18 replies to this topic

[maineman]

Even with 2 gigs which VISTA needs, you'll still crash. When you add 2 gigs to a quality laptop, you'll be getting up near 800 to 1000 bucks (cheaper ones can be had). A basic macbook for a kid costs around that much and never crashes. If your kid wants to spend his/her days playing High Def video games, he would be better off with windows... but you don't want that, right? Better off buying him an xbox or WII for games and a macbook for "life" mm

[OEXCHAOS]

Or more likely to endlessly pm and text: "IDK my BFF JILL" and to get around your porn blocker.

You can block porn?



M

[ed rader]

I have been a computer geek my whole life. Tested a prototype for IBM in the 6th grade (1965). THey were big in my home town. Took FORTRAN programming in college, learned APL, COBOL,etc. Bought an IBM XT (still have it) for a gazillion dollars with a green screen. Was a DOS/Windows man all the way... until VISTA, which put me over. It stinks stinks stinks....

Got a sweet little 13 inch MAC book, for home use... word, Browsing, SKYPE, email, instant chatting with the kids and family around the world. Open the top, its on, and works. Barttery lasts forever. No Freeze ups, nada, zip...

Do yourself a favor and get a Macbook.

Or an HP with XP on it, NOT vista...[color=#FF0000]

mm

how you do dat? when i looked recently the only company offering XP machines was dell, and only certain models.

i ended up with a 14" gateway that i really like. 1 gig RAM and an excellent screen. i use it for internet and to store raw files (camera) when i'm outta town and as a back-up to my PC.

since this computer is for a 13-year-old kid i'd recommend a similar machine over the esoteric...i paid $550 for the gateway and i really like it .

ed rader

Edited by ed rader, 10 October 2007 - 11:24 AM.

[OEXCHAOS]

Even with 2 gigs which VISTA needs, you'll still crash. When you add 2 gigs to a quality laptop, you'll be getting up near 800 to 1000 bucks (cheaper ones can be had). A basic macbook for a kid costs around that much and never crashes.

If your kid wants to spend his/her days playing High Def video games, he would be better off with windows... but you don't want that, right?

Better off buying him an xbox or WII for games and a macbook for "life"

mm

I can't speak to the mac. Many love em. Fine. Compatibility is probably important here. What I can say is that I've run a Vista machine on 1 gig and it ran fine. A bit slow from time to time, but I like lots of stuff running at one time and some are cludgy resource hogs. I NEVER had a crash, running for a week at a time between reboots. That's with a number of USB connections, too. I didn't want VISTA, but now that I have it, I have to say it's better than any prior windows, especially when properly udated.

One big recommendation. Get an external hard drive. I got a tiny 40 gig drive for something like $39 bucks. NIIIICE. I just grab everything every day and dump it on there. I can work from it. If I lose my laptop, I have everything right there. I don't "do backups" I just copy everything I use to the drive in one fell swoop, and get a cuppa joe. When I'm back it's done.

Cheap insurance.

M

[eminimee]

I have been a computer geek my whole life. Tested a prototype for IBM in the 6th grade (1965). THey were big in my home town. Took FORTRAN programming in college, learned APL, COBOL,etc. Bought an IBM XT (still have it) for a gazillion dollars with a green screen. Was a DOS/Windows man all the way... until VISTA, which put me over. It stinks stinks stinks....

Got a sweet little 13 inch MAC book, for home use... word, Browsing, SKYPE, email, instant chatting with the kids and family around the world. Open the top, its on, and works. Barttery lasts forever. No Freeze ups, nada, zip...

Do yourself a favor and get a Macbook.

Or an HP with XP on it, NOT vista...

mm

I bought my son one a few months ago....the other great thing is.....it takes 5 mins to buy one.....You don't get the other sales pitches for spy ware protection or antivirus protection. Walk in...walk out.

[zman]

I have been a computer geek my whole life. Tested a prototype for IBM in the 6th grade (1965). THey were big in my home town. Took FORTRAN programming in college, learned APL, COBOL,etc. Bought an IBM XT (still have it) for a gazillion dollars with a green screen. Was a DOS/Windows man all the way... until VISTA, which put me over. It stinks stinks stinks....

Got a sweet little 13 inch MAC book, for home use... word, Browsing, SKYPE, email, instant chatting with the kids and family around the world. Open the top, its on, and works. Barttery lasts forever. No Freeze ups, nada, zip...

Do yourself a favor and get a Macbook.

Or an HP with XP on it, NOT vista...

mm

I bought my son one a few months ago....the other great thing is.....it takes 5 mins to buy one.....You don't get the other sales pitches for spy ware protection or antivirus protection. Walk in...walk out.

Thanks to all very much for your time...a big help indeed...Leaning towards the hp, mac for now...tanks again:)

[denmo83]

You can find good deals here:

http://www.dealcatcher.com/

[Affirmed]

I have to agree with mm. I bought my daughter a macbook in August. With student discount (she's a student) was only $999 with free HP printer, and Free Ipod. Nice deal I thought if they still offer it. New Operating system will be able to run windows but you will have to reboot and choose operating system. The macbook reboots in no time maybe 15 or 20 seconds. Unlike the forever rate of windows. I added VMWares Fusion and can run MacOs and Windows simultaneously. It's really cool. I use it as a back up when my laptop needs repair. And mm is right it never crashes, at least not yet. Good Luck I just went through the same thing and did a bit of research. Read up on Walt Mossberg's columns he finalized my opinion.

[qqqqtrdr]

What applications does your son want to run? This in itself would determine what laptop to get. A good used one with XP - Pentium 4 Mobile or Centrino 1GB of RAM and Wifi should run about $300.00. This would be a good all around base. Mac notebooks are great. They come up great, fast, superior operating System. Less compatibility with games. Better notebook for multimedia applications etc... Vista is a hog on resources. If you need Vista, buy a new notebook with at least 2 GB of memory and dual-core. Make sure the internal graphics card is 512 MB ( although 256MB will do ). There are many laptops with Vista for Sale with 512 MB or 1 GB of memory that are low end. Don't buy those. They can barely run Vista, and they will be slow. Barry