This is exactly how I feel. Owning other apple products (ipods) their customer service is fantastic and not from India (damn dell :mad). My limited use on friends Apple laptops and the Apple desktops at school has been great. I just want to make the best and most educated decision.

Possibly the answer. Anybody here run OS X on a windows laptop/desktop? This could be a very interesting option.
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I've seen it on netbooks.

There was a thread recently (within the past 3 months) in the GD about it.
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FWIW, Gateway support is still in the US - it has never left the country AFAIK.


Yeah, toyed with it a few years ago. Royal PITA. Simpler to just buy a Mac and run bootcamp if thats what you want (not as cheap, but much less headaches). Maybe things have gotten better since then but still not worth it to me.
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Posting from a Dell Mini 9 running a fully patched, retail, vanilla version of OS 10.5.8 Leopard. :-)
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any complaints? I kinda want more details then that, please :-)
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None. It does what it does. It's a netbook, so small screen, no optical drive, not a super-powerful computer but it's great for surfing the web, email and it is incredibility portable. I will say that OS X runs much better on this than XP or Linux (Ubuntu) did.

There are other machines that will run OS X but none as seamlessly as the Dell Mini series.
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Something no one has mentioned---didn't I read here on CA that Apple won't work on computer's owned by smokers as they consider the smoke residue a "bio hazard"?
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Get yourself a MacBook Pro and you'll never look back. Computing heaven! :-)
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Your opinion entirely, not fact. You may feel having a high powered laptop is waste, but I don't. And I don't consider my laptop a disposable asset, my netbook maybe, but not a laptop that cost over 1k. Maybe when the day comes that i'm making JE3146 money i'll look at it differently, and a grand won't mean so much to me lol. And netbooks are great, but too small and underpowered to do serious work.

My best advice is to go to a Best Buy or some other place that has demo machines and play with a win7 machine. It sounds like you already know macs to some extend, but if not go hit up the kiosk in Best Buy or your nearest apple store. Try them both out, weigh the costs, and pick what you like. I use a mac and a win7 pc everyday, and my netbook runs linux. Each has a different use, but I can't say that I like one over the other. Each has things I like and dislike about it, it just boils down to personal preference.
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I would say go with a Dell, or a Toshiba, bc if you decide to later on down the road you need a better grafics card or processer you can change it out with the Toshiba, no other lap top company is doing that yet. and it will cost you about the same as a Apple
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I do lots of stuff, video and photo editing, play games, overclock, build my own systems, all that sort of stuff.
I run Windows XP on all my stuff.
I've been a windows developer partner since '99. Vista sucked ass from day one.
I just got done with Windows 7, and the DRM issues were never-ending.
If I ever changed operating systems from Windows XP, which I probably never will until the hardware runs past it, then I'll look at Leopard or Linux.
I'm pretty much Bill Gates'd out.
I have never for a second considered a Mac, because it meets none of my needs.
In the future, it may. The tricycle/motorcycle representation pretty much says it all.
Add to that Mac is overwhelmingly overpriced, and it's a tough call.
It really depends who you are and what you're willing to learn.
My only issue now is Digital Rights Management. I don't want an OS that doesn't let me do what I want to do the way I want to do it. Apple is free of that crap.
I think Apple is headed in the direction I want to see happen for me.
Windows isn't.
Google is coming.
I'm glad I don't have to make your decision, Christos.
Honestly, you can't go wrong either way for what you want to do, regardless of what fanboi's like myself might say. Buy what makes you happy. You'll be happy with it. :-)
I'd stay away from the airbooks with no optical drive though. You'll have to drag around a sidearm dvd/cd burner, and that'll suck. Big time.
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Decisions, Decisions ugh!! :-)

I might just wait until my current laptop really runs into the ground. Perhaps by then Apple will come out with something new and Windows 7 will have some more reviews/be more stable. I appreciate the help. Keep it coming :-)

I'll probably take whatever money I get for the laptop and buy cigars :-)
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As long as you are not doing anything taking significant advantage of the onboard video processing primarily new graphically intensive games you can run Windows in an emulator like Vmware Fusion or Parallels and have the best of both worlds simultaneously without having to boot into bootcamp. Many of the games you can run on boot camp. Essentially anything but the most high end games. You can also run a linux virtual machine on either of the emulators as well.

If money is not an option Macs tend to be more future proof than PC's. Meaning they last longer before they are obsolete. My wife is still using a five year old MacbookPro and for photo editing, internet, email, documents etc... 95% of what she does on a computer it is holding up fine with just a memory upgrade. We did end up upgrading her machine only because I had one come to me through work.

If money is a concern pc's definitely are better bang for buck. Also for people used to windows there is no reason to retrain them to a new OS.

There is not a "right" answer just whatever works for you.
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:-) if only you knew how much money I make right now :-) (I'll give you a hint.. I'm a student)

In my career, a laptop is a tool, so I treat it as such. I apologize if my view like that offends, but it's no different than a toolbox to a mechanic.

In regards to serious work that depends on the work. I can do more with a command line than most can do with a GUI.

Command lines don't need much horsepower :-) ... typically.. but if that's the case, I'll utilize my server for processing power.

But it will all boil down to your needs of a laptop, which I understand.. but from my point of view and my opinion. That's what a laptop is and should be capable of. Heck I find gaming on a PC overrated now as well. I'll take a console, a comfy couch and a large flatscreen over a desk chair that I sit in far too much as it is already.
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This is probably the best decision. I don't think there will be much debate about that.
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Agreed. Emulators have the convenience of access without rebooting - in my case I need to run AutoCad and Solidworks so I prefer the performance of Windows 7 in Bootcamp.
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Personally I don't get this. If I needed CPU/RAM intensive Windows only apps I wouldn't buy a Mac. Please give me an example of someone needing a Mac only app for their Windows box so bad that they dual boot.


I expect nothing but crickets because so few apps actually exist.


I will continue beating the Windows drum

BTW...resistance is futile you will all be assimilated.
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I utilize a lot of UNIX programs with the comfort of a stable OS that I don't have to tinker with (Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, but it can be a pain sometimes).

In addition to all my programs, a native coding environment for me to run just about any script or compiler I need, and also I have access to the microsoft office suite, which is far and away better than Open Office.

It's everything I need to get the job done.... which the exception of a graphical SPICE tool... but I can remote desktop into a Vista PC and utilize LTSpice if I need to run graphical simulations.
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Well, I currently have Macs so the best option was to get Windows 7 so I could run those programs on my current machines. For a new purchase, I would still get a Mac because for 90% of what I do (graphic design, audio and video editing, etc.) Macs are just more pleasant to use. So far Windows 7 seems stable but my previous experience with Windows (always had PC laptops for work) was that it's glitchy and simply required to much attention. As Jordan put it, it's the "comfort of a stable OS".

:-) In the overall scheme of things Mac users barely show up on the radar. Why do Windows users care so much about us?
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No no no. :-)

Comfort of a stable OS in comparison to a Linux distro that you have to tweak to your needs. I find no issue with Windows as a stable OS, but I keep my Windows OS Stable.

I love Windows and I use it often. But for the sake of the tools I need to accomplish my scholastic tasks on campus or at home. The Mac OS X provides a more stable experience to what I would have to do to Linux to make it run similar tasks.

For everything else, I use a PC, though lately I find it annoying to sit at my desk, so I often just sit on my couch with the Mac. I wouldn't call that biased, because if the laptop ran Windows, I'd use it too. I just like the couch :-)
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