My history of reliability: Toshiba Tablet PC, >$4K - fan failure in 2nd year Dell Inspiron 8600, ~$2.6K - hard drive and video card failure in 2nd year Sony Vaio, $2.5K - mainboard failure in 1st year iBook G4 - track pad failure in first week, replaced with new laptop MacBook C2D, 2nd year, some minor issues with charger
On heat, my MacBook runs cooler than all my other laptops, but I'm not sure if that's just a Core 2 Duo thing and the way they position the fans to vent toward the screen rather than you. Had iPods ( classic, nano, touch and iPhone), no file system corruption in 4 years. On price differentials, it depends, Apple updates once or twice a year (Dell does it almost weekly), so the price difference component by component does vary depending on where you are in the cycle, Apple rarely discounts. At one point when I was shopping for my MacBook it was almost the same price as a comparable Dell model. For me, the capabilities of laptops and my willingness to spend money mean I'm willing to lay out around 2K for a machine and get what is available at that price point. I've run ubuntu, I've run 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, XP and I've run (to a limited extent) Vista. I also want OS X - and as long as Apple doesn't entirely screw me on the hardware side, I'm happy with the prices they charge. In short, I think the adage 'your mileage may vary' applies here. On Sep 3, 10:53 am, Ben Schulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Quality? Come on, don't bullshit a bullshitter. > > MacBook quality sucks, it's a fact. My favority apple screw up: Their > regular MacBooks are known to overheat and they announce the MacBook > Air. My immediate thought was "wow, they must have dealt with the heat > issue!" Well, wrong. My friend could not watch 30 minutes of DVD > without it overheating. A "fix" later he made it to 40 minutes > (because now the fan would max out earlier). > Are you telling me the people at apple QA are just that stupid, or > would you concur that the MacBook Air was just a marketing gag? > > Personally I bought one lousy apple product in my life: An iPod nano; > it was a birthday present for my sister. Now somehow you need to > disconnect it on a software level before physically disconnecting it > (how stupid is that btw?). So one day she comes to me and says she > forgot to do it, that most files are corrupted and if I could do > anything. Over 90% of the files were screwed up -- I don't even > understand how you would go about writing software like that. > ++unsatisfiedCustomers; > > Anyways, quality my ass. > > With kind regards > Ben > > On 2 Sep., 15:44, Reinier Zwitserloot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I've seen almost a hundred of these comparisons, and they arbitrarily > > swing to: Apple is the cheapest hardware you can actually buy today, > > to, apple is 200% more expensive. > > > You've thoroughly screwed up your comparison, however. > > > - You DONT, under any circumstance, let apple install extra memory or > > harddrive space. You do it yourself. Rookie mistake. Buy a standard > > model, unscrew the memory bay, and install more if you want it. > > Harddrives is a bit more complicated: The 'apple premium' is merely > > ridiculous instead of completely outrageous as it is for memory, and > > only Macbooks have a user servicable HDD bay. > > > - Your HP Pavilion has a crappy keyboard, a crappy trackpad, a crappy > > screen, and a crappy battery. > > > More important than even that, is the end experience. In the good old > > days, the primary difference in user experience between any given pair > > of PCs was performance based. How big is the screen? How fast is it? > > How many programs can it run before it runs out of memory? Those are > > all quantifiable entities. Bigger is better. > > > In today's world, that just doesn't apply anymore. Even hard core > > developers have some difficulty redlining their CPU often enough that > > it really makes an impact. Between swapping and lots of cheap RAM all > > around, I can run 2 parallels, eclipse, a server, postgres, watch a > > video, and have umptheen personal programs up, and -still- I'm not > > really noticing much swapping, and that's on an older macbook with > > 'just' 2GB of memory. > > > At the same time, designers have finally figured out that computers > > are things you often sit behind for many hours, most days of the year. > > Keyboards on notebooks recently have vastly improved. Trackpad > > technology has become subtly better. They are more responsive, and far > > more precise. Battery technology is slowly evolving. So on and so > > forth. > > > I'm not kidding that I will -gladly- buy a machine with half the CPU > > and a quarter of the RAM, for the same price, if it has a > > significantly better keyboard than the high powered alternative. My > > mind boggles at developers who don't agree with this sentiment. A bad > > keyboard easily costs you just as much productivity. Probably more. > > > Most of these new yardsticks aren't very quantifiable. There's no Mhz > > for tactile keyboard feedback. Even the ones that are quantifiable, > > such as battery life, are quantified using a practical yardstick (work > > hours) instead of a factual yardstick (mHa or some such). Contrast > > this to the old yardsticks, such as CPU speed, which are still stated > > in factual yardsticks instead of practical yardsticks - cache, pipes, > > instruction set, northbridge, bus speeds - those all have more impact > > on how fast a computer really is than raw cycle speed, and yet we're > > still using that pointless yardstick of 'Ghz'. > > > The problem is this: Only apple gets this. No other computer > > manufacturer has realized that the old yardsticks simply do not matter > > anymore. Innovation today no longer means 'faster'. We're done with > > that. And it shows: There's a reason why half the 'developer is a > > lifestyle' developers own a mac (and no, I'm not exaggerating. Go to > > any halfway hip conference where the majority are NOT there on a multi- > > thousand dollar admittance ticket paid by their employer, and half the > > participants are walking around with some apple logoed notebook under > > their arm. The rest have an Asus Eee or sony vaio. They are all design > > statements, and two of those three are vastly overpriced if you don't > > count better keyboards, rugged design, and screen quality). I don't > > know about other 'apple fanboys', but I will preach this principle any > > chance I get, because I'm scared that there's only one manufacturer in > > all the world that makes a decent notebook. I -really- don't want to > > be dependent on just Steve Jobs. I want other notebook manufacturers > > to get it. Unfortunately, the last big hope, Sony Vaio's, have since > > gone mostly backwards, abusing the brandname and introducing a slew of > > ergonomic problems. Even the asus Eee seems to be heading the wrong > > way, according to Eee using friends of mine. Abuse of brand name, new > > models that just missed the whole point of what notebooks ought to be > > about. > > > The sign that the rest of the world has finally caught up will come > > when ads for computers stop quoting every quantifiable yardstick in > > the book. I can pick up a computer magazine and it'll show a grainy > > picture of the latest 'grey ugly box' variant, along with a big > > bulletpoint list of Mhz, MB RAM, MB HDD, XxY screen, pre-installed > > software I just don't care about, and a price tag. Pages full of the > > same pattern. Grainy picture, list of numbers, price. You'll never see > > 'has a keyboard that typing pros rate as quite good for a notebook > > keyboard!' in that list. You'll never see a picture of the power > > brick. No mention of the heaps of pre-installed demos and trials > > you'll need to remove. No quality assessment of the speakers. No clear > > indication of where the ports are and how conveniently you can access > > them. Not a word about the rugged feeling of the laptop (most non- > > apple laptops I know of creak and generally feel like they're about to > > break when you hold them, opened, at the side and walk around. The > > MacBook I own feels rock solid when I do that. That's more important > > than another half a ghz to me). > > > I can't speak for the posse, but I wouldn't be surprised if they talk > > a lot about apple for the same reason I do: To impress upon the rest > > of the world that they really should be catering to us. Excellent way > > to show off that you're part of a large market: Be vocal about it. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javaposse@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
