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Resolved Question

Macbook Pro Alternative?

Nov 1, 2011 3:36AM PDT

Hey Folks!

Discussion is locked

FXTech has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Must be 2 or 3 models now.
Nov 1, 2011 4:10AM PDT

The problem as presented is your "requirements" call out the 15-inch Macbook Pro in it's first line. You repeat that in the last line.

How would anything else meet your requirements?
Bob

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Valid Concern
Nov 3, 2011 5:29AM PDT

Hi Bob,

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Next time. Fix that copy and paste.
Nov 3, 2011 5:54AM PDT
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If you want a gamer laptop. Many students do but won't tell
Nov 3, 2011 6:00AM PDT
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Thanks
Nov 3, 2011 10:32AM PDT

Sorry about the confusion :/

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Answer
You do know
Nov 1, 2011 10:54AM PDT

You do know that you can run Windows on a MBP right? Not just in a VM, but natively via Boot Camp.

We can agree to disagree about a PC being a better value, since most PCs have pretty shoddy construction in comparison to an Apple product (and I say that as a hardware tech), but why not just take the MBP specs and go see what you can find that is more or less equivalent from other vendors? If you go for an exact, 1:1 match of the basic specs, you'll probably find virtually every PC maker is more expensive than Apple. If you include the cost of your own copy of Windows, it's probably pretty close to a wash.

Now, IMO, if not Apple then your options are limited to Dell and Toshiba... Maybe Asus, but Asus is still so new to the game there's little long term data on any of their units. HP and Acer can battle it out for the quality toilet bowl crown without me needing to pay to subject myself to their garbage is my thought on those. And Lenovo has done a pretty fantastic job of running IBM's top rate PC business into the ground.

Dell has the benefit of being pretty liberal regarding their warranties. You can replace almost anything you want without voiding the warranty, just don't expect Dell to cover whatever part you replaced. They also have a repair system in place that comes close to rivaling Apple's in overall efficiency. Probably the biggest downside, is Dell's documentation is atrocious. You try and find a teardown guide, and assuming they've bothered to put one up, it's usually missing a few key details, or when you actually go to try and remove a part, it doesn't look even remotely like the picture in the teardown guide.

Toshiba isn't really a lot better, their repair infrastructure is pretty bad (I've had it take over a month to get something as simple as a replacement keyboard, but typical times are like 2 weeks, compared to 24-48 hours for Dell, and Apple having over 90% of parts dispatched and arriving next business day). The only real upsides to Toshiba is that they're pretty middle of the road quality wise, like Dell, and are probably a little cheaper than Dell.

That is at least better than Acer which doesn't tend to stock warranty parts, and will regularly just up and cancel a repair order without any kind of notice or reason given. They're sold cheap, and they're constructed even cheaper.

HP is big on trying to upsell you on their proprietary crap, like "drive bays" that only accept drives sold by them without some heavy modification. Their quality is usually pretty crap ever since the Carly Fiorina days, drivers are worse, but I understand their documentation is excellent. Don't have any real direct experience with their repair infrastructure, but HP is not a company known for moving quickly... On anything. Apparently in recent years they've improved from moving on geological time frames to a speedy glacial. You want a laser printer or graphing calculator, HP's your company. Pretty much anything else....