I have a budget of around £1000 from work to buy a laptop. Some of the work I do will have to be done in Windows environment due to the MS Word macros we use.

The question is: should I go with the latest 13.3" Macbook (Aluminium) with Windows XP installed through boot camp or as a virtual machine via Parallel/Vmware, or go with a business laptop like Dell Latitude E6400, Lenovo Thinkpad T400 or Toshiba M10-10I (and play with Mac OS X on it)?

If this is for a professional environment, go with the real Mac. Plus, Hackbooks tend to have one issue or another.

I would say go with the MacBook. I have been using a white MacBook to develop VBA applications for Office using Windows XP with Parallels for over a year now and have never had a problem with it.

Do take into consideration that the Aluminum version of the MacBook DOES NOT have a firewire port and is much more expensive than the white/black versions. It does look damn slick, though.

Happy buying!

Macbook.

if you can come out unscaled with a macbook pro, you should definitely go for it
or you could just wait till Apple refreshes their line early next year and see if the new macbook come with a firewire port

but 4 what its worth go 4 a mac

Apple won't refresh their laptops early next year, they just refreshed them now.

Being a work laptop I would probably go for the Dell, unless Macs are really common where you work.

Yeah, I know that's pretty up to say. But as far as bang for the buck goes it's pretty hard to beat, and the insane battery life with a 9 cell and extra slice would really seal the deal for a work laptop at least for me.

Mac advantages :
Good battery life.
Good resale value. (this is a biggie)
Works perfectly with OS X + Windows.
Nice design, thin and light.

Disadvantages:
Little bit more pricey.

MacBook of course

I got few hacks , but I use often the macbook of my girlfriend with bootcamp inside.
It's a pleasure running/working/playing with it.

Last personal real mac I owned was last powerbook 15.4.
They are pretty pieces of hware , no doubt...asap I collect the cash I buy one new , even if the prices as a bit high

I just update my signature.... is my first real mac.....

MACBOOK is another planet.....BUT!!

Do you will really work with macros? Office2008 for mac wont solve it? compatibility probs? so buy a cheap 2nd hand laptop...

As stated above, Parallels works great with any Office version.

Thanks a lot for all your advice. I've been running Mac OS X on my desktop PC at home. The laptop will be mainly for work, although some at my workplace use linux and Mac, we cannot do without Windows (VBA macros for our Word templates won't work on Mac version of MS Office). The solution has been vmware server (free for linux/windows) and parallels (for Mac).

I'll mainly use the laptop when traveling and meeting, so need a laptop that is small/light and sturdy. There may be some interoperability issues in a windows dominated (business) world (in which I'm working).

I also suspects that performance may suffer when running windows application via vmware/parallels on the same hard drive (bare in mind that laptop hard drive is already slow e.g. 5400rpm - which is often the bottleneck of performance). This has not been an issue for my hack (Pentium D820 3.0GHz - everything works, but I do have to find a hacked kernel everytime a major update arrives).

If the slow RPMs bother you, you could always[I assume anyway, the lastgen Macbooks were upgrade friendly, why change now?] swap out the hard drive for a bigger, faster one.

The thing is, a Mac runs Windows perfectly. Boot camp is really fast - it's a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo or whatever - Really fast CPU.

And VMWare fusion runs Windows AMAZINGLY fast on my Pentium 4, so the Macbook should blaze through it.

And the Macbook is small, light and sturdy. For the budget of 1000 pounds it's perfect.

Does the new macbook really worth the extra £300 compared with the black/white one?

Well... I just picked up the new Al MB last Friday to replace my 1.33 iBook. These are things I noticed:
- graphics are much improved, especially if you use external monitors
- graphic processor removes load from the CPU
- DDR3 memory and dedicated graphics processor helps the 2.0ghz models perform better than the 2.4ghz of the previous generation.
- The Al model looks much more professional
- The Al model feels solid... no worries about cracked cases.
- Slightly lighter weight.

And they look sexy!

Just received my Macbook (2.0GHz Aluminum). I love it!!!

I knew you gonna love it

Good luck and take care of your new baby