MacBook Question

[Roobyroo]

I want to buy my wife a PC laptop, but she's insisting on a Mac. I've always liked Macs, but they're a little pricey. Does anyone know if Mac laptops tend to last a little longer than PC laptops?

[John A]

I personally love Macs - if not just for the sheer delight of the sleek outside and polished interface. They do seem a little bit higher-priced than their Dell counterparts.

However, Macs tend to be more high-end than Dells, especially MacBooks, as they're basically a merge between the pro laptop PowerBook and the consumer laptop iBook. As a result, the MacBook includes a powerful dual-core processor, the Intel Core 2 Duo. It also has a built-in web camera, which may/may not be useful for you, but it's still a nice feature.

Another nice feature is the trackpad, which may look quite ordinary, except the right button is non-existent. However, it's got a very nice feature: put 2 fingers on the pad, and it suddenly starts scrolling whatever document is in focus, making the trackpad double as a scrollwheel.

All in all, I'm quite happy with the MacBook I purchased about 3 months ago - no problems or breakdowns with it (except the times when I messed with the kernel/partitions and it required reinstallation :D).

What you should expect in a Mac (MacBook in particular):

• Elegant, sleek design
• Easy to setup and use
• Powerful processing insides
• Reliability

What you should not expect in a Mac:

• Inexpensive or rock-bottom prices
• Long battery life (powerful CPU sucks lots of juice)
• Flexibility (no custom Macs or a lot of built-to-order options)
• MacBook has lousy video card, so not really any good gaming

It's also worth noting that the MacBook has skimpy RAM (512 MB) and a small hard drive (60 GB), so you may want to consider upgrading these if you are going to perform memory-intensive operations or store a lot of data, respectively.

You should buy a Mac if you want a pro-sumer product to do lots of processing, but if you are only planning to do some simple web-surfing with it... you may want to get something cheaper like a PC.

Hope this helps

[Roobyroo]

Thanks! Very helpful!