Buying a new computer - or a Mac?

[dave byrd]

For me i think PC's are much better value (bang for buck as they say) over MACs.

Excluding monitor, keyboard, mouse and wireless card which i already had, I've built an Intel core i7 machine with 6GB DDR3 RAM, an ATI 6870 1GB GFX card and a 1TB hard drive card for just over £700. this price also includes the case, power supply, DVD writer ect.

What would £700 quid get me Mac wise?

[Machetero]

Asus's build quality is very good. Sure, they don't make pretty laptops like Apple... But that's design, not quality.

In terms of buid quality I mean engineering. It's super ugly (not looks) at the moment for both Taiwaneese tigers - ASUS and ACER. Just try and disassemble couple of their machines and take a look on bizarre internals.

I know what I'm talking about becasue my elder brother worked for both of them (is still is a managing director for one of them here), so I've seen plenty of their engineer semples (netbooks, tablets, ultraportables, normal notebooks). They are OK and even good price-quality wise.

But:

1) sound (especially in portable models);

2) cooling system;

3) touchpads;

4) battery life (much better in 2011)

were just crappy.

I owned Fujitsu Siemens and Sony VAIO notebooks through 2000th and in 2009 decided to buy a new one. Considered latest SONY VAIO 13" Z model, but it was too expansive and battery was very loose (in a premium portable, bloody hell). Got myself 2009 unibody Macbook Pro 13" (never ever worked on Macs before) paying 30% less and never ever regreted it.

Everything just worked - OSX and Win XP (dual book with Bootcamp), webcam, internal speakers, touchpad (the best in the market, no need to connec mouse), battery life, outlook, office, photoshop and corporate programms they all just worked in numerous business trips.

Sold it to a friend of mine this fall and the notbook had 85% of initial battery capacity (after more than 2 years of heavy usage).

In the very same period of time I had corporate Dell Latitude (oldish 2008 or 2007 model, 14") and it was a robust minimalistic beast that worked really well(XP installed). Now I have a corporate 12" HP - nice design, etc, but works quite sluggish with Win 7 installed.

[alexyfoot]

Bear in mind this is a year old, that the survey may be commissioned with conflict of interest in mind, that this can vary widely from country to country, that not all makers will make the sort of laptop you are looking for, and that reliability isn't always the best marker: http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/S...ility_1109.pdf

This is study is OK, but it is not entirely correct in terms of its evaluation of actual products. For example, it would be good to see a breakdown of the figures by different class of laptops for each brand - for example failure rates of Asus in Gaming, Proffesional and Entertainment (and the same for all brands). Such a survey will inevitably hurt Acer for example who sell mainly cheap Aspire who of course are more likely to fail over time than high end machines, thus helping the mode prestige brands who sells stuff like VAIOs, which are sell a bigger proportion of high-end machines than cheap entertainment version. I also want to see Samsung's results in it, so far I have seen next to no major general complaints about their laptops on the internet and I have no problems with mine 2 so I expect them to rank well.

Macherato - I hate ASUS's and Acer's low end products, too. ASUS's entertainment series overheated and had battery life issues (even had one and did not enjoy the experience), no idea if this is still on but their high-end products are very good. No surprise about the Lattitude, great machines. Btw, nothing wrong with the sound on ASUS as far as I know...don't know what you mean, they work with Altec Lansing and B&O for the different models and produce above-average sounds in my opinion.

Dave Byrd - nothing They start from 900 I think