Commend me a laptop

Ok I bought a fabulous Paul Smith bag from Harrods this weekend and now I want a smaller laptop/notebook for flyig etc.

Needs to be 120gigs plus for two ipods and two iphones also wireless and not over expensive.

as far as I know it can't be an applemac because my office stuff is windows and whilst I am away I will need to be taking some work with me.

Cheers

[Nottingham Nick]

You can run windows on a Mac, EGG - get a Mac Book. Go on, you know you want to. [;)]

[Darren Wheeler]

Dell do 13.2' starting at just under £600
Toshiba do a 13.3 for about the same
HP 12.1 for £650
PCWorld (hahaha) do an Advent 12.1 for £450

All pretty much of a muchness really

A MacBook 13.3 for about £800 and from what I can tell so far, Mac Office 2008 seems pretty compatible with Office 2007.

[mcmbenjamin]

Did the bag cost more than the laptop?

[HighFlyer]

Yup, I'm reading this and thinking that you need a Mac, EGG. You can either dual boot it to run Windows with Boot Camp or use Parallels/VMWare to run Windows as a Virtual Machine. Then you have the best of both worlds, and I can help you with the latter if you need assistance setting it up.

Thanks,
Sarah

Mac definitely. I run a MacBook pro with BootCamp and Parallels, I can dip into the BootCamp install via Parallels if I need to quickly or reboot into full blown Windows. Thankfully i don't have to do either very often. I spent 20 yrs using windows and moved over to Mac three years back when I gave up working in IT, what a revelation, I shall never go back!

I know everyone's advised me against this but I've decided it's such a good deal it's worth the risk.

Dixons Tax Free are doing a basic Mac book (120GB)for £594 or the next one up (160GB) for £705. In addition they're offering 12 months interest free credit. Overall this represents a good saving on the UK price (effectively the VAT has been knocked off) and means I don't have to spend my holiday money on it.

I'm picking one (the £705 version) up at T3 on Friday morning first thing so I'll have a bit of time to play with it in the clubhouse to check everythings OK before we go. I'll let you know if I have any issues.

Miopyk[8D]

The macbook air looks nice but the most expensive one say 64mb of memory and I don't understand how that can be worth more than the cheaper one with 120mb, whats that all about?

[Darren Wheeler]

The 64GB is solid state rather than a traditional rotating platter disc design.

Solid state means even lighter, less moving parts, lower power usage and less heat.

Originally posted by Darren Wheeler
The 64GB is solid state rather than a traditional rotating platter disc design.

Solid state means even lighter, less moving parts, lower power usage and less heat.

Will give that one a miss then my ipods got 60gb so 64gb for a lappy aint much. Or am I being a bit dim?

[Darren Wheeler]

bear in mind that the AirBook is aimed at the ultalight traveller. Form more, errr, hard core users the MacBook or MacBook Pro is much more suitable.

I'm looking to move my MacBook from a 120GB to one of the new 320GB WDC Scorpio Black drive so no storage issues here.

[preiffer]

Oooooh I like [y]

Shame it's a REAL b*tch to do a HDD swap on a MacBook Pro. [:(]

[Darren Wheeler]

Looking at about £100 too. Only on pre-order at the mo.

At least a MacBook is easier. After copy disc, unscrew, slide out. Repeat in reverse.

Not that hard on an MBP, lots of screws to undo to remove the top shell but once that's done it's easy enough?

Well the Paul Smith bag is happy, I got an advent 9' screen notebook with 80gigs for £279 from pc world already loaded with windows, perfect for travel and on line stuff it has no discdrive but not a problem really.

So having expected to spend £1600 ish on a small lappy now I am going to choose a Viao or an AppleMac for home. Can't decide which.

[honey lamb]

Originally posted by easygoingeezer
Well the Paul Smith bag is happy, I got an advent 9' screen notebook with 80gigs for £279 from pc world already loaded with windows, perfect for travel and on line stuff it has no discdrive but not a problem really.

So having expected to spend £1600 ish on a small lappy now I am going to choose a Viao or an AppleMac for home. Can't decide which.

Don't choose a Vaio. I have one and it was the worst decision I have ever made concerning IT. I deeply regret not having bought a Mac at the time and keep hoping this one will go up in flames or do something dramatic to justify the expense of replacing it. We only use it for travelling and its only redeeming feature is that it is lightweight and has been available when the hard drives on my PC and Aer John's laptop went belly up at various stages.

[Nottingham Nick]

Wait till you hear Decker's opinions on the Viao. [:0][:w]

[honey lamb]

Originally posted by Nottingham Nick
Wait till you hear Decker's opinions on the Viao. [:0][:w]

Probably the same as mine. God, I hate it.

Right I got a black macbook thingy 2.4gz and 250gb, as no damn shop or store actually keeps stock I have to wait till Tuesday for it.

When I was doing my 6th form at school I used to work at the co-op electrical, my instructions were to learn everything possible about thestock by taking home instruction books from the boxes, seems today not a single sales person has a frickin clue about the goods but is expert on divying up the commissions from extended warranties.

Been all day looking and not one shop had one in a box nor knew anything about apple.

I may be asking lots of dumb questions from you all.

first being does aol work on it and can me and my other arf both have our itunes accounts on it. I will be using this for travel as well as the little one.

[Darren Wheeler]

Sadly this is the state of the retail environment. Too may no-nothing trying to sell stuff that requires a little knowledge. Try walking into you local B&Q, ask a slightly complicated question or ask for something not on the shelves. The replies will make anyone who remembers proper hardware shops fall to their knees and weep.

[HighFlyer]

There are instruction booklets that come inside the Mac OS disc box (if i remember correctly - I'm one of those 'don't read manuals' people) so there shouldnt be a loose booklet in the box. You'll get the instructions when you get your Mac, though i appreciate it doesnt help you now.

Yes, you can both have your iTunes accounts on the Mac (i believe the various options were covered when you asked the question some time ago, but i cant find the thread). When you ask if it works with AOL, do you mean as in an Internet Service Provider? If so, then yes, it wont matter who you get t'internet from, it will work with a Mac or PC.

Thankis,
Sarah

Slightly off topic but- Does AOL work on anything? Since the Car Phone Warehouse servers came on line I have had nothing but trouble. Slow download speeds, capped downloads, trouble connecting, browser software causing incompatibility problems etc etc. Sky broadband now has my business.

Regards
Bryan

[mitchja]

According to this AOL help page there are only a few routers compatible with an Apple and AOL.

From what I remember AOL are different than other ISP's in that they use their own mail and connection protocols. I believe you have to install the latest version of AOL software too before you can connect unlike other ISP's that dont need any special software.

Regards

Actually the trick is not to install any AOL specific software and just connect using your normal web browser.

Regards
Bryan

[Scrooge]

Originally posted by Darren Wheeler
Sadly this is the state of the retail environment. Too may no-nothing trying to sell stuff that requires a little knowledge. Try walking into you local B&Q, ask a slightly complicated question or ask for something not on the shelves. The replies will make anyone who remembers proper hardware shops fall to their knees and weep.

Paul, fix your shop please, there's a good chap [y]

Originally posted by mitchja


From what I remember AOL are different than other ISP's in that they use their own mail and connection protocols. I believe you have to install the latest version of AOL software too before you can connect unlike other ISP's that dont need any special software.

Regards

[y]

Originally posted by sixdownkeepsafedepth
Actually the trick is not to install any AOL specific software and just connect using your normal web browser.

Regards
Bryan

[y][y]

Well close, the trick is to uninstall the pre-installed AOL software, do a reg cleaning then do a search, get something like filescrubber and use it to delete the folder that is hiding somewhere, then do another eg cleaning...come back in two months to make sure that the AOL folder has no reappeared...the same holds true for quicktime [}:)]