, then I can see why you want one.

If you decide to go the PC route, I would highly recommend Thinkpad T series. I think they have T61 now. Make sure you get the 14.1" 1400x1050 resolution version, not the lower res version.

If you ever think of carrying your laptop to school, a bag full of bricks is lighter than that Dell - specially the so-called Dell with impressive specs list for a decent price (~$1,600). That's a lot of money to spend on a Dell.

By the way, Vladimir asked the same question a while ago about Thinkpad and I gave him some pretty detailed answer.

Look at post #19 and after here Any electronic gadget fanatic here ? - QuantNetwork - Financial Engineering Forum

 

[Yuriy]

A new question: which would last longer?

My Dell notebook will celebrate its first anniversary in November (bought it for $900). It was more than twice as cheap as my previous HP Compaq nx7000 which lasted 2 years (cost $2000). If my Dell lives longer than 11 months, it will be better than HP. How about Apple and Thinkpad? What is the average life of the two?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I still have a Thinkpad T23 which is 6 year old. i have it running 24/7 for the last few years prior to my T60. It's still working as good as when i got it.

As far as i know, Mac is durable as well. Thinkpad T is business laptop, Dell is consumer oriented and Mac is geared toward the creative crowd (or so I've been told) so i'm not sure if we can put them in the same category and compare

Apple makes their own hardware so I don't know how much you can upgrade you laptop sometime down the road.

 

[cw202]

Get the plain Macbook with the student discount and when necessary run WinXP and PC apps with VM Fusion. Fusion is better than Parallels. Also, purchase a memory upgrade to 2GB. It is cheap, and you can use Non-Apple RAM.

Windows is a piece of shit operating system. Go with the stable OS X and its simple GUI. You want to get your work done without your computer crashing or the threat of viruses. You can do all your C++ programming with OS X and its built-in IDE.

Save the Linux bullshit for the IT nerds and grunts.

 

[Yuriy]

I still have a Thinkpad T23 which is 6 year old. i have it running 24/7 for the last few years prior to my T60. It's still working as good as when i got it.

Andy, that is the most encouraging If my Dell breaks down in the next 24 months, I will get myself a Thinkpad

 

[alain]

Get the plain Macbook with the student discount and when necessary run WinXP and PC apps with VM Fusion. Fusion is better than Parallels. Also, purchase a memory upgrade to 2GB. It is cheap, and you can use Non-Apple RAM.

When the Macs break the 25% market share in the financial industry, I'll make the switch.

Windows is a piece of shit operating system. Go with the stable OS X and its simple GUI. You want to get your work done without your computer crashing or the threat of viruses. You can do all your C++ programming with OS X and its built-in IDE.

Save the Linux bullshit for the IT nerds and grunts.

Ignorance is bliss.

 

[alain]

I still have a Thinkpad T23 which is 6 year old. i have it running 24/7 for the last few years prior to my T60. It's still working as good as when i got it.

I had a Thinkpad 600E that I gave to my nephew to play games. My nephew is 7 years old and the laptop is around 8 years old. The machine is still working and the abuse it gets is unbelievable!!!

My old T41 is still going strong after 3 years of continuous use as my main machine at work. A consultant in my company is using it now as his primary machine.

I have a T60 right now and I will recommend it to anybody.

 

[cw202]

>When the Macs break the 25% market share in the financial industry, I'll make the switch.

What does purchasing a "personal" laptop have to do with Macs breaking the 25% market share in the financial industry?

>Ignorance is bliss.

So is getting a bonus several times larger than the Linux system admin's total comp. You can buy an Open BSD t-shirt for everyone in IT ;-) .

 

[woody]

If you get a Windows laptop, only ThinkPad. I have a ThinkPad for work and it is well-built (not so well designed, but well-built). Too bad it runs Windows.

If you get a Mac, well, you don't have a lot of options. But I own the black MacBook and it is very nice. I use Windows on it for two things: SAS and VBA (Mac Excel does not run VBA fast).

But I might wait until the next OSX comes out, unless you want to shell out another $50 in October.

I use Parallels but I hear the VMware is better.

Now, I won't tell you that you *should* buy Win or Mac, but you can guess which I prefer.

Btw, I have no antivirus software on my Mac and have never had a virus. I have a desktop Mac that is 5 years old and still fine (same HD and everything). You know what they say... once you go Mac, you never go back.

 

[Yuriy]

By the way, there is a 25% off Labor Day sale on Lenovo website, and it ends today.

 

[alain]

What does purchasing a "personal" laptop have to do with Macs breaking the 25% market share in the financial industry?

Usually your personal choice translates to what you use at your job.

So is getting a bonus several times larger than the Linux system admin's total comp. You can buy an Open BSD t-shirt for everyone in IT ;-) .

I have never heard of anybody that works with a Mac in a Financial industry getting a bonus several times larger than the Linux system admin's total comp. (nor I have heard of a Linux System Admin getting a high bonus either :D)

 

[cw202]

>I have never heard of anybody that works with a Mac in a Financial industry getting a bonus >several times larger than the Linux system admin's total comp.

I don't believe anyone said they work with a Mac in the Financial industry.

>(nor I have heard of a Linux System Admin getting a high bonus either :D)

I rest my case ;-).

 

[luso]

I have a T60 right now and I will recommend it to anybody.

If you buy IBM/Lenovo, you should buy T series only. It is the best.
If not, think about HP, it is pretty decent.
If you can spend an extra 100 or 200, make sure the HD is 7200rmp.

 

[VladimirBunicu]

If you decide to go the PC route, I would highly recommend Thinkpad T series. I think they have T61 now. Make sure you get the 14.1" 1400x1050 resolution version, not the lower res version.

By the way, Vladimir asked the same question a while ago about Thinkpad and I gave him some pretty detailed answer.

Look at post #19 and after here Any electronic gadget fanatic here ? - QuantNetwork - Financial Engineering Forum

Gentlemen,
I've purchased the T61 (thanks Andy, I've followed your recommendations on specs :tiphat. I purchased the XGA+ 14.1" version (they also offer widescreen Thinkpads, but I waited for the standard screen to appear on market).
Comments so far: Great built! =D> Just returned from Burning Man festival in Nevada desert. My lovable creature have survived the playa dust, sand storm, zero humidity and 110+ temperatures (though black lid heats more than lighter colors).
The machine loads quite slowly - probably because Lenovo had put lots of semi-useful processes in start-up. :-k After tweaking Windows a bit, cleaning startup, registry etc, it became faster, but still loads slowly. AvSvc ([SIZE=-1]Access Connections Main Service - a system process by Lenovo) was eating up one CPU completely (it shows 50% CPU usage on my Dual2 Core). Quite annoying... So I just renamed the file to avsvc.exee for now, and the system looks to work better without it. I will try to find few hours and make a clean install of Windows, then I believe things will fly.
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[Andy Nguyen]

Vladimir,
I'm really glad you're finally a proud Thinkpad owner. Once you go Thinkpad, you never go back
The first thing I did after open my T60 box is to wipe clean the hard drive and reinstall a fresh copy of XP. You are correct that IBM install many software that you hardly need. Those antivirus software is the most resource intensive hog.

Take sometime to reinstall a fresh version of XP and you wouldn't believe how fast it flies. By the way, I added 1GB of RAM to it.

 

[DominiConnor]

My laptops are Dells, and I'm happy with them. But I have the deluxe support plan, where I get intelligent beings answering my call and fixing them. When I had the cheap plan, I got stuck in the "Your screen is not broken, try installing windows" hell.

But there is no option for a newbie quant other than Excel for Windows.
Excel for Macintosh is being withdrawn and replaced by a pile of shit that does not work properly and can never be made useful for finance. Mac Excel will not work properly with Windows Excel.
This is by design, and yes I have been more than a little unkind to MS on this.

There is no useful spreadsheet for the Mac. Apples "Numbers" is bollocks, a quaint British term, think of it as like an attractive believer in Creationism. It's pretty, but you wouldn't want it in your life permanently because it's stupidity would drive you to homicide.

The open source spreadsheets are only marginally less wretched than "Numbers".