Michael Dale
A laptop.....a....mac laptop?!?!
Right well I’ve been a bit absent from the old web site lately.
I had Physics last week on Wednesday which was surprising not too bad, considering I only started doing work in physics after we’d finished our school classes ;) But yeah I was fairly happy with it. I’ve been pretty happy with all my exams, there hasn’t really been anything that I wasn’t expecting and everything seems easier than the trials. Nice. My last exam is on Friday (last day of the HSC), which happens to be ITF (crappy computer course) so I’m not planning on studying until latterrrr.
Tomorrow ucosty is having a lan party so I am looking forward to that. A good way to start the holidays, even if I’ve got an exam left! :p
In two weeks time I will be 18, which is pretty scary. But birthdays are good because you get free stuff
So I’ve decided I think I’ll be getting a laptop. But it isn’t all that easy to find something that is exactly what you want. I’ve got about $AU2000 to spend. You can get a pretty beefy laptop if you spend about $2500 but that is a bit too much for me.
I am looking at two laptops currently. A Dell Inspiron 8600, a Centrino based PC
(http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspn_8600_au?c=au&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn) or an Apple iBook 14” (http://www.apple.com.au/ibook/)
Both seem to be about the price I want. I can get a student discount of about $200 so that would be good.
I just really don’t know what I want. I would be able to get a Radeon 9600 in the PC where as the Mac would only have a Radeon 9200. But I’d get a bigger hard drive in the mac. I’d also get Bluetooth in the Mac.
Both come with a CDRW/DVD, Wireless, working battery (big plus), colour screen (not used to that), 512mb Ram. The PC would be a 1.4GHz Pentium-M and the Mac would be a 1.33GHz G4.
I wouldn’t really be using it for games so I suppose the video card doesn’t matter. I’d like a Mac for OS X. It’s built on BSD plus has all the nice mac features.
But I’ve been a PC user since DOS 5.0 and the PC laptop would be able to do games (better video card than my PC).
I was talking to one of my friend’s dads yesterday and he is a big mac fan and that I’d really like it. He is a power user so he knows stuff about them, not just point and click. I also like the look of the mac better.
Microsoft is going no where with Windows at the moment. I’d probably end up installing Windows 2000 on it. I’m not a fan of the XP bloat. Apple is releasing OS X 1.4 Tiger next year, but also OS X 1.3 is really nice. I love the look of Exposé (http://www.apple.com.au/macosx/features/expose/).
Argh. So yeah. Fast PC or sexy Mac. Software really isn’t an issue. I do web development, email, music, web browsing. Both have all the software I’d need. I’m leaning for a mac just because I like change. Plus the whole niche groupie thing that comes with being a mac owner.
Does anyone have a Mac laptop? Are they funky? There is an Apple shop in Balmain so I might head over there today.