MacBook Pro

Actually I don't like the keyboard much. The keys on IBM (now Lenovo) feel more substantial when typing and I it's slightly wider that Apple. Also, I have a 'problem' with the keyboard not going to the edge of my notebook. It's definitely a nice notebook though.

Why the 100GB 5400RPM hard drive instead of the 100GB 7200RPM drive or the 120GB 5400? As an aside, yesterday I Boot Camped my 1.83GHz 15" MBP, installing XP SP2, the Norton suite to keep it safe, Firefox because IE sucks, MS Office because of some Excel macros that don't work in Excel for OSX, SAS and Stata for statistical work, and a bunch of Adobe stuff through my uni faculty license. It is by far the fastest Windoze computer I've ever seen. It starts up in only about twice the time my ca. 1/2001 500mHz TiBook loads Tiger. It opens Firefox in about 1.5x the time it takes the TiBook. Word, amazingly enough opens in about the same amount of time on the MBP Boot Camped into Windoze and the 500mHz TiBook running Tiger. Obviously, the MBP running what it was intended to run does these things much, much faster. For a Windows machine, I think that's pretty impressive. It also quite masterfully shows off the superiority of OSX, which makes a 5 year-old computer faster than a blazing fast Windows computer for many normal tasks. More to the point, as it's not really fair to compare ancient hardware running a modern OS to modern hardware running an obsolete OS, I showed a colleague and it performed those task faster than the brand new top-of-the-line Dell desktop tower he wasted his IT budget procuring. The irritants are that cmd-click doesn't work for right click, and I can't get my audio output to go into analog; it keeps flashing red.

Propaganda. Perhaps your criteria for "blazing fast" differs from mine, but I'd like to hear some actual specs if you are going to make these kinds of claims. (so I can tell you why you are mistaken) A "blazing fast" windows computer can open an XP install from power off in about 10 seconds. I don't see how boot camp running off an old mac is going to improve off that speed, seeing as it has to emulate BIOS right off the bat. I assume that your copy of XP has all the programs loaded at startup that come loaded on your buddy's Dell too... When you say a "top of the line" Dell, I assume that you are talking about the $5500 Dell XPS gaming computer w/ dual 3.4Ghz Intel cores, 1 terrabyte RAID array, and 4gb of matched RAM. If so, jeez, no wonder it takes a little longer to load, its a friggin behemoth of a system. Try putting a TB of disc space and a RAID controller inside your laptop, and get back to me if it affects your load time. If not, please rephrase and be more specific.

TS, please don't add nonsense to quotes. I'd really like to know how a 5 year-old PowerPC (G4) would run Boot Camp, an OS switcher for the modern Intel macs. The Boot Camped computer that was faster than a brand new Dell was my MBP. A more fair comparison for Windows against OSX is not running OSX on the MBP but on a five-year old laptop with 5 year-old buses (but admittedly a fairly modern - not SATA, but 5400RPM - disk and maxed out RAM) and a 500mHz G4. It is a fact OS startup and opening normal programs that are common to both platforms (Firefox and MS Word) occurs much faster on the ancient 500mHz G4 Titanium PowerBook running a modern OS (10.4.6) than on a brand new Superdell running an outmoded OS (XP SP2). Get over it. I don't know the exact spec of said Dell, except that it has two dual-core Xeon (not Pentium) processors inside and that on at academic departmental budget it was around $3600 with two 19" (I think - could be 17") Dell monitors. It's a machine purchased for real work (econometric modeling and that sort of thing) and not for frittering away time blowing up shit on a screen, so I assume it has gobs of disk and RAM.

I apologize for misreading your post, but if you wouldn't have worded it so poorly, perhaps we wouldn't have had this problem. Both the original post and the above quotation are very confusing. Perhaps its something to think about in the future. A fact according to who? I haven't seen any recent research being done on five year old Macs v.s. a top of the line Dell. I think that maybe you are a tad bit biased. I'm not trying to defend Dell or anything, but I frankly think you are being a little bit careless with your terminology. SuperDell indeed. Ok, first of all, what you are describing sounds like a workstation/server type PC. Far from being a "top of the line Dell". It being expensive does not make it faster. In fact it isn't designed to be fast. They are designed to crunch volume data and manage servers. So your comparison is faulty. And yes, it probably has quite a bit of disk space and I'd assume a fair amount of RAM. One of which slows it down, and one of which can potentially speed it up if it uses the RAM in a configuration condusive to speed. (which it probably doesn't) Anyone who knows anything about computers knows that the "top of the line" when it comes to speed and performance is going to be in the gaming computers arena. That is the forefront of technology because THAT IS WHERE THE MONEY IS. Your condescention aside, I would actually like to see your five year old mac vs a modern computer built for speed, running XP. I think it would be a lot closer than you imagine. Price wise too...

I don't think it's apt to compare a home-type computer as such an Apple laptop mostly is--despite its Pro addendum-- with somewhat niche computers like for specific gaming purposes, which are usually custom-built, as I understand it.

And some of us have better things to do than waste our lives testing computer speeds on the latest fantasy or shooter games. Like posting on here.

Spend the extra money and get some protection for your laptop, the new ones don’t take as much physical abuse as the old ones. Also, it probably goes without saying but get a two button mouse.

Many of the better ones are...Dell's top of the line XPS is halfway decent for being a Dell, though a bit on the pricey side.

I don't think its fair, or realistic, to compare a 5 year old MBP against anything. I'm just trying to clarify the point that in no way can it smoke a "top of the line" (IE Gaming) Dell by the margins advertized. I didn't make the comparison, I'm just debunking SGladwell's.

I don't think its realistic to compare it to a server either, while probably being a very nice business machine, its not going to be as quick as the Mac. Then again, there aren't any macs out there that can process the raw data and bandwith that a quad xenon system can. So I guess its even.

Slow and steady wins the race. I wouldnt sacrafice reliability for upfront speed. Windows wont have anything nearly as stable until project LongHorn or whatever their calling it these comes out.

Its called "Vista" and who knows how its gonna work out. I'm excited because its pretty cool looking, but not as "cartoonish" as OSX. Most people are going to need to upgrade their computers to run it at full features, and there have been grumblings about the new DRM/HDCP standards, but one of the next versions of MacOS is going to have them too. Either that, or there will be no Hi Def content for Apple. So... Microsoft is just ahead of the curve in the "screwing people over department". Anyhow, Vista looks cool. I've played around with the BETA a little, and its actually been ready for a while, but MS has been delaying it for like six months while the hardware manufacturers catch up to it. Supposedly its startup is supposed to be much faster than XP.

Are you a Beta tester or did you re-appropriate a copy? From what I've heard it's the resource management capabilities that are the showstopper. I was temped to run a copy on PC Anywhere but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. As far as the GUI, you have to admit it does borrow from the Mac OS. Is Vista still on schedule to come out late this year? Personally I wouldn't get a MBP until v.2 (computers have given an aversion to anything v.1) and the new OS comes out mid 07, Marmot or Shrew or whatever jungle cat its going to be named after.

My roommate has a quad-processor Mac, with 8GB memory. He is a video editor so it comes in handy for him, although the most recent video editing software can only take advantage of 4GB (though I believe the next version of Final Cut Pro is going to be able to use 8GB of memory). I don't have numbers to compare - just pointing out that Apple does make industrial-level computers. At this point, the idea of comparing numbers between systems is kind of a moot point. The OS's operate so differently - the load times, when they exist, are in different places, so it would be difficult to compare them objectively. My Mac boots up rather slowly, but that's because I've been lazy about trimming down my activated fonts. To the OP, grats on your new machine. I'm jealous. On Windows Vista, I think it's alright. It's much prettier than XP, which is nice, but it still feels very math-y and technical in how it operates, opens programs, loads files, etc., to my dismay. I'm surprised at the comment about it being less cartoony than Mac OS X. I suppose you're referring to the bubbles and more subdued colors and styles... however I find the stylings to be kind of immature-looking. It reminds me of Xbox... a lot, so I disagree on those terms. Again, however, I do like it better than XP, which feels *incredibly* flat, despite it's over-use of bevelling, shadows, opacities, etc.