[ale] Macbook Pro 15" or Thinkpad W500?

Atlanta Geek atlantageek at gmail.com
Fri Jan 2 10:11:28 EST 2009


I had a G4 ibook that that I traded with a friend for one of the first
mac minis that came out. (I lucked into it early). The G4 died this
past summer and that is after 3.5 years of me using it constantly and
my newborn (now 3) standing on it anytime I left it on the couch.
I loved the laptop but what killed me about it was paying the $120 tax
to get new versions of the OS. It had 10.3 and when 10.5 came out I
bit my tounge and bought that.

I wanted to get a new laptop and have been interested in the using
GPUs for data analytics (eg CUDA or OpenCL) since mac was suppose to
support OpenCL. The MacBook selling at $1300 only had 256MB  Nvidia
9300M card. I then asked about the next version of the OS (it is to
include OpenCL) and they told me that I would have to pay for the
upgrade even if it came out within the next 30 days.

Screw it I'm tired of paying for annual OS updates. I bought an ASUS
X38V that is only sold at Best Buy. for $900 I got a solid laptop with
bluetooth, Wireless N and a 1GB Nvidia 9600M. Ubuntu installed fine.
And yes I dual boot but only for Adobe Flex IDE.

I'm a cheap bastard. I normally get used laptops. (first new computer
in years). Mac is great if you dont mind the re-occuring fees

On Thu, Jan 1, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Doctor Who <whodoctor at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm in the market for a new laptop and am considering either a Macbook
> Pro 15" with OS X Leopard or Thinkpad W500 with Linux.  I'm really
> torn!
>
> I know several on the list have Mac notebooks, so I'm looking for some feedback.
>
> At this point, I see the following advantages for the MacBook:
>
> * Very well polished user interface
> * Support for a lot of commercial software
> * Good support for iPods (which I have) and iPhone (which I may get)
> * Good support with my corporate environment (Exchange server, Juniper VPN)
> * Machine is aesthetically pleasing and light weight for 15" machine
> * I like the MobileMe synching capiblity to keep calendars and such together
> * You can install Linux on the Macbook, but can't install OS X on the Thinkpad
>
> What I don't necessarily like with the Macbook:
>
> * Price (about a grand more than the similarly spec'd Lenovo Thinkpad
> W500)..ouch!
> * Being a Linux guy I feel a little odd going with Mac OS X
> * Not as much software available for the Mac (I hear Fink doesn't work
> all that well / poor stability)
> * Not as much 'control' of the OS as you get with Linux & proprietary hardware.
>
> So what are the thoughts on the list?  How do the Mac laptop owners
> like theirs?  If you considered a Mac and didn't get one, why not?
>
> Thanks all!
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> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>



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