I'm considering a Toshiba, I've heard a lot of good things. I've been told with Sony you pay too much for the name.

Originally Posted by nila*

I'm considering a Toshiba, I've heard a lot of good things. I've been told with Sony you pay too much for the name.

Probably, but I love the turn off display button

I absolutely hate toshiba's. They feel weird when using them, and they look very.. boxy.

Originally Posted by Afzal

oh but the tonymacx86 iboot runs on pretty much ANY Intel PC.

Interesting. I shall investigate for the lulz.

wow this is turning into an HP thread. I dont have too many problems with HP but before there were comparisons between a macbook pro and an HP (~$900). There is no comparison. The quality of hardware is reflected in the price. You need to compare it to a performance laptop like a dell studio xps, or even better a thinkpad

Originally Posted by qwerty91

wow this is turning into an HP thread. I dont have too many problems with HP but before there were comparisons between a macbook pro and an HP (~$900). There is no comparison. The quality of hardware is reflected in the price. You need to compare it to a performance laptop like a dell studio xps, or even better a thinkpad

Okay, just for fun, lets compare.

MacBook Pro: 15 inch: $1849
-2.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor (lol)
-320GB 5400-rpm hard drive -Intel HD Graphics
-NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB GDDR3 memory


Now, lets look at a PC that could match/beat those specs:
Asus K52 Series: K52JC-X1 NoteBook:
-Intel Core i5, 2.26GHz
-500GB 5400-rpm hard drive
-nVidia GeForce 310M: 1GB DDR VRAM DEDICATED Card
-Price: $849.99 + $9.99 shipping

As you can see, the ASUS almost tied. Processor is *slightly* slower, but still extremely fast. Harddrive is larger, and graphics hard is much better, 1GB Dedicated!

Price difference is almost $1000!

Now, you decide. Oh, and keep in mind, the mac now uses an INTEL processor!

Originally Posted by nila*

I have no problem with my HP laser printer, I'm just saying that maybe their laptops aren't that great.



from this study: http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/S...ility_1109.pdf

That surprises me. I have an Asus N50Vn laptop. Touchpad sensor died, chassis is wobbling itself apart and my graphics card(or screen, cant pinpoint) cuts in and out on occasion.

I should have bought a Dell studio XPS, them things look solid.

Personally, I have to say it doesn't matter...

There is this notion that engineering requires laptops with graphics cards or else you wont be able to run the software. That part I found out to be complete bs. Maybe it applied a few years ago when laptops had low-spec onboard graphics, but not anymore.

I saw plenty of people work with a Athlon X2 systems with 2GB ram, and get through first year just fine. My bigger suggestion would be to get a monitor. It sucked ass working on solidedge on a 15" screen. If your low on cash, grab a used one...if you shop around you can pick up a 19" for around $70

Oh, and get a laptop with long battery life...doesnt mean get a mac, which is complete waste of money as your gonna need to run windows anyways, but get a PC with either a 9 cell battery or something that actually has long battery life.

I'm putting together a new system for next year (based on lessons learned last year) and heres what I'm getting:

Dell Inspiron 1464 with 9 Cell Battery...2.16 GHz Intel i3, 4GB Ram, 320 HDD, Onboard Graphics
19" Monitor

Costing me around $1100....in other words same price as a Macbook Pro

OR get a desktop with Core i7, 12GB of RAM, 2GB Nvidia 285 gtx, 1,5 TB of space for all that downloading, and a 24" monitor to spread out your part and assembly file on the same screen, allowing extremely easy bs-ing of your final project and it's measurements in 1c03!

try CCleaner to erase useless registries

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

Interesting. I shall investigate for the lulz.

I'm buying a DL DVD-R tomorrow to test this out.

I say, if your going to make the purchase, make it one that will satisfy you for atleast your university life.

Originally Posted by Afzal

I'm buying a DL DVD-R tomorrow to test this out.

Wow... this is amazing. I have the thing installed, and literally ALL of my hardware works :0. I would put it on my laptop, but unfortunately I have an AMD processor and an unsupported video card :(.

Now time to pirate the NTFS driver .

Protip: Try image the snow leopard ISO on to a USB drive/key instead of a DVD-DL. I wasted many disks trying to burn it without errors on different drives :p.

Any benifits to installing it?

Originally Posted by blackdragon

Any benifits to installing it?

Good response to people who justify buying a mac computer just because they think OS X > everything.

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

Protip: Try image the snow leopard ISO on to a USB drive/key instead of a DVD-DL. I wasted many disks trying to burn it without errors on different drives :p.

Thats because you have to mount/open the ISO, delete the file that prevents it from being burned, THEN burn it.