Macbook Air

[KneesUp]

Perhaps it was to sync her phone then? Or put music on, or something? It was a 3Gs I think. I try not to get involved.

 

[fossyant]

My sister has a MacBook air and it's nice and thin. Our new HP Envy (yes win 8.1) looks very similar to a MacBook, nice and thin, but is packing a fast quad core i7 with dedicated graphics and its blisteringly fast (classed as a gaming laptop) but looks business like.

Go try a few out at a computer store.

 

[KneesUp]

I'd imagine @fossyant 's laptop with Lubuntu on itwouldbe quite nippy.

 

[fossyant]

I'd imagine @fossyant 's laptop with Lubuntu on itwouldbe quite nippy.

Does lubuntu do Minecraft or Watchdogs . If not my lad might not be happy.

 

[andyfraser]

I hated Windows XP so switched to Debian Linux in Jan 2003. By 2005 I was on Fedora but bought a Mac mini to try out OS X. I liked it enough to buy a MacBook in 2006. They weren't any more expensive than high end laptops from other manufactures.

By 2010 I was thinking about upgrading but now Apple's laptops were way more expensive than good laptops from other manufactures so I bought an Asus running Windows 7.

Now I have Windows 8.1 on my desktop, Debian unstable on my old Asus laptop and I'm typing this on a Chromebook, which is now my main laptop.

The point of all this waffle is this: MacBook Airs are fantastic but seem very expensive for what they are. I have no problems with Windows 8.1 (or Windows 7), and yes, Windows can run without giving grief these days, and you can get some great machines for less running Windows. The days of buying a machine with OS X because it's more reliable than Windows may well be over.

It also depends what you're planning on doing with the machine. I don't do anything on a laptop that a £200 Chromebook can't do (this one is a 14" £250 one but I do have a 11.6" £200 Chromebook that the better half likes to use).

 

[KneesUp]

Does lubuntu do Minecraft or Watchdogs . If not my lad might not be happy.

Dual-boot.

 

[CopperBrompton]

It was a 3Gs I think.

Er, yeah, that would have been in 2009 :-) Things have moved on a little since then ...

 

[CopperBrompton]

The point of all this waffle is this: MacBook Airs are fantastic but seem very expensive for what they are.

Spec-for-spec, they carry only a modest premium.

£750 gets you an 11-inch Haswell i5 with a PCIe SSD, Intel HD 5000 graphics card, 802.11ac wifi, Thunderbolt port, genuine 9-hour battery-life, fantastic screen, backlit keyboard and a brilliant multi-touch trackpad in an incredibly small and light form-factor.

 

[edindave]

Macs are so much less hassle than PCs = more time on the bike

I especially like the fact that the latest OS Yosemite now lets you send/receive text messages from your Macbook (or iPad etc) while your iPhone can be somewhere else.

 

[KneesUp]

I used to send and receive text messages on my Powerbook running 10.4 (Panther?), before there was. Such a thing as an iPhone. There's nothing new under the sun.

 

[edindave]

Were people able to send text messages before iPhones? How did that work?

 

[CopperBrompton]

I especially like the fact that the latest OS Yosemite now lets you send/receive text messages from your Macbook (or iPad etc) while your iPhone can be somewhere else.

I also answer iPhone calls on my Mac when in the office. The seamless integration is very nice indeed.

 

[andyfraser]

Spec-for-spec, they carry only a modest premium.

£750 gets you an 11-inch Haswell i5 with a PCIe SSD, Intel HD 5000 graphics card, 802.11ac wifi, Thunderbolt port, genuine 9-hour battery-life, fantastic screen, backlit keyboard and a brilliant multi-touch trackpad in an incredibly small and light form-factor.

That is a great spec but, and I must stress that this is completely my preference here, when I can get a machine with the same size screen with slightly lower specs that will still do everything I want for £300 less I know where my money will be going. I'll take a HDD over a SSD, put up with the slower boot times etc, and have more flexibility.

 

[CopperBrompton]

when I can get a machine with the same size screen with slightly lower specs that will still do everything I want for £300 less I know where my money will be going. I'll take a HDD over a SSD, put up with the slower boot times etc.

Which is absolutely fine, of course - we all decide where to spend our money. But there's a myth that Macs are much more expensive than Windows machines, which arises because people don't compare like-for-like specs. It's like arguing that a highly-specced bike is over-priced because you can get 'the same thing' in Tesco for £100.

 

[CopperBrompton]

[QUOTE 3373976, member: 259"]They integrate really well with Android devices and apps too. Just saying...[/QUOTE]
They do (and I did for quite some time mix-and-match), but it's zero-effort within the Apple ecosystem. Just tap in your Apple ID when you setup a device and you automatically have synced data, seamless handover of notes, documents, phone calls, texts, etc.