Laptop recommendations

[RogerS]

Well, having used macs for years as part of my job, I have to say i find them a PITA to be honest!
I have a macbook laptop for work and it is unbelievably slow, if I have a 'Word' document open, email and a preview window open to check a photo , then try and open an internet window, I may as well make a cup of tea and drink it while I wat for it to decide to open the window.
If I was using high processor stuff like Paintshop or Quark/Indesign I could understand it, but these aren't processor hungry programs.
I think Macs aren't all they are cracked up to be personally, the software is unbelievably expensive, and as a format, overhyped. Having worked for about ten years in an industry where the format is allegedly more stable than PC's, i've seen crashes on a regular basis, so not quite the be all and end all as is being made out.
Could be that one mac is unlucky, but when you have colleagues having similar situations rather regularly, not quite the best thing since sliced bread in my opinion...

How much RAM have you got inside it? Which version of the OS are you using? Very very rare for the Mac OS to crash unless you're running a program that is unstable.

 

[andy king]

hi Roger,

It's OSX and has 512mb ram. Not a huge amount by todays standards, but I never use any high end graphics programs that eat the memory, so having Word, email and an internet window should be well within its capabilities, but it's like watching paint dry if I try to open something else. A simple database for instance takes an age. Nothing else running in the background such as wallpaper screen or flashy screensavers
On a similar spec PC I have no problem with speed issues, practically instantaneous when opening multiple applications that aren't memory hungry.
As for crashes? Back when I worked in an office with people doing Quark/Photoshop applications and there would be plenty of cursing as the machines froze at inopportune moments. Could be memory issues, but these were top spec at the time.
They look good, but not quite the answer to everything, a decent PC is certainly good enough to match a mac and better it in my experience, I've had a PC laptop for work as well as a Mac and I found the PC far quicker...
Viruses are a different matter though!

cheers,
Andy

 

[RogerS]

hi Roger,

It's OSX and has 512mb ram. Not a huge amount by todays standards, but I never use any high end graphics programs that eat the memory, so having Word, email and an internet window should be well within its capabilities, but it's like watching paint dry if I try to open something else. A simple database for instance takes an age. Nothing else running in the background such as wallpaper screen or flashy screensavers
On a similar spec PC I have no problem with speed issues, practically instantaneous when opening multiple applications that aren't memory hungry.
As for crashes? Back when I worked in an office with people doing Quark/Photoshop applications and there would be plenty of cursing as the machines froze at inopportune moments. Could be memory issues, but these were top spec at the time.
They look good, but not quite the answer to everything, a decent PC is certainly good enough to match a mac and better it in my experience, I've had a PC laptop for work as well as a Mac and I found the PC far quicker...
Viruses are a different matter though!

cheers,
Andy

Hi Andy...you don't say which version on OSX (Tiger? leopard?) ...but anyway 512Mb is way way too low IMO to run those programs. It's the programs that are the culprit as they are very memory intensive and if you don't have enough RAM then the poor old Mac (or PC) spends all its' time paging stuff in and out of the hard disk...but then you probably knew this!

 

[andy king]

OK, just checked it Roger, it's OSX 10.4.11, which is, I think, Tiger?
While checking this via the Apple menu, I clicked on the 'Mac OSX software...' link, third down on the menu, which decided to open the Apple website.
Having the Safari icon open but minimised in the tray, along with email and 'Word' (all minimised, nothing else open) it took 53 seconds for the Mac to decide to actually implement te instruction and open an internet window. PAINFULLY sloooow!
Had it had to boot the program first I could maybe understand it, but not when the program is already booted and idle in the dock.
I wouldn't say 'Word' email or Safari are massive drawers of memory, especially as they are idle in the dock, not open and running, and its this where I think the Mac is poor. An old home PC has an identical memory spec and fastish processor and it leaves the Mac for dead on similar processes, hence my negativity towards the mac as a platform.
According to Microsofts site, 512mb ram is more than enough to run Word 2003, and should be equal to opening a simple non graphic database alongside it and have email and internet idle but loaded without running at snails pace when you need to access it for a simple search surely?
As I say, my old PC, running XP can open Word, internet, email and a few other simple progs including a viewer for digital pics without any seeming slowdown in speed or ability to open and access the programs at the same time when required. My Macbook can't cope with simple wordprocessing, email and basic internet using the same amount of memory without slowing dramatically if I try to open another simple database alongside it, even when the others are docked.

cheers,
Andy

 

[Smudger]

Andy - have you tried Repairing your Disk Permissions? It's the equivalent of the old Rebuilding the Desktop trick. In some way which was once explained to me it stops the machine being constipated...

Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility > follow instructions to repair.

See if it makes any difference, but I think you need more memory, though I must say that I can run quite a bit (Firefox, Word, Photoshop plus others like Preview, a French dictionary and stuff) before I notice a slowdown. I only have 512k on this laptop.

 

[RogerS]

Andy - you can also open Activity Manager where you can see which programs are hogging the CPU, amount of disk activity, where the RAM is going etc. Your macbook is very atypical in performance. You should see something like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Activity_Monitor_Screenshot.png


Also how much free disk space do you have? That can have a major impact on performance if you have very little spare.

And repair permissions as suggested.

Do you let your maintenance scripts run during the night?

Also zap the PRAM.

Maybe we need another thread to stop hijacking this one :lol:

 

[mr]

It does rather sound like your mac has a problem somwhere Andy, the performance you descrive ould be unacceptable regardless of brand.

Meanwhile back on topic here's a brief comparative review of desktop replacement laptops.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/16/BUO11190F7.DTL

Cheers Mike

 

[andrewm]

My Dad just bought a Dell M1330 - having similiar requirements to your wife:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/produ ... redirect=1
Quite good value and pretty well reviewed - they do one with a bigger screen too.
Cheers
Gidon

Mine arrived last week and it does everything I want and sounds like it meets your wife's specification. I got the red one by the way but also available in blue or black. The LED backlight makes the screen very visible.

I got mine at nearly half price from a guy who sells via eBay but who I know from another forum. If you are not too bothered about specific I can recommend him. Search for RogerAlpine.

Andrew