I have been delaying buying a new laptop for as much as I could but a decision have to be made sooner or later so I find myself being caught again in the laptop research process. The current one, a Dell Latitude D820 has served me well but I would greatly enjoy some improvement in the compilation times and overall speed. However looking at the available choices I am not in any way thrilled of joy and for the first time I am asking myself a new question: “should I buy a Mac?”.

Let’s start with the requirements which in my case are pretty simple. I want something faster and more powerful without making too many compromises. Now my laptop has a Core 2 Duo T72000@2GHz, 2G of RAM, 80GB HDD and a 15” screen at 1680×1050. I mainly do java and flex development and I run only Ubuntu Linux. The laptop it’s more than 4 years old and had 3 crashes all related to the video card. Each time Dell replaced it and lastly it even did so when it was out of warranty so this is a good point for buying a new Dell laptop.

The main setback into buying a new laptop was the fact that all new laptops have less screen height when switching from 16:9 to 16:10 aspect ratio. I see no point in going from 1600×1200 to 1680×1050 to 1600×900. Going 1600×900 or 1440×900 does not seem much different so better buy a lighter 14” screen laptop with the same height but a few hundreds grams less. There aren’t many 16:10 laptops left so the choice is limited.

And for the first time the question popped up: “should I buy a Mac?”. I am not much of a trends follower and I am more driven by practicality but some reasons exist for buying a Mac. First, after a small review of the offer I went to a big shop to actually see the laptop offer. I should admit I was shocked a bit to see lots of colors and lots of textures but I managed to spot the following laptop categories:
– the black-gray ones, or should I say “corporate ones”: hps, some dells, lenovos. The same dull and ugly plastic not always matched by the equivalent power.
– the colored and textured ones, or should I say “for the masses”: some dell inspirons and N-series, acers, sonys. Glittering but pour quality and screen size.
– the macs and sony clones: simpler design and sky rocketing prices not always matched by power

To be honest I liked the macs mainly because they are simple and not cluttered with lot of unneeded stuff like 10 media buttons or 5 mouse buttons around the trackpad. It’s a simplification without loosing functionality. Ergonomic and pleasing design for me.

Another reason why the question popped up is that at least 2 people I know switched to mac lately with little complaints and I had the time to hear them out a bit giving good reviews about the hardware and software.

This would be more than enough for some people, but not for me. So I started looking at the specs and finally ended up with 2 candidates: the Dell I6410 (yes, it’s the one with the ugly plastics and the 5 buttons trackpad) and the MacBook Pro with similar specs: i5 M540 processor, 4-6G of RAM, HDD@7200RPM, 14” 1440×900 anti glare screen, 3y warranty. I’ve also ditched the 9cell battery since after 1 year it will not matter anyway and the Nvidia card requirement since I never played a game on the current laptop and I’m in Linux anyway (not to mention it broke 3 times on the last laptop).

Then as I started summing: extra memory, extra warranty (default 1y for Mac and 3y for Dell), anti-glare, etc: the Dell ended up almost half the price at around 1100 EUR. Does the better plastic and sleeker look worth the difference? Not to mention that in the frenzy of research I found out that buying the laptop with 2G and adding later 4G not bought from Dell would make it even cheaper and of course I could buy it with FreeDos. Of course Mac memory was also more expensive.
On the other hand another question keeps bothering me: why the other manufacturers don’t learn from Macs. I don’t mean copy but simplify. I almost never used the media buttons on none of my laptops and I surely don’t need 5 trackpad buttons or a “instant access” button. I would prefer more refined plastics or a better test of the display hinge.

In the time since I did most of the research I had the time to play in detail with a Dell I6410 and had some surprises:

  • a good one: the metal cover is quite nice, too bad the interior is as ugly as expected.
  • a bad one: it was much more difficult to install Linux than expected and I it make me remember the tinkering times.

I haven’t spent much time thinking about the OS part. My OSX experience is limited but upon a simple research it seems I could do the same basic tasks with eclipse, flex (even better now since flex builder support is coming to an end now on linux), oracle, etc. I seems even java will be standard from now on and packaged by oracle. There is even an android SDK. Some have even installed Linux but it seems a bit of a waste.

So the question remains: should I buy a Mac, paying twice as much for better plastics and the trendy look?

Comments:

dani -

Because I am a mac user I can not be impartial, but I can tell you what makes me buy a Mac: 1. The perfect integration between hardware and operating system. No drivers or any operating system related stress. I can focus on my work and not the operating system. 2. Commercial available software similar to the one in Windows. Linux is not an operating system alternative to Windows because of the lack of commercial application support. No Adobe products, no real 3D software, no Autocad. 3. I don’t have an other alternative. I don’t like windows and linux is not offering the applications that I need.

Florin -

buy the Mac! beside all those positive things you may also add the very robust build and great resell value (unlike any PC laptop), plus the fact that it comes with the OS free, already installed and optimized for that specific hardware (and you can also run Windows on it, or just some Windows apps in an emulator)

len -

@Dani - I agree with you, fortunately I don’t even know (or need) to use even gimp properly so I guess I’m lucky @Florin - I agree with the resell value point @both - but not with the optimization part since I can do that, agreed, with a bit of effort, with my linux install. In my case it will probably be easier than to switch to a new OS.

Laura -

Most of the people I know have Macs. No doubt, they are all happy with them. If you want something perfect, with no headaches (well, the macs get slower as they get older), get the Mac. If you want to be a fighter, and confront all the hardships of having to find packages or software for Linux, or tinkering at something until you get it right, then go with it. I’ve had Linux for some years now, I am generally using my computer for normal stuff+work and I am very happy with it. The only inconvenience for me is Gimp which has some issues, but still does the job after considerable amounts of heavy keyboard banging, (and installing WoW… ahhh, those were the days). @Dani: what do you mean by “no real 3D software?” I am not sure what your needs are, but Blender is a great one. Of course, if 3D is a priority for you, I understand you picking the system that gives you most flexibility.

dani -

@Laura I am not a a heavy user of 3D software but I know for sure that Blender is not even close to software like Cinema 4D, Maya or Cheetah3D. But on the other hand am a heavy user of all Adobe software and I can tell you for sure that Gimp or the other open source alternatives to the bitmap and vector editing software are not even coming close for professional use to the Adobe software. I hate that the adobe is a monopol in this area but their software is the best. I use Ubuntu for my servers and am extremely happy with it but I will never use it for desktop until the commercial software wil be available. @Len I agree that if you don’t need the comercial software available to OSX and because you find your way without any problems in tweaking the Linux distro to work your way, there is no real reason to spend the extra money on a Mac. On the other hand after I changed to Mac in 1995 I have never had the urge to change from it.

Laura -

@dani I agree with you about Adobe, I have an Adobe Reader 9 and most of the times when there’s more than one file open it freezes. Now I did not look into that too much to see if others have the same issue and if there’s a fix of some kind, as I am using Open Office mostly, and it suits my needs. But to your point, yes, it is a bit of a headache, especially if you need Adobe. And when it comes to good ol' Photoshop, there’s no doubt. For vector graphics I do like to use Inkscape however, but that’s because I first started graphics while on Linux, so I am not really aware of the differences with other programs. But moving on from all these little things, I still think that Linux is cool, be it simply for the fact that a bunch of geeks do from this their life passion and keep on developing. Ultimately, that’s why I like it. Free and open source, no monopol, no commercial supremacy. Am I deviating from the subject? And yes, Macs are cool, they are kind of perfect, as in a well rounded, self sustaining entity. For that reason they tend to be addictive.

derp -

HP Envy

len -

seems a bit heavy, no option without windows and 2yr guarantee. Otherwise a similar choice.