Hello everyone. I am currently choosing between an Apple MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz, 2GB ram, 120GB HDD (256MB video) and a Dell D820, 2.16GHz 2GB ram, 160GB HDD (512MB video) and have irritated my wife asking constantly "what should I do?" so I figured I'd ask you all who've had experience with them My delima is as follows:

I work in IT. Primarily I develop applications for the company I work for in Microsoft.NET. I am both the web developer (asp.net, c#) and Senior Applications Developer (various manufacturing applications). I also support Windows Server 2003, SQL 2005, and XP/Vista/Office 2k3,2k7 desktops. At the same time we have an XServe and several Mac Pros and MacBook Pros in the company. A while back I owned a PowerBook 17" 1.25 GHz and greatly enjoyed using a Mac. My main reason for choosing a new laptop is twofold: (1) my current system won't support Vista well (2) it also doesn't run OSx86 well.

I've read the D820 doesn't support dual core (a post on this site). I'd want to dual boot Vista and OS X on the Dell D820. Of course if I could use Parallels with Coherence to run my Windows apps (Office 2007, Visual Studio) on OS X that would be great but I haven't tested it. I've also heard the MacBook Pro doesn't run Vista well and it seems it takes more work to get Vista to run on a MacBook Pro than OS X to run on Dell hardware (I know, that sounds weird) .

I'm basically looking for posts from everyone with their experiences, pros, cons, and overall suggestions. I have never used a Dell D820 and definately don't know how it performs with OS X. I just don't want to buy the Dell and wish I had gotten the Mac or visa versa.

Thanks in advance for any information and guidance anyone can provide! I'm at my wits end- I dreamed about the decision all night last night and several night this past week !!

well i cant speak much to the d820, but getting vista RTM to run on my MBP was cake, and it sounds like you are very computer competent so i wouldnt be too concerned about that.. plus you have these great forums for any support issues. And as i've been saying a lot recently, the only computers that will have guaranteed future support for OS X (think leopard which will be out very soon) will be a bona fide mac. and from my perspective that alone is enough reason to purchase a mac

Dell D820/D830 is now fully supported. Every hardware except if you get wireless , make sure you get the Dell True Mobile and not the Intel 13xx or 14xx wireless cards. Get the Dell Broadcom BCM43xx series and you will be rockin.

Just recently they have now support for the Giagbit Lan for both the D820/D830. You will find the kexts for them on the forum or I have them both if needed.

Sound support on both laptops and DUal Core now resolved with XNU kernel or patched kernel as well as the upcoming Voodoo Kernels. I have a MAC Workstation bought this year. I also have PC workstations and Dell D820 and D830 Laptops and I prefer them over the MACbooks. You should buy one piece of PC hardware from Mac like maybe a Mac Mini just to do QA stuff and compare things to OSX running on your PC. Other than that you will be fine with the Dell D830 and other Dell Laptops. The D830 never had the Core 2 shuttering issue but the D820 did which is now fixed.

Only one thing you might misout on is the Firewire 800 support. You only have FIrewire 400 built into PC laptops right now.

Wow this is just the news I have been waiting to hear, I've got a D820 and my last experience with osx86 was less than stellar... no ethernet, sound card didn't disable speakers when headphones plugged in, wireless didn't have WPA enterprise support, needed to disable 1 of 2 cores to fix jitters.



Could you please post a link or a description of those .kexts? And also could you describe in detail what you did (what kernel version, etc.) to fix the dual core issue? I've attached a HTML lshw of my D820, also uploaded it here. Have you managed to resolve the sound card issues as well?



With all those other things fixed, firewire is really just a moot point haha. I've got the latest iATKOS release on dvd but I'm running Ubuntu atm, wasn't sure if it was worth trying osx86 again until reading your post

Post those files or link those sources lol, my d820 should be in by tuesday. I'm still researching the best way to install. Did you use a boot-132 disk or a distro?

iATKOS 5i w/default patches + x86 ACPI + NVkush, then used dell post-installer to install Sigmatel 9200 kext and patched XNU kernel for 10.5.5. Dual core works, sound works (mute, internal speakers, external headphones) but internal mic doesn't seem to work, haven't tested with external mic. I've got truemobile wireless so no problems there. Remember to boot with cpus=1 until you've installed patched XNU kernel, so the little "welcome" video plays smoothly

Next step is getting a battery meter. The first time I used dell post-installer for everything at once, nothing worked at all afterwards so now I'm going one step at a time. I'll post how that and ethernet, speedstep goes. If you want to see what all my hardware is check the attachment in my previous post.



Wow ok so I just tried installing battery meter with dell post-installer. Clicked on spotlight to type in disk util to repair permissions when this semi-transparent black layer slides halfway down my screen and everything hardlocks. Now leopard won't boot, just cycles back to OS selection. Having a triple boot setup can be really convienent... will try to repair disk permissions with iATKOS dvd then see if leopard will boot again.

Great, thanks alot! My specs are:

Core Duo 2GHz
4GB DDR2 667MHz
80GB SATA
Nvidia Quadro NVS 256mb
Broadcom 1390 wireless
15.4" screen @ 1920x1200

Thinking it should make a great macbook alternative. The dell post installer your using is the 1.3 right? And post those lan kexts if you have them

*EDIT* Apparently you can get the hardwired LAN working here:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=114605

I dont want to use the post installer so now i'm just searching for the sigmatel 9200 kext he's using in that installer.

Hey there,

I just made a copy of the iAtkos5i and I have had some trouble getting things to work correctly especially with the Nvidia Quadro NVS 120M. It also just doesn't seem very stable to me so far. Can you post which specific options that you chose with iAtkos5i that worked best for you?

Thanks,

A.

Same here! System is running like crap. We have pretty much the same machine. My keyboard and mouse weren't detected on my first install. That dell post installer screwed up my installation. It wouldnt even boot. I just need to figure out how to extract the kexts from that installer. I think the instability is comming from the vanilla kernel

I recommend Mac Book Pro see this link -> http://web.me.com/studiodc/Studio%3A%3ADC/Apple_Macbook_Pro.html
It has strong aluminum body and there are good technologies in it. For notebook I think it worth it's price.

Yea its the kernel causing the sluggishness. I installed the XNU kernel now all is working fine. I got resolution change now but no QI/CE