ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Purchase decision time - My trusty old, hard working 5.5 YO 17" iMac G5 hardware is dying. I may be able to fix it, more details to follow - but I decided to replace it and re-purpose it if It can be fixed. I've got all my data and a recent 'image' of the drive.
Go with Apple 13" MacBook Pro? I had decided earlier that my next 'desktop' would be a laptop with an external monitor and external keypad/mouse. Our college kids have had the low-end MacBooks (G4 and C2D), and that would fit my needs. Last year, DW wanted her own laptop, and after I looked at them at the Apple Store, decided the extra $100 or so for the Aluminum uni-body was worth it, and that machine is impressive. But, another wrinkle...
Or Cheaper Laptop/Linux? Last year, I bought a $270 ASUS netbook, replaced the weird Xandros Linux on it with Ubuntu Linux, and have been very impressed with Ubuntu. Knowing that I have DW's MBP as a 'backup' in case I really need something I can't do in Ubuntu, I started thinking about getting a cheaper generic laptop and running Ubuntu as my daily machine. Well, this got interesting.
Price/Feature Comparison The MBP is $1099 edu price (just about anyone can qualify), and that includes a rebated iPod Touch. We have one, don't need a second, so I assume I can sell the Touch for $175, add a $29 adapter for external monitor, and the cost is $953 for a well equipped machine. I should be able to do much better with a non-Apple brand, right?
After some research - not so sure. By the time I search for equivalent memory (4GB), and processor (~P8600), graphics cards, and even reasonable battery life (MBP is 10 hours - I see a lot of laptops in the 2-3 hour range, seems you have to climb up the ladder to get 5 hours or more). I'm up to $750, and I'm not sure I want to risk it for a $200 delta.
I'm going cheaper, but less capable. Good Enough? OK, I got ansty and pushed the "BUY" button before getting around to posting this. My (still revocable) decision was to go down the chain a bit, get a $378 laptop that is not equivalent to the MBP specs, but will likely be 'good enough' for my mostly desktop use. Acer/Emachines E725-4520. The T4400 ( Pentium Dual Core), Intel GMA 4500M, 3GB RAM, 2.5 Hr battery(!) are all less capable than the MBP (as expected for the price delta) and no webcam or microphone (cheap to add external if I want). But I think it will be 'good enough', and that was enough of a price delta to make it worth the 'risk' to me. I downloaded the latest Ubuntu release yesterday (10.04 Long Term Support) and ran it in "Live" mode on my netbook to test it out - I'm ready to roll, and the E725 is due here today.
One more note to this already too-long post. I just could not find deals on the laptops with NO O/S (or Ubuntu pre-installed). They just are not popular enough to drive traffic with sales I guess, but it irks me that a portion of this purchase goes to Microsoft when the first thing I'm going to do is make restore disks, check the hardware, and then wipe the drive.
I hope this turns out to be a savings, and not a $378 mistake - wish me luck!
-ERD50
Go with Apple 13" MacBook Pro? I had decided earlier that my next 'desktop' would be a laptop with an external monitor and external keypad/mouse. Our college kids have had the low-end MacBooks (G4 and C2D), and that would fit my needs. Last year, DW wanted her own laptop, and after I looked at them at the Apple Store, decided the extra $100 or so for the Aluminum uni-body was worth it, and that machine is impressive. But, another wrinkle...
Or Cheaper Laptop/Linux? Last year, I bought a $270 ASUS netbook, replaced the weird Xandros Linux on it with Ubuntu Linux, and have been very impressed with Ubuntu. Knowing that I have DW's MBP as a 'backup' in case I really need something I can't do in Ubuntu, I started thinking about getting a cheaper generic laptop and running Ubuntu as my daily machine. Well, this got interesting.
Price/Feature Comparison The MBP is $1099 edu price (just about anyone can qualify), and that includes a rebated iPod Touch. We have one, don't need a second, so I assume I can sell the Touch for $175, add a $29 adapter for external monitor, and the cost is $953 for a well equipped machine. I should be able to do much better with a non-Apple brand, right?
After some research - not so sure. By the time I search for equivalent memory (4GB), and processor (~P8600), graphics cards, and even reasonable battery life (MBP is 10 hours - I see a lot of laptops in the 2-3 hour range, seems you have to climb up the ladder to get 5 hours or more). I'm up to $750, and I'm not sure I want to risk it for a $200 delta.
I'm going cheaper, but less capable. Good Enough? OK, I got ansty and pushed the "BUY" button before getting around to posting this. My (still revocable) decision was to go down the chain a bit, get a $378 laptop that is not equivalent to the MBP specs, but will likely be 'good enough' for my mostly desktop use. Acer/Emachines E725-4520. The T4400 ( Pentium Dual Core), Intel GMA 4500M, 3GB RAM, 2.5 Hr battery(!) are all less capable than the MBP (as expected for the price delta) and no webcam or microphone (cheap to add external if I want). But I think it will be 'good enough', and that was enough of a price delta to make it worth the 'risk' to me. I downloaded the latest Ubuntu release yesterday (10.04 Long Term Support) and ran it in "Live" mode on my netbook to test it out - I'm ready to roll, and the E725 is due here today.
One more note to this already too-long post. I just could not find deals on the laptops with NO O/S (or Ubuntu pre-installed). They just are not popular enough to drive traffic with sales I guess, but it irks me that a portion of this purchase goes to Microsoft when the first thing I'm going to do is make restore disks, check the hardware, and then wipe the drive.
I hope this turns out to be a savings, and not a $378 mistake - wish me luck!
-ERD50