It’s come to a point where I need to buy a laptop for using over in the UK. A tough choice, as there is no perfect laptop for all possible scenarios. Portability and performance are two important factors, both of which unfortunately seem to conflict with one another. I’ve also been keen to try out Mac OS X, both for the exclusive low priced but polished applications available for the platform as well as the fact that Apple’s approach to software is very consistent with my own view: that software should be simple and automated. Macbooks (or any Apple product for that matter) aren’t cheap though. I’m also a gamer, so for me performance isn’t a feature to be taken lightly when choosing a computer, and with Apple’s hardware you nearly always pay more money for less grunt.
To help me with my decision I put together a comparison of six laptops, listed below.
| EEE PC | MSI Wind U100 | Macbook Air | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Screen Size | 7″ | 10″ | 13″ |
| Display Resolution | 800 × 480 | 1024 x 600 | 1280 x 800 |
| Harddrive | 4GB Flash | 80 GB | 80 GB Parallel ATA, 4200 rpm |
| Price in NZ Dollars | $398.00 | $799.99 + GST | $2,999.00 |
| CPU | 900 MHz Intel Celeron-M ULV 353 | Intel 1.6Gb Atom processor | 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 4MB shared L2 cache |
| Video Card | Intel UMA | UMA 950 | Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory |
| Memory | 512MB, DDR2-400 | 1GB DDR2/667MHz (onboard) | 2GB (onboard) |
| Mac OS X | No | No | Yes |
| Windows Vista | No | Optional… just | Optional |
| Windows XP | Optional | Yes | Optional |
| Linux | Yes | Optional | Optional |
| DVD Re-Writer | No | No | No |
| Weight | 0.92 kg | 1.04 kg | 1.36 kg |
| Macbook | Dell XPS M1730 | Macbook Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Screen Size | 13″ | 17″ | 17″ |
| Display Resolution | 1280 x 800 | 1920 x 1200 | 1680 x 1050 |
| Harddrive | 250 GB Serial ATA, 5400 rpm | 2x 200GB SATA 7200RPM | 250 GB Serial ATA, 5400 rpm |
| Price in NZ Dollars | $2,399.00 | $3,398.62 | $4,499.00 |
| CPU | 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo | Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T9300 2.5GHz | 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo |
| Video Card | Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory |
Dual 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT with NVIDIA SLI Technology |
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB |
| Memory | 2GB (two SO-DIMMs) | 4GB (2×2GB) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM | 2GB (two SO-DIMMs) |
| Mac OS X | Yes | No | Yes |
| Windows Vista | Optional | Yes | Optional |
| Windows XP | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| Linux | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| DVD Re-Writer | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Weight | 2.27 kg | 4.81 kg | 3.08 kg |
The 7″ Eee PC is one of the most portable laptops around, and for an excellent price. However, for long term use I can see using that tiny keyboard becoming frustrating. Anyone who has chatted to me through IM will know that I’m a fast but clumsy typist, and when I tested this mini laptop in a store the keyboard proved quite tricky to type on without pressing multiple keys at the same time.
Next is the MSI Wind U100. For under NZ$1000 it’s also well priced, and boasts an 80 GB harddrive. Not quite enough for storing all of my data locally, but as I’ll be taking an external harddrive with me this won’t be so much of an issue. I have yet to try out the system, but overall it looks a useful netbook for taking travelling and one that holds a decent amount of data.
The cheapest Macbooks are the Macbook and the Macbook Air. The Macbook Air is less powerful, and has significantly less disk space than the ordinary Macbook, yet it costs quite a bit more. The only advantages are less weight and thickness… certainly good things to lose, but the price tag is a bit steep even by Apple’s standards. The Air will probably replace the Macbook eventually, but like the iPod Classic versus the iPod Touch, the Macbook still currently remains the better deal from a price/performance perspective. With a 250 GB harddrive the Macbook is also the smallest laptop of the six that will also host all of the data that I’ll want to access often (documents, music, photos, etc) without the need to plug in an external harddrive.
The Macbook Pro and Dell XPS M1730 were two high end laptops that I’ve been looking at. They both would act as gaming laptops. As you can see from the table above, the Macbook Pro is significantly less powerful than the M1730, although I suspect both laptops would run most modern games fine. The Macbook Pro does have some advantages though, most noticeably the weight of the unit. Also I couldn’t find any mention of battery life on Dell’s website, but I can imagine the M1730’s battery would drain reasonably quickly as it has to power dual video cards and dual harddrives. However for a gaming laptop the M1730 does look like the way to go. With gaming hardware becoming obsolete within a few years it’s quite a lot more money to pay for the Macbook Pro. There is the option of getting a cheaper 15″ Macbook Pro, however the 17″ inch model is the only Macbook that supports 1680 x 1050, which is usually the minimum widescreen resolution in games.
However, recently there haven’t been many recent releases that interest me. I wouldn’t mind giving Spore a go, as well as Dragon Age when it comes out, but I figure that they can wait. So I’ve gone ahead and ordered an Apple Macbook. It’s a good compromise between portability, price, and performance. Macbooks aren’t really gaming machines, but that’s not to say that I’ll be giving up PC gaming. There are plenty of classic games that I haven’t played through, so I’ll be living the past when it comes to gaming (for now), all the while enjoying the benefits of Mac OS X.
Congrats on ordering a Macbook.
I must say, my Macbook Pro is sort of overkill, though the larger screen is nice. 13″ is minute.
Glad you didn’t get a Macbook Air; they don’t even come with an optical disc drive!
And Spore is crap; you’re not missing out on anything there.
A little part of me has died inside.
@Chris M - Thanks. Hopefully 13″ won’t be too small for what I’m using it for. I’ve been using a 15″ Vista laptop as my main PC for a while now and have no problems with the screen size, although the resolution is significantly lower on the Macbook.
@Urban Reflex - Sorry man, I know you wanted me to get a gaming laptop so that we could play some multiplayer games. All hope is not lost though; I will most likely buy a gaming PC or a console at some point in the future when I’m in a more permanent living situation.
How’re you gonna emulate PDS on a Mac, man? HOW?
Yeah. I’m taking this hard. Sniff.
Oh well. As long as you’re happy with your choice. I figured it’d be best if you had the laptop for a while before you left. I pushed you to decide and look what happened! Will keep my mouth shut next time =P
Macbook + Boot Camp + Windows + SSF = Panzer Dragoon Saga goodness.
There are some Saturn emulators for OS X, but as far as I’m aware they aren’t every mature, so I’ll just boot into Windows if I want to play it. Since SSF isn’t a GPU intensive application, it should perform fine on the Macbook.
I will probably have an XP partition running alongside OS X. Should be able to run most older games that way.
Probably won’t happen, but I can possibly see you using XP more than OSX to begin with.
Or are most of your programs available on Mac too?
Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how much I end up using XP. Most of the apps that use are either on OS X as well, or there are Mac alternatives. Theoretically, the only thing I should “need” Windows for is gaming and testing webpages with Internet Explorer. You can get Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite for Mac, and most of the open source apps I use are available on all three major platforms. There are some exclusive Mac apps that I’ve been wanting to try out too, and these were an important deciding factor in going for the Macbook over a Windows based laptop.
I’ll do a blog post once I get the Macbook outlining my experiences in switching.
Are you actually going to buy Adobe CS though? It’s like £23452393.
Probably not, I was more using that an example. A lot of popular Windows software is also available for Mac now (aside from gaming) or there is a decent Mac alternative.
However there are some great looking alternatives to Photoshop such as Pixelmator (http://www.pixelmator.com). I’ll be giving the trial version a whirl at some point.