Laptop Advice......

[Dipster]

Hi all, I am going to buy a laptop in the near future - most probably an Apple Macbook - but I thought i'd ask on here to see what you can recommend? Are the macbooks good? They seem like the best for what I will use it for to be honest. Any one got any reasons for not buying one? Will it make much of a difference to the performance if I get the 1.83GHz Intel as opposed to the 2.0?
Sorry if I appear a little thick! i just want to make sure before I lash out all the money!

Thanks in advance.

[WoWo]

Mac's are generally more expensive than a Windows based laptop, other than that no reason not to purchase one.

[rojash]

Unless you have a particular requirement to run Windows software, then a MacBook is a great choice. To get an accurate price comparison, you should look at an absolutely top of the range Windows notebook running Vista in Aero mode. If you do this, you'll find that the Mac is not particularly expensive, especially when you take into account its superior usability.

[fo3nix]

Don't worry about the speed of the processors, but I would suggest that you get it with 1GB RAM, as opposed to the base 512MB model.

And I entirely agree with rojash; people compare Mac laptops with standard Windows laptops that don't match features and wonder why the Windows machines are cheaper -- and that's before Mac OS X vs Windows is even taken into account.

[xxyyabikes]

Hi,a friend of mine was trying to convince me for years to get a mac...I eventually bought a 1.3 ghz laptop about a year ago,it does not crash,it does not suffer from viruses,it operates better than my windows based desktop (once you get used to the mac way of thinking )which I also have...I would definitely buy another at a later date,( also,my friend is a "wizard" with macs,as he has been using them at his design based job for years..)..as the saying goes,"once you go Mac,you never go back"..hope this helps !

[winny]

Sorry bit thick but I am looking at lap tops too. I use windows office for self employed accounts and word etc. If you get a mac can I still do all this is it just learning how to use different word processor and spreadsheets. Untill I read this link I just thought mac was just a make and you just put windows on them.

[fo3nix]

winny: no, Apple Macs run a different system Mac OS X. It's leagues ahead of Windows in many respects (even Vista).

Microsoft do make a version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, which looks just the same and works just the same as on a Windows machine.

If you don't want to pay for that, you can also download NeoOffice, which is a version of OpenOffice for the mac (OpenOffice is like a free Microsoft Office for Windows and other systems that works just like Microsoft Office but is totally free).