mmk Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 I want to share here the perfect system that I have in mind .... and how I got there. 1. HARDWARE Between a desktop and a notebook, of course I would go for the notebook. It's portable, and you can just plug it in a monitor and have the desktop system. I am not looking for the ultimate computer powered by quad xeons ( :mellow: ) so core 2 duo is enough. 1.1 Manufacturer This is the easy one. Apple. Why? Well ... let's take Dell. They are trying to cheat you and on top of that they have problems with their batteries. Yeah it's cheap, but you get what you pay for. And you can double that for Sony. Except maybe for the cheap part. Moving next, it's Toshiba. They had a really really bad design in the past. They changed it now in the new Quasimodo Qosmio line, and also Sattelite line looks a little better. But they lost my trust. I had one Toshiba laptop, and I was not very impressed. Just mediocre. Ans also I have friends that had Toshiba and with that a lot of trouble. Fujitsu I guess are ok, but a little expensive for the medium cathegory I am placing them into. Nothing extraordinary, but you can get more for the same money. Acer has a great offer, but I am no fan of their keyboards. And the keyboard in a notebook is very important. And I end here with IBM Lenovo Thinkpad. I currently have one Tankpad Thinkpad and I am more than pleased with it. It's great. I love the design, I love the keyboard, I love that I had no problems with it. So in the final we have Apple and Lenovo. But Apple has some advantages. You can run one extra OS on it, and it's more "sleek". Maybe it's not so robust, but it looks better. Also, I am a little dissapointed how the new Thinkpads turned out to be. The gray color and the new keyboard layout... it's just not IBM anymore I guess. 1.2 MBP vs MB 13 > 15 ? Now it really depends. On many things. I, for one, think that 13.3" are enough. But if you think that "Size Does Matter" than you should go for the MBP. Also, I do belive that professional photographers, for example, need more space on their desktop. So the increased resolution of MBP is a blessing. I for one am no professional photographer, so I would go for the MB. ATI vs Intel Here we might have a problem. I am no gamer, but I do play from time to time. Mainly "oldie but goldie" games. So I would say GMA950 is enough. But what do you know, Heroes 3 has a new brother... Heroes 5 that is, which is more 3D than ever and need a good video card. It may run on GMA950 (I have no idea), but probably on 800x600 with very low detail. I don't know if that would be enough. What's more important, I want my video card to be DirectX 10 ready. I've seen some of the things DirectX10 brings, and I want them. Also, I want to be aqua aero compatible. From what I understand, GMA950 runs aero. So in the end, I would say GMA950 would pass at the limit, event without DX10 support and with the low gaming performance. Like I said, I rarely play a 3D game. I do however hope that GMA3000X is not the fiasco I read it is and those hw shaders do bring some improvemnets, Because it's clear that this is the next MB videocard. Plastic vs Aluminium Well... I am just going to say that MB can be "assorted" with an iPod (and maybe with a future iPhone). And I like the keyboard also in the MB (I did not say I don't like the one in MBP). Conclusion It's definetely a Macbook (with Core 2 Duo), but if in the near future we have a GMA3000X with good performance, it's worth waiting for it. 1.3 White vs Black Well, I have to say that I'm biased. As I currently have a Thinkpad, black is my color. I would also go for a black iPod. With white, I always have that feeling "be careful... do not get it dirty...". White in MB is just too.... white. 2. SOFTWARE Here I got it all figured it out, because of my previous experiences with Linux and Windows. As my hardware (1.) permits it, I would go for Mac OS X as my primary OS (don't ask me if it works on my Thinkpad... you know the answer to that. YES it's FULLY supported! wireless, QE, you name it!). Now I would have, of course, multiple virtual desktops. With that nice cube rotating when you switch them. I would use Mac OS for music (iTunes), photos (iPhoto), movies (frontrow), chatting + some fun (YM, iChat, photobooth), mail (Mail.app). These are all fantastic applications. But summing it up I am not too pleased with Mac OS X. Finder and the Dock are not for me. So one of my virtual desktops would run a full-screen virtual machine with Ubuntu. That's because I love Gnome. It's so.... productive. I hope for some 3D support in the virtualization, so I would have XGL's expose in the VM. Why is Gnome so great? Well... it's best at what I hate more about Mac OS: it has a very customizable "dock" and also I find Nautilus very nice, with the built-in search and the little things (for example, one feature that is also present in Leopard is renaming a file, when it is selected only the filename, and not the extension). Let's not forget Microsoft. True, Windows sucks - internet explorer, media player are really bad. But they have nice things. Microsoft Office is one of them. Have you seen Office 2007? Really cool. I can't wait for the UB. Or it that turns out bad, I hope for a good wine/crossover office. And of course Windows might still be handy for those cases when virtualization is no solution and wine does not work. Mac OS X would be primary, used daily for entertainment and such, Ubuntu for work and Windows for gaming. To sum all up: Mac OS X (+iLife) dual boot with XP(Vista maybe) and a Ubuntu VM shared between those two. All on a Macbook. Black. What do you guys think? EDIT: you can find it on my blog here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogabean Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 mmk... just a quick thought man... why is this is in the *nix section? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmk Posted August 18, 2006 Author Share Posted August 18, 2006 Haven't found a better one I couldn't post it in Discussions.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogabean Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 Apple Computer and Hardware Thunderdome and Apple Opinions and Discussion (I don't know why you couldn't put it in there) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmk Posted August 18, 2006 Author Share Posted August 18, 2006 No... permissions Munky, can you please move it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walking_Death_Trap Posted August 19, 2006 Share Posted August 19, 2006 My thoughts... Choose one with features along the lines of what a laptop should actually be... Light and moveable with the best hardware possible. Macbook is almost perfect save for 2 things.. The weight (2.4kg for a 13.3 inch Come on apple!) and the intel GPA. As for the colour....... well it depends on what fualts you'd like to see appear.. The black would show fingerprints and scratches too easily whereas the white would show "off colour" dirt. BTW have you had a look at the Sony Vaio SZ series?? 1 of them actually weighs 1.67kg and it's a 13.3inch too!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmk Posted August 19, 2006 Author Share Posted August 19, 2006 yap also acer has some nic models 14.1 wide w/ geforce, ibook white Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aqualeviathan Posted August 19, 2006 Share Posted August 19, 2006 What's up with the Qosmio bashing? Sure it's large and a bit on the heavy side, but its not meant to be moved around a lot in the first place. It's a desktop replacement clearly advertised as being designed as a portable media center. The Qosmios aren't particularly ugly either, so I don't know where that "quasimodo" line came from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbz Posted August 19, 2006 Share Posted August 19, 2006 OMG QUASIMODO!!!! I swear I have never heard that before, and i think it's rly rly rly funny! I don't literally laugh out load when reading this forum often, but this is the second time today... Thanks mmk! oh and BTW, toshiba USED to make really great notebooks. I still have an old pentium 133mhz system that works great. But i got a satellite pro like three years ago and it sucks, it really does. -Urby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeezoflip Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 Whats up with the dell bashing as well. Just cause they had a battary return program doesnt mean squat. Thats a good company, other companies wouldnt care. And if i dont recall, MBP's had a battary recall as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmk Posted August 20, 2006 Author Share Posted August 20, 2006 yes... sony battery (like dell ) agree, toshuba USED to make good laptops Qosmio bashing >> because of the design. For a desktop replacement I find mini machines better. I believe most of us need smthg light for a laptop. Dell, I haven't tried one personally... I find them ok, I'm sorry for the scandals they`re in. I have a dell desktop and it's ok. But delldoesn't have nothing ''extra''. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wondergod Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 i have a toshiba tablet pc, and 2 laptops a dell xps and hp dv1000 series... the xps is nice when i'm at home...and at my desk because its too big to move around...the tablet was cool at first but I don't even use it(gave it to my girlfriend to use) my hp...now this is my baby i take it everywhere with me and it has not let me down ever...it runs anything i throw at it and it has a beatifal easy to read screen with excellent battery life... plus after my sister saw me running osx on my hp...she was kinda upset that she bought a MBP because its soo big and she has to carry an external mouse everywhere because she is used to 2 button mice. as for the dell battery thing...it wasn't only dell that used those sony batterries, its only dell that got shown on video...but when you think of the amount of laptops dell sells a year its not really surprising that it would be one of theirs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogabean Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 Honestly to me... the Mac Book (Pro) represents the perfect laptop in the wild right now if only for the fact it is the only one that can run OS X and Windows supported. That alone puts it ahead of anything else out there. It's all about choice. In this case choice to me is software, not hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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