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Help Me Choose A Laptop

twelve said:
Seeing as you have a PS3 (judging by the PSN ID on your profile page) I'd say getting the bluray drive is pointless, even taking into account that it is a burner. You can always replace the drive in years to come when prices drop if you feel you need it at a later date.
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Good call, I didn't see that in his sig.

If you're serious about OS X, just go ahead and get the Macbook, or like Vanden said wait for Snow Leopard to come out and get it then. If your parents are paying for it, who cares? And since your not planning on gaming with it, the specs on a Macbook are extremely sufficient, even for a Windows installation.

From first hand experiences with OS X86, I can tell you it's not a delight. It takes forever to install and tune it to your specific hardware settings (not to mention there are a bunch of things that you might have to troubleshoot for your specific hardware), and updating is a hassle.
 
Tommi said:
Vanilla OSX is the standard retail disc yes.

As for the insurance, it's the standard warranty, what I meant was to get it put under your own insurance.

The difference between the two CPU's will not be noticeable really, I just wouldn't worry about the Blu-ray drive on a laptop.

There is way for OSX to read AND write NTFS using THIS or ntfs-3g which solves the shared issue.
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twelve said:
Seeing as you have a PS3 (judging by the PSN ID on your profile page) I'd say getting the bluray drive is pointless, even taking into account that it is a burner. You can always replace the drive in years to come when prices drop if you feel you need it at a later date.
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ok so i should be good installing the retail version then.
ok so I'll just get the 2.5 ghz processor. I do have a PS3 and really, I was wanting the blue-ray for the ability to use it as a burner. But it does make sence to wait and get one when i really need it.
Also thanks for the link on how I can get NTFS to work on mac. I'll keep that in mind

I guess I've drilled the price down to $1,300. Seems a little low lol. Is there anything that could be upgraded for better performance?

---------- Post added at 05:12 PM EST ---------- Previous post was at 05:07 PM EST ----------
Frenchb0ygenius said:
Good call, I didn't see that in his sig.

If you're serious about OS X, just go ahead and get the Macbook, or like Vanden said wait for Snow Leopard to come out and get it then. If your parents are paying for it, who cares? And since your not planning on gaming with it, the specs on a Macbook are extremely sufficient, even for a Windows installation.

From first hand experiences with OS X86, I can tell you it's not a delight. It takes forever to install and tune it to your specific hardware settings (not to mention there are a bunch of things that you might have to troubleshoot for your specific hardware), and updating is a hassle.
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I know its my parents money but, it's not like we got money growing from trees over here. That's why i wanted to get a Dell, to save money and just install OSX on there. I'm aware that it's not the easiest thing in the world but there are forums and tutorials for that. I guess right now i'm heavily leaning toward the dell. But if my parents can afford it, I'll get a macbook.
 
futuregator15 said:
I would use that coupon but I'm planning on buying the computer around June. It'll prolly expire by then
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It will but there should be another coupon up just like it by that time. Never, never buy a laptop from a name-brand online without using a coupon, they usually always have coupons like the ones I linked to
 
Thanks to everyone for the help. With Frozen's coupon site, i managed to get a pretty sweet deal (thanks again). Hopefully they will have a very similar coupon up there in june. Here is my final build for the Dell. Now just to wait for WWDC to see if they can roll out anything that can compete (price wise). Oh and hackintosh is supposed to be compatible with everything in the computer:


Processor: Intel
 
futuregator15 said:
So I'm supposed to be getting a laptop sometime this summer. I def want a 15 inch screen and i have really been looking a two different computers. The Dell XPS 1530 and the 15 inch Macbook Pro are the laptops that I am looking at. So here's the deal, I know that I can get a WAY better laptop from dell for a decent price (Customized M1530 came out to about 1500), but I really have been eyeing the macbook pro for it's nice design and the support for dual booting (Windows Vista). Also would it be worth going through the trouble of installing OSX on a PC. Oh, and money is a little bit of an issue here. I would like to keep it under 1500 (Why I'm leaning towards the dell), but it'll come down to how much buying a mac with benefit me, and if my parents can afford to get it

Thanks for the comments
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If you're trying to stay under $1500, I'd probably go with the Dell unless you actually want to use macOS. The MacBook Pro's big advantage here isn't that it somehow makes Vista better — it's that you get two operating systems on one machine when you really need both.

Boot Camp was a perfectly reasonable way to run Windows on Intel Macs, and Apple even provided official Vista support for the appropriate generation.

I definitely wouldn't recommend installing OS X on the Dell just to get the Mac experience. Even when the hardware happens to work, you're taking on driver, update and compatibility headaches for no real advantage. If you like the MacBook Pro and will actually use macOS, buy the Mac. If the main attraction is simply getting a nicer-looking laptop that can also run Vista, save the money and get the Dell.

Also remember that you're comparing two machines from the same general era, so don't spend the entire $1500 just because the configuration allows it. Put some money toward RAM/storage or keep it in reserve — you'll appreciate that more than a slightly faster CPU on an older laptop.
 
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