1.5k budget, Laptop or Macbook?

Spending $1000 on a laptop is poor resource management. Buy a cheaper laptop and accessories, invest the rest in something that will generate money for you like advertising or hosting, or an even cheaper laptop to use as a server so you can do your own hosting.

Go for a cheap dual core machine with 4gb ram. Spend under 600 and try to keep it under 400.
option 1) get a 32 bit machine and load xp on it.
option 2) get a 64 and ether delete whats on it and put 64 bit vista, or wait for 10. I hear windows 10 is more processor efficient.

suggestion, add a linux partition and dual boot. I suggest ubuntu. Also check out puppy linux.

Also buy:
a good external USB rive of twice the size of your laptop hd for backups and for storing large but unimportant files like movies. Make sure it is powered only from usb and does not need a brick to power it.
Two smaller pen drives for backing up your most important files. Keep one with your laptop and hide the other one in case your laptop gets stolen. Or you could use a web backup service if you dont mind people sniffing through your files.

If you travel much:
also consider a usb wifi stick that has an external antenna port an a small but good directional antenna.
an extra battery or even better a usb battery booster that could also be used for your cellphone or other stuff.

macbook pro, seems nicer

You want to spend 1,5k$ for a laptop where you will be writing articles on?
Dude get a 500$ machine and save the rest of your budget...

I've had both and used both in various capacities. There is a major difference in performance depending upon the functional use of these devices, but NOT for your desired/intended usage. They'll be equally functional for your intended usage, so you should go with whichever one you had decided to purchase prior to creating this post.

somedude1974 said:

Spending $1000 on a laptop is poor resource management. Buy a cheaper laptop and accessories, invest the rest in something that will generate money for you like advertising or hosting, or an even cheaper laptop to use as a server so you can do your own hosting.

Go for a cheap dual core machine with 4gb ram. Spend under 600 and try to keep it under 400.
option 1) get a 32 bit machine and load xp on it.
option 2) get a 64 and ether delete whats on it and put 64 bit vista, or wait for 10. I hear windows 10 is more processor efficient.

suggestion, add a linux partition and dual boot. I suggest ubuntu. Also check out puppy linux.

Also buy:
a good external USB rive of twice the size of your laptop hd for backups and for storing large but unimportant files like movies. Make sure it is powered only from usb and does not need a brick to power it.
Two smaller pen drives for backing up your most important files. Keep one with your laptop and hide the other one in case your laptop gets stolen. Or you could use a web backup service if you dont mind people sniffing through your files.

If you travel much:
also consider a usb wifi stick that has an external antenna port an a small but good directional antenna.
an extra battery or even better a usb battery booster that could also be used for your cellphone or other stuff.

Click to expand...

1st mistake: Suggesting a 32 bit laptop in 2015.
2nd mistake: Suggesting the holy grail of fuck ups that is Windows Vista.
3rd mistake: I don't even want to read the rest...

I got a Mac-book thought I'd like to, waste of money I paid for it. It's a month old, looks incredible, and even still have the box, and everything. I used it one time for 5 minutes to check Facebook.. I'm more of a windows person, but I like their phones. Think really hard if you want it, and shoot if you are interested I might sell you mine. Add me, on Skype, or something if you are still looking.

So, did you buy a MacBook Pro? lol

if you want to spent that amount of money then i can suggest MSI they have gaming series and pro series

tl;dr
- buy a high spec/high quality pc notebook, OR get a macbook air and install windows.

I'm a windows/pc guy, but I bought a macbook air (i7, 8gb, 500gb) and commited to using if for everything in 2015, so here's my 2c.

you'll be able to get all your work done just as easily on a mac as pc. functionally there's not much difference.

The Pros
- Awesome battery life. Will do 6+ hours if you don't run a million things at once.
- Light and boots super fast
- Great build quality
- Powerful enough to replace my desktop
- remembers things like multi-monitor arrangements so when you plug in again, everything works nicely.
- Fonts and colours are nice
- You can install windows on it and it runs great
- it's nice having a native bash shell with grep etc
- spotlight is cool, however search on osx isn't really comparable to windows search + everything.
- trackpad on my macbook air is very nice
- automator is neat
- forced consistency within apps, such as CMD-, for preferences is nice.
- You can get 1-2TB xsdc memory cards, which is a good way to expand the storage.

My next laptop will probably be a Dell XPS, but I've been very happy with the mac and would consider another one.

The Cons
- OS/X sucks and I hate it. I really wanted to like it, I tried!
yes it has some nice features I quite like, but it's frankly inferior to windows...
- OS updates are likely to cause you all sorts of strange problems. EG Elcapitan required me to spend a day updating apps like office, and it also broke/borked the scroll wheel on my mouse (wtf??)
- the UI is mostly hieroglyphics and tiny grey buttons
- no native support for ntfs
- 2 usb ports (with varying usb3 device support), no ethernet port
- connection to monitors is via thunderbolt, which you'll need an adapter for.
- excel on mac sucks, as does outlook I used mail.app and it wasn't too terrible.
- finder sucks (I use pathfinder)
- itunes is an abortion, as is quicktime.
- PDF export from office is awful.
- hardware support compared to windows is pretty hit and miss. On windows (8,10) things really do just work. Mac, it's 80% as good as windows.
EG.
- Plugging in my wifi super-antenna, makes my mouse stop working, and 10 minutes later the system will crash. Go figure.
- USB3 external drive doesn't work in usb3 mode, only usb2.

Since I installed win10 on the mac I've been much happier with it


To the guy who said spend $400.... wtf ?? you spend all your time on the machine working. It's the tool of your trade, buy the best you can afford.

Macbook you can allways run windows alongside mac os.

I have a MacBook, I use it for my cats litter tray. Sometimes get the feeling he does not even like shitting on it.

Personally will go for laptop...... unless you do a lot of designers stuff then go for mac.