Sunday, October 19, 2008

to mac or not to mac

For the past two months, I have been actively looking for a notebook computer. I found one that seemed to be a bargain. It was the Lenovo X200 Tablet. I was supposed to wait for its delivery for a month, because I ordered it before it was officially launched. To my disappointment, I found out that the model that I ordered did not include a touch screen that can be used with bare hands. It required a digitizer pen. This is a reverse in technology on lenovo's part. So after a bit of persuasion, I finally got a refund arranged. Yes, in Hong Kong, where refunds are not common. Anyhow, this brings me to my current dilemma: to mac or not to mac.

The timing has actually got me thinking of the possibility of getting a MacBook. Previously, I didn't choose it because it was outdated for the price, but now that it has just been updated on Oct 14, it got me thinking.
Looking at the specs, whether I should pay the premium of 40% for the aluminum chassis, glass multitouch touchpad and cleaner design.
Performance wise, I would still lack the power of a dedicated display card.

If I were to spend the same amount of money, I would be running a notebook that seems better in performance:

Bigger screen at 15.4" with better resolution, 1920 x 1200
Quicker CPU at 2.53ghz vs 2.4ghz at double the Level 2 Cache
Extra Card Reader, Express Card expansion and Firewire (IEEE1394a) port
I can even get HDMI and Blu-ray disc player.

Of course, there is also the trade off of an extra 0.5kg and 1 hour less battery life.

The Mac OS is also a mixed bag. Surely it may be user friendly and looks nice, but it requires it own set of software. Running both OS X and Vista on a Mac is an option, but should I bother?

Will the experience grow on me? Is there more to it for using Mac?

Should I trade performance for style? Or should I go further to save my $$$ by getting a PC with Macbook's specs?

To Mac of not to Mac, that is the question.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Let an old friend hints you on the current trend.

There was a computer engineer converted about 2 years ago, and recently, there was an electrical engineer converted as well. And none of us is regret about the decision.

Mac is not perfect, but it fits well to its target audience. Now, the question is ... Are you a target audience?

walekim said...

Care to elaborate my friend?

Anonymous said...

I am considering to get a mac notebook too.

Sounds like it is a bit late for comment, but do not think in terms of style for mac, the value of a mac is certainly more than the visual aspect.

In terms of OS, while VISTA is not really a good choice of operating system (as I heard many complains about its speed, stability and resources consumption), MAC OS sounds like a better choice.

Unless you want to play computer games with your notebook (I presume that you don't), otherwise, software compatibility isn't such a big issue.

(You can always find pirate software for mac easily...)

If you need to do presentation, compiling slides... using Keynote that can only ran on Mac is a better choice than using Powerpoint where it can be found on both Mac and PC.

Anonymous said...

Also... what's the point of buying a computer with higher performance where its OS eats up more of it?

So, at the end... you ended up with lower performance with a better hardware~