PC or Mac?

[Therogen]

Well right now i'm in my first year of Art College and I will eventually need a laptop. So this brings me to my question: Which one would be better? I will be doing illustration, graphic design, advertising and character design on it so if anyone would just write some pros/cons of each then that would be very helpful and thanks for taking time from your busy days.

~Therogen

[[DD]mARTinK]

I had the same question a short time ago.

And before you answer this question for yourself, you have to think about a following things:

1. Do you realy need this notebook only for work?
If you do, it's better to get an Mac. If you want to play games on it, you should better buy a PC.

2. How much money do you want to spent on it?
If you don't want to buy an expensive one - it could be better to buy a PC.

3. Are your realy good in working with the windows-system (knowing insider stuff and things that most windows-user don't know)?
Than you have to buy a PC.

but it is possible to switch between windowsXP and mac with the new mac-system - keep this in mind!


mac:
- its easyer to install fonts, programs, an to use system-settings
- it is difficult to finde programs and trial-versions in the web

PC:
- easyer to find someone who can help you with system-problems



greetings
Gouldar

[grantrl78]

The major issue in this battle is that you will pay at least 30 percent more for the same hardware when you get a mac. It is the magic of marketing that people even consider macs for art.With the switch to intel, macs are now just expensive pcs running osx. Plus with the switch, osx doesn't natively support many of the applications you will need to paint and draw with. So you will be running yo shit in emulation. Plus all of the mac laptops have serious heat issues that are the result of faulty designs. And many macbooks have design flaws in the case that cause them to crack with regular use. Plus the white macbooks discolor with age. I am a long time mac user that can remember when macs were better for creative types because MS didn't support many of the apps we needed, that is now not the issue. Save a truckload of cash and avoid some design flaws, buy a toshiba.

[stalsby]

pcccccccccccccc! all the way baby! ;]

[Elwell]

Doesn't anybody bother searching before they post anymore?


Seriously, since you're still in school, you should go for whichever platform your school supports better.

[Seer]

Save a truckload of cash and avoid some design flaws, buy a toshiba.

I've been looking at those and HPs. Seems to me they've got the best screens in the medium priced range (~$1500). You got a toshiba? Are you happy with it? The screen is a bit of a worry for me. A mate's acer screen didn't show black very well at all, and it isn't just that I'm not used with LCD monitors, I've got a 19" Hyundai that's great.

[thesinfulsaint]

Go Mac. The fact that they don't get viruses is a MAJOR plus. Now that they can go both Mac AND PC, there's no reason why you shouldn't go for them. It's a little extra dough to push out there, but you *do* get what you pay for. I've been a proud Mac user for my entire life; they've never let me down.

[grantrl78]

I had the compaq v2000, it has a nice bright screen with 3 hours of battery life.
But the hinges on the screen are cheap and crack after just a little use. When you open it up you can tell why they crack, it is just feels chintzy. If you google it you will find quite a few angry v2000 buyers. The toshiba satellite has a better case design but cost a little more for the same specs as the hp-compaq. I think it is more solid than the v2000 series though.

[eblu]

The major issue in this battle is that you will pay at least 30 percent more for the same hardware when you get a mac.

complete misinformation. its not 30%. not even 5% more. apple charges exactly what ANY computer vendor would charge using the same components. They happen to have slightly higher standards than most for the components that go into their machines. For example, if you ordered 2 desktops from dell, they could be assembled right next to each other in the assembly plant, from the same order for the same parts, and still come out with completely different components on the inside. This is because Dell uses the cheapest, most readily available parts.

Apple does not make low end machines, they don't use low end parts. You pay what is perceived as extra, for the quality of the components. If you got comparable components in a pc. you'd pay the same, or more.

[DaveyJJ]

Why buy a piece of hardware that can only run a single (or two if you count Linux) OS? Buy a Mac, run OSX or Windows or Linux all at full tilt natively and get the best of all worlds. Run OSX for iLife, upcoming CS3 (universal binary of CS3 photoshop beta simply flies!), surfing, etc etc. Boot into Windows and run Half Life 2 or Medievla Total War 2 all at full speed for your gaming fix. Run OSX and Parallels to run both OSX and XP at the same time of you design for the web and need to preview your work in IE7 and Safari.

And it's simply FUD that anyone claims Macs are more expensive. Go and look at Apple's 15" MacBook pro and build a similarly speced PC laptop. Same Core 2 Duo chip, same RAM, same HD, same video card. Add a Pro version of Vista (since that's comparable to the powerhouse that is UNIX-based OSX).

Make sure the PC laptop offers the same battery life 4-5 hours and weight (good liuck with that).

Now find a PC laptop that isn't affected by viruses, worms, trojans, spyware etc. Add in the cost of your standard anti-virus stuff and a complete package like iLife and iWork and see what the numbers come out to.

No way is a PC laptop less expensive than a Mac. Even the Cheift Security editor at InforWorld said so.

Buy a Mac.

[Seer]

I'm not really informed but Vista gives me shivers, I'm going to save my money for now (was on my way to buy a PC laptop). Looks like it's going to have to be a future with Mac on my part.

[silver surfer]

MAC, definitely!! I work on both platforms - Pc at home - PowerBook for travel. Well, that was the plan..I ended up using the Mac only. I think because it is a different concept. Built for users and very comfortable to handle. I even can't remember when it crashed the last time...oh, now I do: it happend when I used the Microsoft Internet Explorer...