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| Thread ID: 83055 | 2007-09-18 00:01:00 | New Laptop, Mac vs XP Questions. | Enigmur (10547) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 592084 | 2007-09-18 05:50:00 | You can purchase applecare any time during the first year of ownership, I have never bothered with it. If your going to use bootcamp make sure partition it in fat32, that way you can read and write to the windowsdrive when booted into osx. I have had no problems networking xp with osx, so I can't see a problem there. |
plod (107) | ||
| 592085 | 2007-09-18 10:26:00 | My experience with a new mac has been positive except in one area, too small a hdd. I back up to an external, but as i also use it for my pc, I've had to use a fat32 drive which presents the problem of a 4gig file maximum.So, get the biggest drive you can afford, I bought all the jam packs for garage band and all my disk space went west!! | limepile (96) | ||
| 592086 | 2007-09-18 10:31:00 | What HD size did you start with, Limepile? | winmacguy (3367) | ||
| 592087 | 2007-09-18 10:46:00 | Ignore the scumbag warrenty crap,They are still required to honour the CGA. I agree with that - save your money. They won't cover wear and tear anyway. Chances are for most people that you would pay more for the cover than any minor work you might have to have done! |
johnd (85) | ||
| 592088 | 2007-09-18 23:10:00 | So do you guys think that the extended warranty is a waste of money? I really would rather it but it is friggin expensive. If I was to forget about it, I could get the next model up which has a faster CPU and more Drive space - 80GB is a bit skimpy for if I want XP on there as well. I'd just have to really hope nothing went wrong with it after the first year, but in terms of memory failure and a lot of hardware - I guess you are likely to know within the first year if something is dodgey. Does anyone here think it's worthwhile getting the extra warranty, or can I really trust this laptop to last me a few years without too many problems. Cheers. |
Enigmur (10547) | ||
| 592089 | 2007-09-19 02:23:00 | The way I see it is this: 1. On average the insurance provider wins out - the chances of you spending more on fixing the laptop than what the insurance cost is minimal. 2. For the first year you are fully covered by the normal warranty. My opinion on any extended warranty on electronic products is that it is a waste of money. |
johnd (85) | ||
| 592090 | 2007-09-19 02:36:00 | Does anyone here think it's worthwhile getting the extra warranty, or can I really trust this laptop to last me a few years without too many problems. Cheers. The only thing I will guarantee is that you won't suffer from any malware attacks but as to potential hardware issues - a MacBook can breakdown just like any other electronic device. So what ever guarantee you get is up to you. I got the 3 yr Apple Care. |
winmacguy (3367) | ||
| 592091 | 2007-09-19 02:54:00 | Cheers for that John. I guess I’m just worried that something really serious will die just out of warranty. I’ve heard of lots of people having problems with their system randomly rebooting, screen flickers, not turning on ect – if anything like that happens to me, I’d like to know that I’m guaranteed to have it looked at for free. In terms of the insurance likely to cost more than any work needed, I work at a PC company and I know that could be very true in some circumstances – but it could also be the opposite. If I have to take it into a place that charges $60-$100 per hour, plus any replacement parts – I think I would kick myself for not getting the insurance. The other thing for me to consider is, if I’m going to be doing this course for the next 3 years (diploma), I may not have the cash to go out and get it repaired if something breaks. Knowing that I am going to be worry-free in terms of servicing for the time of my course would set me at ease. On the other hand, 3 years is a long time to own one computer – by then MacBooks (or the future equivalent) will be using Penryn processors at least and will probably be a hell of a lot cheaper. 3 Years in the computer world is such a long time. I guess I just want to know how durable these laptops are, and if I look after it, should it last me 2-3 years? I think I would benefit from having the 120GB hard drive and a slightly faster CPU, but it does seem like a gamble to me. How happy are the long time Apple users with the quality of product – you guys must have a bit of trust because nobody has told me to bother with the warranty. |
Enigmur (10547) | ||
| 592092 | 2007-09-19 03:08:00 | Problems regarding software and the OS are usually fixed by Apple firmware updates. If you want to find out more about any hardware related problems that Mac users have then you could check out the macrumors.com forums. As long as you treat the laptop well - get a protective case or laptop back for it - you should be ok. I've been a Mac user since 2000 and a Mac owner for about the last 3 months or so and haven't had any problems of the hardware or software kind so far... In terms of durability, there are plenty of people still using 7 year old Macs with no problems. Most designers like them because they just keep going while top designers and photo retouchers probably get theirs replaced every 12 months or so as the newer faster models come out ( and their business can afford the upgrade) I leave mine turned on 24/7, I just keep it in Sleep mode when I'm not using it, it takes about 5-10 seconds to respond after waking from Sleep . It runs silent. I only restart it if a software update requires a restart. |
winmacguy (3367) | ||
| 592093 | 2007-09-19 03:45:00 | Cheers for that reply WMG. I think for the time being, my mind is set on the 1 year warranty, I think it is a bit rude to ask that much for a warranty extension from someone willing to move from Windows to Mac, and is spending more for hardware in comparison (eg, I could get a similar or better spec’d laptop, with 3 year warranty for less). Next question I have (bear with me please lol), is Image Backups. Do you use image backups at all winmacguy? Does OS X include anything to do it? Basically I have a 250GB hotswap backup drive in my XP PC at home, I’d like to have the ability to put my Mac image backups on that disk, or even a partition on my XP HDD (I could format a new partition to FAT32). Is there a way I can do this? I have Ghost and True image, neither are for Mac. The idea I am having at the moment is to network the Mac to my XP PC, boot up XP on the Mac with BootCamp – and run True Image to do a full hard drive image. The version of Ghost I have is on a DOS bootable CD, so obviously wouldn’t work with the Mac, unless I removed the Mac HDD and attached it directly to my windows PC and booted. Does windows detect a Mac partition, but not be able to access it? If so, shouldn’t I be able to boot up XP on the mac and tell True Image to backup the whole drive, both partitions – and if anything goes wrong, I can simply clone the whole image back to the drive. True Image can do full backups while windows is running, its based on Linux. I wonder if it could back up the mac partition too. Cheers if anyone knows. If anyone has suggestions for Mac image backups, it would help too. |
Enigmur (10547) | ||
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