Laptop dilemma - Mac or not?
Warning - extreme nerdism ahead.
So I'm in the market for a new laptop soon. I've mentioned this before. I want to spend around $1500, but honestly I'm pretty flexible on price. For the most part, I've boiled it down to 3 choices - Dell Studio XPS 13, Macbook Pro 13", or wait a bit longer for the mobile Nehalem chips to start shipping in new laptops.
The two laptops I'm considering now have really similar hardware - probable identical CPUs (P9500) and GPUs (NVidia 9400M), and what I think are Samsung-controlled SSDs. Anyway, I configured both to be 4GB RAM with the 256GB SSDs - I would have done this comparison with the 128GB SSDs but Dell's out of stock of those as of right now. Both are retail prices with my federal employee discount.
| Mac | Dell | Notes | |
| Price | $2,161.00 | $1,759 | $400 price difference, before any coupons I might find from Slickdeals/Fatwallet. |
| Battery Life | 7 hours | 4 hours | This is just a guesstimate based on reviews and how I personally use my laptop. And it looks like I'd literally have to buy a spare battery for the Dell to compare. I cringe at the extra hassle that a sealed battery would bring though. Will it last 4 years or will I have to take it to some Apple Store hundreds of miles from where I live? |
| Touchpad | Multitouch with one button | Ordinary with 2 buttons | I turn off tap-to-click since I don't like to accidentally click on stuff. Also, I very frequently use the right click and the simulated middle click (both buttons together) in ordinary use. I also don't know what gestures are available for the multitouch (scroll, I assume at a minimum), and whether they're enough to make up for the LACK OF RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON. |
| OS | OS X | Ubuntu | 90% of my time on my computer is spent using software available on both platforms - websites, music, movies, email, chat. I wonder how easy it is to tinker in OS X though. How much effort is it to get a web server with database up and running? Is the user experience as configurable as conky, compiz, and Cairo-dock? Will I have to spend time chasing down video/audio codecs, or is it as easy as Medibuntu? I may have to sit down with a Mac for a few hours figuring this stuff out. |
I'm guessing this will mostly have to wait until I get back to the U.S. when I can really work out the details of my preferences. One thing that really bugs me about Apple though is their lack of transparency. I'm not 100% sure that the processor in the MBP is a P9500, because Apple doesn't find it necessary to post that information. What about the 2.4GHz CPU? What model is that? Can I change out a hard drive without voiding the warranty? $2160 is a bit much to spend before finding out these things.
Maybe I'll try to get a bootleg OS X installed on my current computer to figure these things out.





