scattered technology news

Rene says:

The dell 3USB/FireWire 400, Mac 2USB/FireWire 400 AND 800! winner dell? WTF!
How much does the SSD COST?
Blueray drive COST?
Video Chat on the Mac is far superior to the dell.

It’s the software stupid. In the end you get the combination of OS X with the Apple hardware. With the dell you get a dell and Vista. lol

cl3m0ns says:

Sorry man but I think the MBP is the better deal of the two. Leapord is worth the extra $500.

Glen says:

You Mac guys are funny. Im not going to give away the vertues of the PC over the Mac. I will say; If you know what you are doing, in the right hands the PC “is” more powerful. The two machines in the review above are both so under-utilized by most people it’s a joke. Yea, I got my 200mph Corvette that I drive to work at 60.

mo says:

I am also thinking about these 2 machines. I think if XPS 1530 can run MAC OS 10.5, I buy XPS immedately. It is because the MAC OS upgrade is not free of charge for MAC user but it is free for PC user. Moreover, the price for XPS is just 2/3 of the MAC book Pro while I will use 4G ram. Futhermore, using Mac Book Pro running Windows that the nvidia driver is not running good. But I have to do C/C++/Objective C programming on MAC. So, if XPS can run MAC, I cannot find reason to buy MBP.

mo says:

Hi Tabu, sorry about that I forget tell you my programming background. I work for UNIX system for many years, say IBM S390, SGI Onyx, SGI O2 and MAC for me is just another unix. You are corrected that I have not fully used the MAC while I just use it for develop CG program. Execpt the SDK, I almost just use the terminal. In fact, for PC, I also just know how to use IE and CMD. So, I may cannot feel how bug of the OS while I don’t use the UI so much.

Gene says:

I just picked up my XPS1530 from DHL yesterday:
Nvidia 256MB 8600GT
802.11a/b/g
T9300
3GB
200GB shock sensor hdd
DVD RW
1680×1050 LCD
bluetooth
Vista Premium
extra power supply
4yr onsite/complete care/lojack.
How much? $1660 plus tax…(healthcare worker discount)

Can I play games with a MBP? Why I even purchased a new laptop to replace my Precision M60…Neverwinter Nights 2 for example…

The XPS is a gaming system…and why I purchased it…

Manu says:

let me correct the specs of teh XPS 1530. It doesn’t have a component video out, but it got a Gigabit NIC. I dint understand what’s this WWAN. I dont consider the fingerprint reader as a secuirty device. It is just an alternative for the Windows passwords.

And of course the Quality of the Mac Book Pro is far superior than the Dell XPS.

Edit: Let me add the wireless NC is 802.11A/G/N

John says:

Maybe people here would know the difference, but many I know just see is price and screen size. They have no idea what’s inside, what it does, and how one thing is better than something else. Same with desktops.

Yeah, I agree with you, many people are not computer literate.

Dan says:

Id say both options listed here are overpriced crap. Why? Because both use the NVIDA 8600 GT. Games? Are you kidding? That thing will be obsolete in less than a year. A good graphics card is more important than a super-fast cpu that moat people will never utilize, while the graphics card will usually be utilized to its max capacity. And graphics cards are used for more than just games… I bought a gateway P-6831FX for $1350 (compared to a $2000-$3000 macbook) that uses the newest 8800GTS card. It is BLAZING fast and more than triple as powerful as the 8600. You can even play Crysis at high settings (tough to do btw) and remember.. this is a sub $1500 laptop. The cpu may be 1.8 dual core, but it still beats the SHIT out of macbooks with obsolete graphics cards. Have fun wasting away your money on laptops that are already obsolete.

-Danny

Dan says:

So macbooks are not for games. They are not for business. They are for “pro software apps…” well i think that is a good point. as a film enthusiast i know that Final Cut simply can’t be beat. But don’t forget, that is an extra $1000. My point is the gateway laptop is much cheaper, and more well-rounded. Heck, it takes 4 screws to open up my ram, cpu, and hard drive in my gateway laptop, so replacing/upgrading these are a breeze. an upgraded cpu with an 8800 GTS should last at least 4 years and is still less than $2000. I guess it comes down to what you want your computer to do. Games and versatility with hardware with lower prices= gateway. If you want to get a mac simply to use mac-branded software, then by all means, buy one.

John says:

Hmm, I wonder if the thing I wrote just now got posted

John says:

Oh okay, I wondered why my message is not appearing, anyway since the MBP will cost me a fortune thats why Im waiting for the next generation of Intel processors to appear and get the previous generation MBP which is as cheap as a black MacBook. Now thats money well spent :D.

Vista is so bad that I cant imagine how many stuffs in my home wont work with it, stupid MSoft, release a product that is incompatible with everything unless you bought it after Vista is released. DAMN YOU!!!.

Melissa says:

I’m currently looking at both machines. I like that I basically get more disk space & ram for less money w/ XPS than MBP. However, I work on a PC for my day job which runs Windows XP and have had to load it up w/ all more than one anti-virus tool. And it seems each week I have several security fixes to download & install from Microsoft. I’m thinking by the time you factor in all the time & money spent simply trying to keep your machine operating safely you might as well have coughed up the cash for MBP. I have several Mac-loving friends who tell me they’ve never once installed any anti-virus software and have never had any security issues. I suppose my question is which one really gives you more bang for your buck when you factor in security? And if it matters… whichever I buy, XPS or MBP, will be used for more creative work, managing home & small biz finance stuff, and watching movies & tv… i’m not a gamer so I don’t need a gaming-specific system.

Luke says:

Personally I see both sides of the argument. It really just depends on what you’re going to use your computer for. I’ve been pretty impressed with what i’ve been hearing about MBP’s with their performance and graphics capabilities. I’m gonna be a college freshmen in the fall and I was seriously considering a MAC…until i saw the starting price of the MBP’s, and the macbooks have a 13 inch screen thats too small (for me personally). So I chose a XPS 1530 (ordered it monday). Upgraded to 200gigs @ 7200rpm hard drive, 4gigs ram, 8600 vid card, 1440×900 hd screen, and 4 year warranty w/ accident and theft coverage. So hardware is more than I could have imagined and I can always upgrade it to include Blue ray when the price drops a little. It has enough power for anything I probably will ever use at school and its got a good enough video card to allow me to run occaisional games with some pretty good performance. AND it looks awesome. Plus it would have cost $2400 but with dell’s sale and student discount i got it shipped @ $1597 after taxes. So all-in-all i’d say i’m gonna be pretty happy with my dell :)
~as for vista?…well…i’ll see about it after my computer comes. and if it sucks I’LL JUST INSTALL XP!(not that hard)

Geoffrey says:

Well, I was able to get a 2.4 Ghz MBP: for only $1611: New too!!! With my student discount! Apple rocks! When apple teams up with Harvard!

Aaron says:

Wow John! serious mac boy. You’re exactly the reason why people hate mac fans. I’ve got an intel core2 duo macbook (I share it with my bro) and a vista 64 ultimate (SP1) pc with just an athlon 64×2 processor.

I love using the macbook for web surfing and stuff because it boots up quick and is nice and clean looking but after using both leopard and vista regularly for about 6 months i have to say i just prefer using vista. (Plus leopard comes with no games. not even solitaire!)

Leopard is great but Vista really is much more “Powerful” You can do literally anything you want with vista if you know what you’re doing. You can get much deeper into the vista operating system than with leopard where it feels like you’re always kept on the service. I know a lot of people complain about vista being buggy but i haven’t had a single bug with sp1 and have never had a virus using vista period and I definately prefer the far wider range of software and hardware.

I think both opperating systems are good at what they’re designed to do but they are designed to do different things. Leopard is an unobtrusive surface for all your apps. Applications sit on the surface and play a greater role than the operating system. Thats why its so quick and slick because its not built to be changed. It is what it is and apple want to keep it that way.
Its nice and quick and doesn’t get in your way.
Vista is designed to let you taylor and customise <-(english spelling) it to your needs and plays a much bigger role in your PC experience than leopard and it has a kick-arse media centre, especialy if you have an xbox360 or any other media centre extender. Yes leopard has a good one too but not as good and you cant customise it with 3rd party apps.

Sorry if i’ve repeated myself a few times in here.

John says:

Oh yeah and Im a PS3 fan not a XBox 360 fan so I dont care about Vista Media Centre. Its just me, no offence

tomtom says:

Mac vs PC is kind of a crappy debate these days. You’re paying for the operating system. If you don’t like OSX, don’t buy a Mac. It’s that simple. Yeah there are some things OSX does better and there some things Windows does better, but they are pretty equal across the board.

macs suck says:

Macs suck. all of them suck. period. that will never change. always go with the dell.

lolwut? says:

Well, I got the MBP for the less weight and smaller footprint. This is important as I am a 13 years old(no bragging but ppl mistake me for a 18 year old online)that needs to bring his laptop to school everyday. I also got the MBP because of the larger VRAM option. 512 beats 256 no question :)

I have no use for an expresscard, fingerprint reader(I only need security from theft. Not that paranoid), blue ray(lolwut?) or solid state(limited writes). Although I would like an SD card reader in MBP for readyboost(I dont like a USB sticking out, I want a low profile =D)

Another big factor in me choosing the MBP is the cool software I can get. Examples are the apps that use motion sensors(LiquidMac, Neverball, Tunnel) in this catagory, there is also a cool app called iAlertU. iAlertU plays a big part is keeping your MB or MBP from being stolen. I have yet to see a windoze PC have these apps despite them having motion sensors on they’re HDs.

The following bit you might say I’m contradicting myself as a apple fan but I see little to no flaws in vista. All XP graphic drivers are available in vista and vista IS the same price as when XP came out. I remember when I was a kid(smaller kid…), that nobody would really touch XP and it was really buggy, people stayed with 2000 until SP1 was out. Vista is the old XP and will be the current XP at around SP2 or fiji. Vista has no major compatability issues that I know of, apple fanboys(no flamey pl0x) are judging vista on its status when it was in RC1, beta and initial release. But I still feel that MS didn’t do the best they could in vista, but you can’t blame them, You can’t have an extremely major and radical change in a windows OS without nuking backwards compatibility in the kernel.

I personally think Apple made a bad choice in the 13″ and desktop(talking about the mac pro, imac is a different story)area. You can get a cheaper deal for a 13″ with dedicated Go graphix compared to the macbooks crappy integrated. With mac pro, it might be cheaper(I know, wierd?) than similiar max performance desktops(alienware etc) but simple doesnt support many choices. With the alienware desktop you have a choice of up to 2 9800s in SLI when the best option in a mac pro is to get a 8800(the quadro is more expensive but doesn’t go with the gaming department).

@ John, I really appreciate your love for apple just like me, but I feel that half your statements are given without solid proof. 10 FPS difference in games? Now? Games run with a max of 5 FPS lowered in DX10, you can get normal performance like XP if you run a game in DX9 mode by right clicking and selecting “run as DX9″

@macs suck, GTFO my internet.

Woo…that was long…please take the time to read it =D I believe it should clear some stuff up. And excuse my grammar and vocab mistakes, I’m only 13.

John says:

Good writeup lolwut, but everyone says that you get an average of 10FPS faster on XP compared to Vista in gaming performance and this words came from gamers, not me!. Unless you tweak Vista but most users wont bother to tweak it.

Well I agree with you that the lower end macs are ridiculous, they give u integrated GPU where competitors are offering 8400M which is called crappy by gamers?. I wont comment on the MacPro cause its not meant for gamers, its meant for people who use it for professional stuffs (not games).

What I do believe is the MBP is priced and feature with the right stuffs cause most of its competitors who has 8600M GPU and has about the same quality as MBP is just slightly cheaper then the MBP (Dell not included).

I understand that some of my point that I made about where your money goes to is unsupported but honestly, how can Apple offer all the features in Leopard at the price of Vista HomeBasic?. So its kinda obvious that some of the money from those overpriced macs ended up in the R&D.

lolwut? says:

Also, gaming on OSX is PATHETIC. I’m a mac fan but OpenGL just doesn’t work the way Direct3D does. When I’m gaming, I reboot and use boot camp for vista.

Please don’t make me prove the above…there are too many examples of crappy mac gaming. It would only make people cry if I was to present proof. Plus, the message only allows 3 links per post.

John says:

Well I believe that Vista will be great once everyone upgrades their PC or there are proper drivers for it. Maybe SP1 fix it or maybe Nvidia drivers finally up to standard for Vista but really, go to forums and people will tell you gamin on XP is faster then on Vista. But hey, maybe that has changed with better Nvidia drivers or SP1.

I personally will play games using XP then finding a Mac version cause I just dont know why, each time the game manufacturers make a game for Mac, the AI tend to be less intelligent then the PC Version (oh yeah, I read this from some game website long ago, forgot which).

Vista is better then XP once there are proper hardwares for it, the people whom are complaining bout Vista sucks (like me) is cause I must replace my all in one printer which I rarely use and found it a waste of money just to get one because of Vista. Thats just me, some people dont like Vista cause they must spend quite a sum of their money to upgrade their softwares to be Vista capable.

I never recall Apple offering the MacPro as a gaming machine? I know Alienware made their PC for gaming but I never recall Apple putting a statement in their website about its a gaming rig (except for the benchmark).