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What laptop have you got?

LifeTransformer

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One of the things I need (some may say want) is a new laptop. I love the one I'm writing this thread with now, but the battery only lasts an hour roughly which sucks for portability.

So I'd like to know; what laptop have you got?

Main things I want from my next one are long lasting battery, and something that is nice to type on would be a bonus too. Not too interested in graphics and all that stuff, a reasonable sized HD would be good too.

I'd also like to know any brands you avoid? After having 3 acer's I'd say I'd like to move away from them with my next one, unless you can convince me otherwise? (The battery is my main problem with them, all 3 started off well but quickly seem to deteriorate in lasting power).

Also open to suggestions from Apple users! Wouldn't mind given one a go.

Why am I asking this here and not doing some digging on tech sites etc? Well, I want to know what suggestions like minded people may have, and not the opinion of some snotty nosed twit who spends all day playing WoW or whatever the hell its called. ;)

Thanks in advance!

P.S. No Apple Vs PC nonsense please, unless it's in a constructive manner. (doubt that would happen here, but worth mentioning).
 
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Jon L

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I have an Apple. I switched a year and a half ago after being a PC guy all my life. I was expecting the OS to be perfect and never crash. It isn't perfect. I'd say that there are as many annoyances with the Mac OS as there are with Windows. They're just different. There are some things about the Mac OS that I love though. Some things are simply brilliant. I mean BRILLIANT. And, then there's some things that you just scratch your head on and wonder why they used a 5th grader to put THAT together. Like - why do they put all your pictures into a database by default (a database that can be instantly corrupted, thus losing years worth of photos in a second). Etc. Or, when something doesn't work, it simply doesn't show up in the list of things that you can do. No error messages, no nothing. For example, in Itunes, if you have the wrong version of iTunes installed and it isn't compatible with the IOS version of your iPhone, your iPhone simply wont show up in the list in iTunes. At all. You have to google, 'why isn't my iphone showing up in itunes.' You'll get a bunch of different possibilities, and you'll have to work through all the possibilities to figure out why yours isn't working. If they would have shown an error message, even a cryptic one, you could at least google that and get to the right answer more quickly.

The build quality, though, is simply superb. I have a mid-2012 mac book pro, retina, 15". The screen is amazing. Things are so crisp. I still notice the difference even now - after I've had the laptop for 18 months. It also runs on a solid state drive, which is blazing fast. From pressing the power button, it takes me just as long to get my hands into position to type in my password as it does to boot to the password prompt...a couple seconds.

Also, I bought mine on eBay from a reputable eBay seller. I paid $1500 which is about $1000 less than the brand new price. The laptop was about a year and a half old when I bought it.
 

DrkSide

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I'll throw in my $.02 to the mix. I am looking at getting a new one probably after the first of the year.

After 10+ years in low level and high level IT support, planning, and infrastructure development I will tell you they all have problems.

I am not partial to one OS over the other as long as I have chrome. My desktop is the real workhorse that I do any design or development on.

Apple will get my business due to the build quality and the battery life. Those are the only two things that I really look at when purchasing a laptop and they seem to have the best going.
 

Imgal

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I've done both Mac and PC and both have had their pluses and minuses and to be honest while a few years ago I'd have said Apple had the edge, I can't honestly say that I see a huge difference between the two.

My Macbook died after I poured coffee on it (it probably wouldn't have if I didn't do it just before having to leave before going to a funeral and not being able to do a thing about it), but before that it was a real workhorse. Acer got crossed off my list after forking out a heap of money and then for the wifi, ethernet port and keyboard all dying within 8 months (without any added coffee).

Currently on a Lenovo and it's more than doing the job ... and I seriously hammer mine to death. The only reason I don't go with Mac is because of that fact I've come to realise I'm going to go through laptops every year or so and so I'd much rather pay for something that will work its guts out during that time than pay out the extra for the shiny looks. Having said that if you travel a lot then the Macbook Air or Pro would be worth considering. At the mo I'm more back and forth between UK and US only so not a big factor.
 
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AntEmpire

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I have a MacBook Pro purchased refurbished from the Apple Store in 2013. It will be 2 years old next month and is still going strong. No complaints.
 

TTG SS

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I use a MacBook Pro. Bought it in Dec 2012 and it still runs like run.

Looking to get an iMac for the desk as well.
 

Bellini

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I have a MACBOOK that I love.

I don't know if I could ever go back to PC, other than having one as a second laptop.

MAC'S OS is so simple and clean.

I've had the same MAC for 7 years (which is ancient in tech years) and have never had one problem with it.

No virus, no shutdown, nothing.

Had to change the battery twice.
 
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Mattie

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I have a packard bell & Mac Pro. I've had Acers in the past. I really never had problems with my desktops and at the time, I thought they took a good beating for gaming and lasted quite awhile. Although I'm nice to these ones because I don't play games, and my son's not using it. He's still on the one back home. I don't like the Mac Pro much for writing. That's why I bought this one. I've only had it for a year. No problems so far.
 

LifeTransformer

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Thanks for the replies people!

Interesting that you've had Acer problems too @Imgal think I'm going to stay away from them in the future.

I'm torn between Asus and Apple at the moment I think. There is a "Zen Book" that looks pretty damn good. @Mattie your comment on writing puts me off a little though. Think I'm going to have to try one in the store to see what I think of it.
 

Mattie

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@Mattie your comment on writing puts me off a little though.
My reasoning was because I didn't want to waste time trying to figure out the programs and crap for formatting and books for publishing. Most of them take windows files and I know they have a program for Mac Pro, but I just wasn't interested in learning all that extra stuff when I was used too Windows and I didn't like using the Mac as much when I got here. It was driving me nuts. lol And some of the companies don't have mac chat and one place I needed to go didn't accept the chat service I wanted to use. So It was making me frustrated and just easier to have what I do. It makes my life easier in many ways. And I don't like Macs because you can steal people's work on them. I ran some ebooks through it and people have access to your writing.
 
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geekboy

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Bought a Dell XPS 13 back in June and love it.

Almost as slim as a MacBook Air with a smaller footprint. Solid state drive so windows loads in about 5 seconds and battery can last about 8 hours depending on what your doing. Buy it!
 

sija1

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- HP Pavilion P6240F (Desktop) - Bought in 2009
- HP Pavilion dv6 (Laptop) - Bought in 2010 for college
- Dell XPS 8700 Special Edition (Desktop) - Bought in July

Even tho HPs still work perfectly, 5-6 years is too much in the tech field so I needed something better to run emulators and visualization software. I have never tried a MAC. Had Asus, Acer and a lot of my close friends have Toshibas (never have problems with them). From personal experience, I never had any problems with HP. On the other hand, my laptop (don't know if this is the case with other HP laptops as well) can heat so much when running games or other resource demanding software, that I need to open a window even during the winter (in Quebec it's between -25 and -40).
Still don't know about Dell, it's been only 2 months and this is my first experience with them (they get a lot of complaints tho for the crappy client service)
 

socaldude

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2007 Macbook---Still going strong! Never any problems. Only upgraded the RAM. I got a great value out of it.

2014 Macbook Pro 15inch---Excellent laptop for anything but it is pricey.

And I do have a PC desktop with a few monitors.
 
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James Thornton

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Surface Pro 3. Best thing ever for digital art. I prefer it over a laptop, but don't think everyone would.
 

prof

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I've got a 15" 2010 MacBook Pro. I can't actually believe it's 5 years old. I actually never turn the thing off. It's practically been running for that whole time too! I only power it off (as opposed to shutting the lid or triggering sleep mode) when I know I'll be away from it for a long time.

I have a second monitor which hooks up with this laptop at the desk on home. The laptop itself sits on a Roost stand to give me an effective twin display.

MacBook Pro's look great, can run pretty much anything and the OS provides a far superior user experience than any Windows based machine in my opinion. I could never go back to a Windows laptop now after 10 years of MacBooks.
 
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rmanal1

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Switched to Mac a year ago after being hardcore anti-Mac, and honestly have become a fanboy.

It took my last laptop 7 minutes to turn on and get on the Internet. MacBook is right about 20 seconds max.

I find the multitouch works a little better as well.

I can't speak for longevity but I've had colleagues who have kept theirs for 5-7 years, really bringing that per year cost to on of if not better than a PC.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Carnage

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I've done both Mac and PC and both have had their pluses and minuses and to be honest while a few years ago I'd have said Apple had the edge, I can't honestly say that I see a huge difference between the two.

My Macbook died after I poured coffee on it (it probably wouldn't have if I didn't do it just before having to leave before going to a funeral and not being able to do a thing about it), but before that it was a real workhorse. Acer got crossed off my list after forking out a heap of money and then for the wifi, ethernet port and keyboard all dying within 8 months (without any added coffee).

Currently on a Lenovo and it's more than doing the job ... and I seriously hammer mine to death. The only reason I don't go with Mac is because of that fact I've come to realise I'm going to go through laptops every year or so and so I'd much rather pay for something that will work its guts out during that time than pay out the extra for the shiny looks. Having said that if you travel a lot then the Macbook Air or Pro would be worth considering. At the mo I'm more back and forth between UK and US only so not a big factor.

I also use Lenovo, best laptop I've ever used.
How old is your Lenovo? They had issues with recent laptops with superphishing problems.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2886...re-that-hijacks-https-traffic-on-new-pcs.html
 

Vigilante

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Dual screen Apple iMac for office.

Google Chromebook for travel and mobile use.

Never going back. Google is getting better, and better, and better.
 
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Imgal

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I also use Lenovo, best laptop I've ever used.
How old is your Lenovo? They had issues with recent laptops with superphishing problems.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2886...re-that-hijacks-https-traffic-on-new-pcs.html
About 4 months old... I got a refurbished model so got all the dodgy stuff wiped off before even got started with!

Google Chromebook for travel and mobile use.

Never going back. Google is getting better, and better, and better.

Stop it already. I'm trying to resist adding more to my collection and that's not helping. ;)
 

Vigilante

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About 4 months old... I got a refurbished model so got all the dodgy stuff wiped off before even got started with!



Stop it already. I'm trying to resist adding more to my collection and that's not helping. ;)

@MJ DeMarco did you ever start using your Google Chromebook?

I am obsessed. They're so cheap, and so great.

I currently have a Toshiba Chromebook. It does 99% of what I need a computer for. The heavy lifting 1% you shouldn't be doing on a laptop anyway. (design work, etc...)

I previously had a Macbook and swore by it, and I am telling you .... I like the Chromebook MORE because of the Google seamless integration.

https://www.google.com/chromebook/
 

Vigilante

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@Vigilante - you just had to post the link didn't you... now there's no hope for me

Best Buy and the office superstores (Depot, Staples, and Office Max) regularly drop the Chromebooks (subsidized heavily by Google) down $75 (+/-) so don't buy it unless it has an instant discount, and stick with the Toshiba or Samsung models (or maybe HP). However, for sub $300 (likely around $200!) you will fall in love.
 

MJ DeMarco

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@MJ DeMarco did you ever start using your Google Chromebook?

I use it periodically-- it has served its purpose real well since I only use it to access the internet and write. It's light and very mobile with long battery life. I'm very happy I only paid a few hundred bucks for it VS shelling out big bux for an Apple.
 
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Imgal

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Best Buy and the office superstores (Depot, Staples, and Office Max) regularly drop the Chromebooks (subsidized heavily by Google) down $75 (+/-) so don't buy it unless it has an instant discount, and stick with the Toshiba or Samsung models (or maybe HP). However, for sub $300 (likely around $200!) you will fall in love.

Great advice! Actually very similar to @MJ DeMarco would mostly use it for writing and internet needs on the move. I will keep my beady offer eye peeled!
 
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Hackdroot

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Dual screen Apple iMac for office.

Google Chromebook for travel and mobile use.

Never going back. Google is getting better, and better, and better.

Exactly. I have two chromebooks now. A cheap $150 model and a higher end $350 model.

I use my google drive for cloud storage, google docs for authoring and editing on the go, and a flurry of other utilities that integrate beautifully into the OS.

With google voice, I have a free single phone number that forwards to all my phones (cell, landline, and office) and to my chromebook via hangouts. Voicemail transcriptions and the ability to send/receive texts and make phone calls when I only have wifi connectivity as well. Skype also works on it.

Plus, I dual boot the chromebook into ubuntu linux when I have work that requires additional utilities.

For as low as $150, you really get a helluva tool.
 

James Thornton

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It took my last laptop 7 minutes to turn on and get on the Internet. MacBook is right about 20 seconds max.
That's not a Mac vs PC thing, that's a hard disk drive vs solid state drive thing. All computers with an ssd boot that fast.

The Mac trackpad is better. Both the hardware and gesture support is better.

I need a pen though, so no more shiny Macs for me.
 

LifeTransformer

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How are the various Chrombooks for battery life?

One of the options I was thinking of was a HP Stream notebook/laptop, I've got the Stream 7 tablet (still can't believe they only cost $100) and that little thing is great for reading books and doing some other things on, the laptop models are probably just a bigger version of the tablet, which might work well for me (that thing boots in seconds too btw).
 

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Macbook Pro 2012 with retina display. Dells are garbage. Have owned them previously and have had nothing but issues.
 

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