It looks like you've already decided, but I will be contrarian in case you haven't ordered.
First, the Apple laptops are, overall, not such a great value. The only compelling reason to prefer them is the ability to run some commercial software and some games alongside Unix software without dual booting. If you need the specific software and want to avoid dual booting Windows (why Vista anyway? let other people work out the bugs! XP has life left in it...) and Ubuntu, then you would have a real advantage with a Mac.
The MacBook Pro is also not necessarily a better choice than the MacBook, although a larger, more comfortable screen is hard to argue against. I lean towards less expensive hardware on the assumption that some of it will break; as others noted in this thread, the warranty is useless if they refuse to cover some damage. Because laptops are moved around, placed where they shouldn't, etc. all the time, the line between damage that can be blamed on you and normal wear-and-tear is VERY thin; I'm not talking about it getting dropped or coffee spilled on it either.
2G of RAM seems gross overkill; 512MB is adequate for most purposes, at least, and 1G would seem to be more than sufficient. You should also avoid ordering RAM from the laptop manufacturer with the product as they usually massively overcharge, and it's an easy third-party upgrade.
I think IBM/Lenovo has actually gotten better in a couple of ways; most notably for the last few years, they now provide a trackpad like everyone else, supplementing the most likely item (the trackpoint) to break in the whole laptop. I don't have a lot of recent data on quality customer service of various companies; Dell is probably still hit-or-miss and Apple has had some notable problems of their own. All of the companies, without exception, now use many of the same contract manufacturers in Taiwan and China, and the differences in quality are more likely to be a result of design than major differences in QC.
Also, I would avoid digging deeply into student loans to buy equipment; you will have to pay those back eventually.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-11-21 08:42 pm (UTC)First, the Apple laptops are, overall, not such a great value. The only compelling reason to prefer them is the ability to run some commercial software and some games alongside Unix software without dual booting. If you need the specific software and want to avoid dual booting Windows (why Vista anyway? let other people work out the bugs! XP has life left in it...) and Ubuntu, then you would have a real advantage with a Mac.
The MacBook Pro is also not necessarily a better choice than the MacBook, although a larger, more comfortable screen is hard to argue against. I lean towards less expensive hardware on the assumption that some of it will break; as others noted in this thread, the warranty is useless if they refuse to cover some damage. Because laptops are moved around, placed where they shouldn't, etc. all the time, the line between damage that can be blamed on you and normal wear-and-tear is VERY thin; I'm not talking about it getting dropped or coffee spilled on it either.
2G of RAM seems gross overkill; 512MB is adequate for most purposes, at least, and 1G would seem to be more than sufficient. You should also avoid ordering RAM from the laptop manufacturer with the product as they usually massively overcharge, and it's an easy third-party upgrade.
I think IBM/Lenovo has actually gotten better in a couple of ways; most notably for the last few years, they now provide a trackpad like everyone else, supplementing the most likely item (the trackpoint) to break in the whole laptop. I don't have a lot of recent data on quality customer service of various companies; Dell is probably still hit-or-miss and Apple has had some notable problems of their own. All of the companies, without exception, now use many of the same contract manufacturers in Taiwan and China, and the differences in quality are more likely to be a result of design than major differences in QC.
Also, I would avoid digging deeply into student loans to buy equipment; you will have to pay those back eventually.