Is a Mac Book for me?

[Funcoot]

Ok, so right now I am a sophomore in high school, and I will be traveling to Germany (my first time out of the country) to see my relatives. We will be staying there for 2 weeks, and I know having a laptop for downtime would be a nice luxury.

Now I know a Mac Book is a big gift for a sophomore in a public high school (I will not be taking it there though), but this would be my Christmas gift technically. So before making my decision, I have a few questions. (No need to make a $1,000+ decision with out some questions first eh? ;D )

Now to clarify before asking questions, I would like to let you guys know, that I am in fact a PC guy, FPS player since a very young age. I have a pretty decent desktop. Specs...

Intel C2D E4500
2gigs of Corsair XMS2 Ram
Abit IP35-E motherboard
ATi Radeon 4850
Corsair 650tx PSU

As you can see, not a bad gaming rig.

So here are my questions regarding the mac book.

I am also an aspiring web designer. I have seen many videos of developers moving swiftly between many apps and editors, it made developing look a lot more fun. Is this actually the case? Is working in the Apple OSX a lot easier, compared to Windows XP? I mean it isn't a PAIN in XP, but it certainly didn't seem to flow as well as OSX.

How long is the battery life? Honestly, I never trust site estimates, even if it is Apple.

And how well does Boot Camp work with Vista and XP?

Am I really just taking too expensive of a leap into laptops? I think we can all agree that Mac Laptops, as good as they are, are not cheap. It is a really expensive decision.

Anyways Thanks in advance guys!

PS: Is discussion of Hackintosh taboo here?

 

[Alexis]

Personally, I find OS X a lot more fluid and intuative. Windows is pretty rigid, whereas OS X has Expose and the Dock, so you'll be flying in between windows and open apps.

Have a look at the OS X pages on the Apple site. I think it's a great showcase for the OS.

Bootcamp is just a program to partition your hard drive and a collection of Windows drivers. Vista/XP work just as if it was on any old PC. When you start up and select Windows, it IS a Windows machine running at full native speed.

Hackintosh is a bit taboo here, for legal reasons.

 

[imnothardcore]

Personally, I find OS X a lot more fluid and intuative. Windows is pretty rigid, whereas OS X has Expose and the Dock, so you'll be flying in between windows and open apps.

AND SPACES!!!!

 

[lukenn77]

Battery life is excellent on my macbook. i usually have the screen brightness set to full, browse the internet, listen to itunes and do a bit of msn and the battery can easily last 3/4 hours. Turn the screen brightness down and you can get 5 hours out of it with no problem.

Granted an apple computer may not seem cheap, but when you compare the price of a macbook with the price a pc laptop with the equivilent you'll see there really isnt a huge gap.

As mentioned above, the dock, spaces, expose, hot corners etc all make your day-to-day usage a lot more time efficient. Personally, i used to always be a PC guy, i was brought up on pc's and had never touched anything else, then last august i made quite a bit of money working and decided to make a blind jump into the world of OS X.... so happy i did. I still use a PC for FPS gaming (COD4, Rainbow Six Vegas etc), but everything else is done with my macbook. I can honestly say that when i have a family it will be a household that uses macs and not PCs as our main computers... they are just that good.

 

[cwa107]

Ok, so right now I am a sophomore in high school, and I will be traveling to Germany (my first time out of the country) to see my relatives. We will be staying there for 2 weeks, and I know having a laptop for downtime would be a nice luxury.

Now I know a Mac Book is a big gift for a sophomore in a public high school (I will not be taking it there though), but this would be my Christmas gift technically. So before making my decision, I have a few questions. (No need to make a $1,000+ decision with out some questions first eh? ;D )

Now to clarify before asking questions, I would like to let you guys know, that I am in fact a PC guy, FPS player since a very young age. I have a pretty decent desktop. Specs...

Intel C2D E4500
2gigs of Corsair XMS2 Ram
Abit IP35-E motherboard
ATi Radeon 4850
Corsair 650tx PSU

As you can see, not a bad gaming rig.

So here are my questions regarding the mac book.

I am also an aspiring web designer. I have seen many videos of developers moving swiftly between many apps and editors, it made developing look a lot more fun. Is this actually the case? Is working in the Apple OSX a lot easier, compared to Windows XP? I mean it isn't a PAIN in XP, but it certainly didn't seem to flow as well as OSX.

How long is the battery life? Honestly, I never trust site estimates, even if it is Apple.

And how well does Boot Camp work with Vista and XP?

Am I really just taking too expensive of a leap into laptops? I think we can all agree that Mac Laptops, as good as they are, are not cheap. It is a really expensive decision.

Anyways Thanks in advance guys!

Sounds like you're pretty happy with Windows, and if that's the case, there's no reason to switch IMO. Switching to Mac requires an open mind, some time to get used to the Mac way of doing things and a certain amount of compromise. If you're happy with Windows, there's really no reason to invest time and effort into a new platform.

PS: Is discussion of Hackintosh taboo here?

Discussion of any illegal activity is taboo here, including the violation of Apple's EULA, which specifically states that Mac OS may not be used on non-Apple hardware.

 

[Funcoot]

Thanks for all the replies guys.

@cwa...

I see where you are coming from, but I am still getting a laptop regardless, I was just wondering if I should try a Mac Book. I don't plan on gaming on my laptop (besides Spore and WoW, which both have native Mac versions).

I am going to sit on this idea for a week or two, then discuss it with my parents.

I also think this would be a VERY good time to get one, because I would be able to find out if I would like to use a mac laptop for College.

Anyways, please guys, keep the posts coming! And thanks for all the replies guys.