 | Home > Off Topic > IT - which way to go? |
 
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| Caterham Member Since: 06 Nov 2008 Location: Birmingham Posts: 6318   
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I hear all the praise for the apple products but just to put that into context I bought a Lenovo yoga back in 2015 which got used for hours and hours pretty much every day (the joys of starting up your own business) and got replaced earlier this year with a Lenovo Thinkpad.
Granted the Yogo did a few times give the death screen which put the jitters up me and hence the new one. BUT it had all sorts of non legit software and I suspect it may have been related to that. I know use it as a back up / out of office machine. The thinkpad is so far as I'm concerned every little bit fit for purpose. Its the carbon jobby too so while its not as slender as the mac pro air it looks really good and to my eyes better than the apple. hence why I'm struggling to be fully onboard with the apple for her. The MS pro was my first thought when she mentioned getting an ipad. I starting to think while most are suggesting / recommending the apple mac I do wonder whether if you pay good money if there's much between them? 
other than perhaps the apple will be more nickable / attractive? |
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5th Oct 2022 6:58pm |
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| AMBxx Member Since: 24 Jul 2016 Location: York Posts: 1041  
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I used MS Surface Pro for a few years. Great, but so fragile. Fortunately, MS have a great out of warranty replacement scheme. I gave up when the 4th one broke.
Recently switched to my wife's cast off Dell XPS 13. It wasn't cheap but after 5 years it's still in great condition. I've replaced the battery and the hard drive - just a screwdriver to do that. Much easier than most modern laptops. It's also worth looking at Amazon for their repacks. I recently bought a Dell monitor on there at a great price. Forgot to say, on the MS vs Apple debate. There are a lot of ignorant people on both sides of the argument! The notion that you have to 'load drivers' on Windows is laughable. It just happens in the background. |
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6th Oct 2022 5:29am |
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| Balvaig Member Since: 19 Feb 2016 Location: Fife Posts: 736  
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AMBxx
Glad to see Windows has got its act together now. Must be showing my age, but when I changed over to Apple I used to spend hours searching out drivers for Windows and setting up networks was a nightmare. Certainly not laughable at the time  |
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6th Oct 2022 7:21am |
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| blackwolf Member Since: 03 Nov 2009 Location: South West England Posts: 17588 
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I have been extremely happy with my HP Pavillion laptops (two of which have done everything I needed over the last 20 years), not cheap but equally not excessively expensive.
I think that the MS versus Apple debate is very like the Canon versus Nikon debate in photgraphic circles - in 99% of cases it comes down to personal preference and there is no technical argument one way or the other. There are some applications (using the word in the traditional, non-IT sense) where there seems to be a bias one way or the other, for example none of the (admittedly few) people I know who work in the professional video/movie world use anything other than Apple products. With the trajectory towards cloud-based service offerings and virtualisation it makes even less difference. As a completely no-scientific observation, it appears to me that those of a literary or artistic bent tend to Apple, whilst those of a scientific, technical, or engineering bent tend to MS. Possibly something to do with left and right brain function.... |
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6th Oct 2022 8:24am |
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| LandRoverAnorak Member Since: 17 Jul 2011 Location: Surrey Posts: 11324
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Very happy MS Surface Pro user here, from a year or so after they first came out. My wife was too but has now moved over to a Surface laptop for a bigger screen. She uses AutoCAD for her business, and it performs very well.
I find Windows to be pretty seemless these days and I rarely even turn my machine off anymore. I did try a Macbook a few years ago as my father-in-law is a lifelong Apple fan, but I found it frustrating and went back to a Windows machine after about 9 months. Just to add, both my wife and I would be described as having a 'technical' bent  Darren
110 USW BUILD THREAD - EXPEDITION TRAILER - 200tdi 90 BUILD THREAD - SANKEY TRAILER - IG@landroveranorak "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought!" - Princess Leia |
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6th Oct 2022 8:32am |
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| Muddybigdog Member Since: 11 Apr 2014 Location: Suffolk Posts: 1029 
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If a Mac is your daughter's goal, you may want to look at official refurbs from Apple https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/refurbished/mac 1-year warranty.
Also, you can buy Microsoft 365 for Mac, (Office for Mac) the student version will give most of the required tools needed. For the best of both worlds, you can split the hard drive, (Mac hardware matched with MS software), so you have 50% MAC and 50% Windows. Jumped ship to reliability - Mitsubishi L200 Puma 90 XS - Sold D3 - 2.7 S x2 (both Sold) Freelander 2 HSE - Sold Freelander 1 - Sold Disco 2 - Sold |
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6th Oct 2022 11:43am |
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| AMBxx Member Since: 24 Jul 2016 Location: York Posts: 1041
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The world's come a long way since the days of IPX/SPX and NETBEUI 
MS fixed the foundations of Windows with the later XP releases. Just a shame they can't stop  about with the user interface. |
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6th Oct 2022 2:20pm |
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| Balvaig Member Since: 19 Feb 2016 Location: Fife Posts: 736
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AMBxx
Feeling even older now. Started out writing BASIC programmes for the Sinclair Spectrum in the 80's. A step up from Ping Pong. Forgotten that I had swapped over to Apple over 14 years ago  |
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6th Oct 2022 2:45pm |
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| AMBxx Member Since: 24 Jul 2016 Location: York Posts: 1041
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Similar vintage. ZX Spectrum followed by a BBC Model B (in exchange for an Apricot my Dad won).
I've gone BASIC, COBOL, Pascal, Fortran, Forth, VB, Java, SmallTalk, JavaScript, C# plus lots of SQL. Order's probably wrong and I'm sure I've missed something. I keep wanting to play with Clojure, but he jump from OO to Functional is hard when there's not a specific project to work on. Doing more with Linux now, but it still feels like a step backward having to do everything in a text box (this is just server stuff). Oddly, the change in Apple from the old stuff to OS X was as great as the move from the old Windows 95 (DOS behind the scenes) to XP. Apple did a very good job of hiding how poor their OS was at multi-tasking previously. Mostly because their users only ever used a single application at a time. |
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6th Oct 2022 2:53pm |
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| blackwolf Member Since: 03 Nov 2009 Location: South West England Posts: 17588
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One of the very first tasks I was given when I started working for a Plessey in about 1981 was to reverse engineer an eprom (fortunately a fairly small one, 8Kx8 as I recall) of code for an 8085 embedded processor, for which the higher level assembler code had been lost. It provided hours of fun. I went on to spend years writing assembler for 8085 micros, and later Motorola 68k micros and TI TMS320C25 and -C50 DSPs when they were released. Good times! |
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6th Oct 2022 5:06pm |
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| macfrank Member Since: 05 Nov 2015 Location: somewhere in the north Posts: 1091  
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@Caterham What does your daughter need?
As much as I'd (obviously) recommend a Mac  "The bait must taste good to the fish, not to the fisherman." don't know if this saying translates well, but I mean, there is no general better or worse for either platform. It depends on what she needs to do with it. Not what our or your experiences or prejudices are |
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6th Oct 2022 7:14pm |
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| JOW240725 Member Since: 04 May 2015 Location: Suffolk Posts: 7908
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I've never really used Macs, so can't compare really. But I'd go Windows everyday. My last 3-4 work laptops have all been HP and they've all been great, all lasted 5-7 years and no real issues. James
MY2012 110 2.2TDCi XS SW Orkney Grey - http://www.defender2.net/forum/topic43410.html MY1990 110 200TDi SW beautifully faded Portofino Red - https://www.defender2.net/forum/post743641.html#743641 MY1984 90 V8 Slate Grey - https://www.defender2.net/forum/post744557.html#744557 Instagram @suffolk_rovers |
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6th Oct 2022 7:41pm |
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| Caterham Member Since: 06 Nov 2008 Location: Birmingham Posts: 6318
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this has reminded me / makes me raise a question - I have MS office / family. As I use it on my MS pc (as does my daughter presently) will she still be able to be part of the family pack if she has an apple? ie when you have the family ms office software - does the whole family have to be either ms or mac? the more I read these posts (thank you) the more I think BW is correct - Cannon / Nikon. So long as you're not trying to compare a cheap ms laptop against an expensive mac. autocad can be reasonably demanding and as other have said the ms pc works fine - as does mine.
thank you all for the comments. |
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6th Oct 2022 7:54pm |
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| Muddybigdog Member Since: 11 Apr 2014 Location: Suffolk Posts: 1029
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From the MS website:
Will Microsoft 365 be identical on a PC and on a Mac? No. Microsoft 365’s applications are tailored for each platform and each operating system. The applications available for Mac users and the specific features included may be different from those available for PC users. With Microsoft 365, you can be flexible. With your account, you are not limited to exclusively Mac or exclusively PC, so you can transition across devices. Jumped ship to reliability - Mitsubishi L200 Puma 90 XS - Sold D3 - 2.7 S x2 (both Sold) Freelander 2 HSE - Sold Freelander 1 - Sold Disco 2 - Sold |
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6th Oct 2022 9:31pm |
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