PC or Mac

[Dawesome Dock]

Gday,
I'm looking to buy a new laptop basically after my year 12 exams over the coming weeks. I'm wondering what laptop should I go specifically not just PC or Mac. I use it all the time for movie watching and games like WoW.

Is there anyone that could possibly give me a good suggestion on what laptop I should buy for the best outcome of all this? Price range is effectively up to 2,000$.

 

[spitlizard]

Gday,
I'm looking to buy a new laptop basically after my year 12 exams over the coming weeks. I'm wondering what laptop should I go specifically not just PC or Mac. I use it all the time for movie watching and games like WoW.

Is there anyone that could possibly give me a good suggestion on what laptop I should buy for the best outcome of all this? Price range is effectively up to 2,000$.

2 GRAND....shit you have to be joking!!!

I'm not going to to speak for the Apple fangirls!!..but you can get possibly one of the top line i7 PC lappies for that kinda price.

To be honest, you could get a top line laptop with everything you need for about $800 - $1000 tops.

$2000 is WAY over the top for either OS X or PC for what you have described!!

 

[Dawesome Dock]

Oh well, obviously the cheaper the better

But I was hopefully looking for a few suggestions of what would be great laptops for gaming and a lot of memory is possible.
Any suggestions welcomed!!

I was just saying I can't really go over 2,000 but I thought really good laptops are way more expensive!

 

[prankmonkey]

dont worry about RAM, its ridiculously cheap these days and is easy to install (although at your price range you'll get 4gb easily). hell you could get a decent gaming PC and money left over for a decent cheap laptop for $2000!

but you'd be looking at something with an i7 processor 4-8gb of ram, form factor i would suggest 14 inch.

if you need better opinions go to www.forums.whirlpool.net.au and read up in their laptop/notebook section

 

[Dawesome Dock]

definitely a lot to look for one that whirlpool site, let's see how I go.. so i'll look for i7 processor with 4-8gb of ram. Too easy, think I might by from MSY computers though

 

[Dawesome Dock]

Sorry for the double post but..

Are these kind of specs for a computer at $1,899 good?:
I7 2630
16GB ram
120gb SSD
GTX 460M
750GB HDD
15.6" full hd screen
BR combo
9 cell battery
USB 3.0
2 year warranty standard

^ Scratch that don't worry about it, i'll just stick for i7, 14 inch + and 4-8 gig ram

 

[prankmonkey]

brand plays a big part in my choice of a notebook
you have to take into consideration price, screen technology (is it RGB LED or another type of screen), your need for bluray (adds lots of $$$).

i'm not up to date on notebook hardware since i havent been looking for a while (still using a p-series core2 laptop here) but SSD will make boot times seriously fast, 9 cell battery will add lots of weight but also lots of use without charging. 16gb of ram is overkill IMO. games wouldnt use more than 8gb, and i doubt you'd want to use anything that needs 16gb on a laptop. graphics card i have no idea, but i'd go looking at benchmarks.

warranty is good, usb3 is good, although limited compatibility as of now

another thing to remember about notebooks is cooling. gaming with a notebook can cause it to overheat very quickly if not adequately cooled.

 

[Dawesome Dock]

brand plays a big part in my choice of a notebook
you have to take into consideration price, screen technology (is it RGB LED or another type of screen), your need for bluray (adds lots of $$$).

i'm not up to date on notebook hardware since i havent been looking for a while (still using a p-series core2 laptop here) but SSD will make boot times seriously fast, 9 cell battery will add lots of weight but also lots of use without charging. 16gb of ram is overkill IMO. games wouldnt use more than 8gb, and i doubt you'd want to use anything that needs 16gb on a laptop. graphics card i have no idea, but i'd go looking at benchmarks.

warranty is good, usb3 is good, although limited compatibility as of now

another thing to remember about notebooks is cooling. gaming with a notebook can cause it to overheat very quickly if not adequately cooled.

So for things such as screen display, over heating is there any brand that you'd specifically suggest? Honestly i've got no idea what is good, hence why a suggestion would be handy! I'll keep looking around though, just why I thought a MAC at the start because i've heard they're really good!

Sorry for being so incompetent, but thought this could be one of the best places for advice, don't want to waste money.

 

[red+black]

If playing games is important to you, then I probably wouldn't consider a Mac.

 

[Dawesome Dock]

Okay i'll rule Mac's out, is there a specific brand anyone prefers due to specific reasons? Just need to at least narrow it down to a few things, such as best brand (obviously open to opinion) and now i've got a few specs to go from.

 

[Chazz M Michaels]

Get a Dell XPS 15" laptop.

For around $1000-1,300 you can get an awesome laptop with 2nd gen i7 CPU (sandybridge) 2.2GHz. Just get the bundled 4GB RAM and purchase another chip from a place like MSY or CPL ($30 for 4GB DDR3).
The screens are very good, you can get a full HD screen WLED also.

Add on another $150 for 3yr warranty. Their warranty is pretty good, they come on-site to fix any hardware issues within a day generally.

ASUS is another good brand, although I don't know what their warranty is like?

If you get a beast XPS you can get your OSX Lion fix by running VirtualBox or VM Workstation. And you can always set it up as dual boot.

 

[Dawesome Dock]

Great information, thankyou! Just two questions about this:

purchase another chip from a place like MSY or CPL ($30 for 4GB DDR3)

What's that..
and this:

OSX Lion fix by running VirtualBox or VM Workstation. And you can always set it up as dual boot.

Also, what's that?

Also, do you recommend any particular places, I was thinking MSY, but is anywhere fine?

Sorry for my incompetence about this, just want to get a good laptop!

 

[Cynic]

Get a Dell XPS 15" laptop.

For around $1000-1,300 you can get an awesome laptop with 2nd gen i7 CPU (sandybridge) 2.2GHz. Just get the bundled 4GB RAM and purchase another chip from a place like MSY or CPL ($30 for 4GB DDR3).
The screens are very good, you can get a full HD screen WLED also.

Add on another $150 for 3yr warranty. Their warranty is pretty good, they come on-site to fix any hardware issues within a day generally.

ASUS is another good brand, although I don't know what their warranty is like?

If you get a beast XPS you can get your OSX Lion fix by running VirtualBox or VM Workstation. And you can always set it up as dual boot.

Highly recommend the XPS 15 Second Generation as well.

 

[red+black]

If you get a beast XPS you can get your OSX Lion fix by running VirtualBox or VM Workstation. And you can always set it up as dual boot.

Also, what's that?

OSX Lion (version 10.7) is the current operating system for Apple Macs.

VirtualBox and VMWare are virtualisation software that enable you to create virtual servers with various operating systems. eg. you have a Windows 7 laptop, and via VirtualBox run an Ubuntu virtual environment.

Dual boot means that you have two operating systems installed and you choose which OS you want to run each time you start your computer.

 

[Dawesome Dock]

So basically I'd get something like VirtualBox/VMWare or Dual Boot and I'd have my Vista/Windows whatever I get on the Dell and I could download OSX Lion so I could have effectively a Mac layout on my computer but it remains a PC.. I think I get the point! Do I just have to buy a OSX Lion from the apple store?

Think i'll go with the Dell, thank you very much for the help with the specs. I'll at least get a laptop that has close to all that. Very helpful!

 

[red+black]

I don't understand what purpose you would have for Mac OSX. If you don't buy a Mac laptop, I don't see why you want Mac OSX in a virtual environment.

Nevertheless, if you did want it, you need to purchase Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard (single or family)*, run updates to get you to at least 10.6.6, then download Lion from the Mac App Store (on the menu bar, click Apple symbol then App Store).

* Apple has withdrawn Snow Leopard from most shops eg. Apple Shop, Next Byte, etc, but you might be able to get it at JB Hi-Fi.

 

[Dawesome Dock]

Not to worry, I don't have some sort of burning desire for it, just thought it would be cool! As you have to pay/update and run it, I most likely wont be getting it. I've always been on PC so I don't mind it whatsoever.

Thanks for the help Red+black, you've made it a lot easier.. And to everybody else. Very helpful!

 

[prankmonkey]

dell has some good deals. try and find a coupon code somewhere online, they always have one floating around. i have an asus laptop, and its pretty good. warranty for nearly all laptops is a 2 year international. most other major brands are 12 months australian.

 

[Luke Kellett]

Not to worry, I don't have some sort of burning desire for it, just thought it would be cool! As you have to pay/update and run it, I most likely wont be getting it. I've always been on PC so I don't mind it whatsoever.

Thanks for the help Red+black, you've made it a lot easier.. And to everybody else. Very helpful!

Sounds like you've made your choice already, but I personally would steer clear of running a virtual OSX or dual boot on a windows laptop. I run a Hackintosh myself and I must say it can be a big pain to setup and I've been in IT for 14 years.

What I would recommend is to buy a Apple laptop and either dual boot that into windows or run Parallels (i.e. virtual windows in OSX). The process is MUCH easier to setup.

Also, if you do go a Apple laptop say a MacBook Air. Don't bother with the i7 upgrade if you get the 13". There is only about 9% performance difference between the i5 and i7's CPU's in the latest Air's and it's not worth the cash to upgrade on the 13", the 11" it is though as the i5 in that IS much slower.

Good luck!

 

[SexyBlueGirl]

I don't understand what purpose you would have for Mac OSX.

To run OS X software.

 

[red+black]

To run OS X software.

Apart from GarageBand and maybe Keynote, again, I'm not sure why anyone would go to the trouble of setting up an OSX VM.

 

[SexyBlueGirl]

Apart from GarageBand and maybe Keynote, again, I'm not sure why anyone would go to the trouble of setting up an OSX VM.

I don't know, I'm not an expert on mac, but maybe some graphic or design packages, maybe development software?

Maybe people who would like to give OS X a trial run before they buy a mac.

Maybe people do just to see if they can for a hobby?

 

[Dawesome Dock]

Not too worry, not too phased about the mac / pc issue was just wondering basically which one was better!

But some good advice for sure from here, very handy. thanks guys!

 

[SexyBlueGirl]

Not too worry, not too phased about the mac / pc issue was just wondering basically which one was better!

But some good advice for sure from here, very handy. thanks guys!

If you buy a mac, you can run OS X and Windows via bootcamp.

 

[spitlizard]

Apart from GarageBand and maybe Keynote, again, I'm not sure why anyone would go to the trouble of setting up an OSX VM.

I have to for work purposes. In the business world, I don't see many Apples around (exception being private schools) so in order to keep my eye in with them, I do need a VM to sort issues that arise in the field.

Plus it's good to know more then one OS