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Which would you rather: XP Laptop or Dual Boot MacBook?

Ishcabittle

Ishcabittle

New member
So if you had a good chunk of change to spend on a new laptop, which would you rather have?

An XP Core Duo 1.87GHz Laptop

Let's say it's got a gig of RAM, a 64MB vid card, 80GB HD, 802.11g wireless, and a sweet widescreen display.

You can boot Linux, XP, and virtualize a host of others. A sweet rig.

A MacBook

Gig of RAM, 64MB vid card, 80GB HD, sweet widescreen display, built in webcam, remote control for multimedia, bluetooth, 802.11g wireless, and a sweet widescreen display.

You can boot Linux, XP, Mac OS X, and virtualize a host of others. A sweet rig.





What do y'all think? Why not have a choice of every OS?

I'm partial to OS X because I use it everyday, but after becoming certified in supporting XP, it really has solidified my opinion that OS X is just easier to use. The Unix terminal is fun and robust, the GUI is fast and customizable, Spotlight is the handiest search engine ever, Expose use super useful (3D window management) I could go on and on. Well, I have, so I'll stop.

Vista will be the big change for PC users, but it keeps getting delayed, and now I hear that most of the hot newness (such as a search engine comparable to Spotlight, 3D windows management) is being cut to get it out in time. By then Leopard will be out, and who knows what Apple has in store?

Comments?
 
That said, I've remembered the x86 OS X project, which at least proves there's an interest from non-mac owners. I guess you could boot OS X on a Dell laptop if you wanted too... but Dell doesn't make drivers for OS X.

Apple, however, makes drivers for XP.
 
Well, if I had a chunk of change, I wouldn't limit myself to those specs.

XPS M1710

Intel Core Duo @2.16Ghz
17" Widescreen UXGA display
4Gb DDR2 SDRAM @ 667Mhz
100Gb 7200 rpm SATA HDD
8x CD/DVD Burner w/ Double-Layer DVD+R
Intel/PRO Wireless mini card 802.11a/g @ 54MBps
Dell Wireless 350 BlueTooth Internal card (2.0)
512Mb nVidia GeForce GO 7900GTX
Sound Blaster Audigy Advanced HD

And on and on. More expensive? Yes, much -- $7,379 -- but you never specified how big a chunk of change. :P
 
Ouch.

Ish, I saw him design the computer he now has.
You REALLY don't want to get into it to the depth TQ did.

Mind numbing for the hardware speck-oblivious.
Like me.
 
Seven grand... ouch.


Here's the top of the line Mac Book Pro:

2.16GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 2MB on chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
2GB of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2
One FireWire 400 port at up to 400 Mbps
One FireWire 800 port at up to 800 Mbps
Three 480-Mbps USB 2.0 ports
ExpressCard/34 slot
17-inch (diagonal), 1680 x 1050 resolution, TFT widescreen
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and dual-link DVI
120GB Serial ATA/100; 5400 rpm (or a 100GB Serial ATA/100; 7200 rpm)
8x Dual Layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Built-in iSight Camera, DVI, VGA (DVI to VGA adapter included, extended desktop enabled)

Total: $3,099.00

So the only thing the Mac Book Pro can't do is the other 2 gigs of RAM and the 512MB vid card. Oh, and the 802.11a. At half the price.
 
^^That's not too bad, actually. And of course, anyone with a desktop system would probably not want a 17" screen. Personally, I'd go for the Inspiron 710m. Not as exciting, hardware-wise, but plenty good enough for portable productivity.
 
I guess the main point of the poll isn't a hardware comparison so much as it is a choice between two machines, one that can run every Intel based OS, and one that can run every OS out there, including OS X.

In the end, I suppose that most people look at the hardware they want for the price they want and consider the OS to be a secondary concern. I'm just excited about the idea that an Apple will now be able to do anything it wants... no longer an outsider to the rest of the computing world.
 
You know, the only things that would honesty prevent me from getting a rig like that (the MacBook) are input-based -- I need my right-click and my Alt and my Ctrl and my Start button to be happy. :) I'm sure the hotkeys could probably be emulated, but does the MacBook even have a right "mouse" button?
 
Yes is does, the trackpad has added a new functionality based on the two finger scroll (where one finger moves the mouse and two fingers scrolls the page). If you leave two fingers touching the mouse pad it recognizes a click as a right click.

Your Start button will be there when you're booted into Windows, so that's taken care of... and the "option" key is the same as the "alt" key, the ctrl key has always been there (ctrl-click is also a right click).

Let me convince you. :twisted:
 
^^Well, I won't say I'd favor an Apple over a Dell... BUT!!! BUT!!! You're doing a better job of tempting me to the Dark Side than anyone else has so far, I'll give ya that.
 
Well, that is a major accomplishment in itself, I'll say that much. Now I can't say that I dislike Dell hardware, not at all. I've just done so much study between the two OSs (XP and OS X) and I really do think that OS X has it's shit together a great deal better than XP.

That's a symptom of OS X being Unix based and XP riding a slightly out of date core, and I think Vista will (hopefully) set the scales back to level. The thing about it is I suspect that Vista will probably run on the intel Macs, and the versitility inherent in a dual boot system is worth more to me than slightly more powerful hardware.

Have you heard of Parallels? It's a intel OS virtualization app for OS X on an Intel Mac: Parallels. You can run XP, Linux, FreeBSD, OS2/WARP, pretty much anything, including MS-DOS 5.0 if you wanted. All tucked away in a window on your desktop.

You can run a virtual 2003 Server box and virtually network it to however many clients you wanted to - useful for preflighting a server configuration before you impliment. Is there anything as powerful out there for the PC (other than Virtual PC for XP)? I've played around with it for a little while, and it's pretty badass. No performance hit in OSX (thanks to the dual cores) and a very fast performance in your virtual system.
 
Well, as previously mentioned, Vista appears to actually be based more or less heavily on OS X, seeing as there's a Panther subfolder within Vista's "Windows" directory. Now, not knowing Panther's nuts-and-bolts as well as you might, I admit I can't say for certain whether that's the real deal or just a deliberate red herring on Microsoft's part -- but having played with two different beta builds now, I can say this -- Vista is going to more than even the field, at least for existing Windows users, and may even convert more than a few Mac users as well.

Let me put it this way -- Mac is easy to use. For the casual user, it's certainly much easier to get the basic "information appliance" type jobs done on a Mac. But the complexity of the task you want to accomplish is inversely proportional to intuitiveness on a Mac. And whereas I've had software hiccups aplenty in Windows, I've had a good percentage of hardware glitches on Macs, and hardware glitches are so much worse that they really do tip the annoyance factor back to even, considering that Windows screwups are things that the proficient user can work fix on his or her own.

And besides that, XP can dual-boot, as well, Vista certainly will -- so why trade hardware performance for versatility when the tradeoff isn't necessary?
 
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