Forums | MacLife

Send her round to me, I'll straighten her out.

Dump her.

It's just a computer. Let her use what she wants.

D'Eyncourt wrote:

You might try the tough love approach and tell her not to expect any tech support from you (not that I recommend this path).

I did this with mine and now we have 2 powerbooks in the house with no complaints.

Tell her that real women don't do Windows. We're too smart for that. We want computers that work with a minimum of fuss and bother. When I have to spend time in the office, I bring my iBook so I can spend as little time as possible on the Dell.

Zetetic Apparatchik wrote:

However, if she does get a Dell, you can play Half-Life 2 on it.

Only if you buy the 9.5lbs XPS models.  Their standard lineup is littered with Intel Extreme to the Max Graphics, especially in the price range we're talking here if she thinks a PowerBook is pricey.

If she wants to buy a Windows laptop, fine.  Let it go.  Just don't buy a Dell.  They are the worst.  My partner just bought a Gateway (he really had no choice - his line of work requires IE 6, and no the Safari spoofing trick didn't work), and it is a great little laptop.  I actually like the screen better than the iBook's, although nothing compares to a PowerBook's.

Just make sure she gets virus protection, and spy sweeper software.

Luodawei wrote:

She actually prefers the way Word runs in a Windows environment and just wants it for photos, music and DVDs.

If I am reading this sentence correctly, then she is making a big mistake with not getting a Mac.  She likes the way Word runs on windows, and yet will not actually be using Word much, because her primary use for the Machine will be photos, music and DVDs.  If that is correct, then you could simply point out that this machine goes way beyond the hardware.  Apple software for consumer-level photos, music and DVD burning is unbeatable with the iLife suite.  She will be hard pressed, if not impossible, to find equivalent programs to iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie & iDVD on the Mac and they way they all integrate with each other for seemless content management, cretion, editing and burning.

It would be a huge mistake to buy a Dell because you like the way Word runs on it, and then to use said machine for media.  When I switched 3 yrs ago, many of my co-workers said  ***gasp*** you will not be able to run Auto-Cad, ArcView or any of our models at home.  I figured, why would I pick a machine based on applications that I may have to run at home 1 or 2 times a year, and then suffer through the torture of using an inferior tool for the job for the applications that I use the machine for every single day??  Besides, I don't really want to have to run those programs at home anyway, I prefer to do my work at.....work.    call me crazy.

D'Eyncourt wrote:

MacBoy4139 wrote:

If she wants to buy a Windows laptop, fine.  Let it go.  Just don't buy a Dell.  They are the worst.
[snip]

Can I ask (again?): was this a Dell Inspiron?

Being as this is my first post in this thread, I'm not sure where the (again) comes from.  I really don't care what Dell calls it - even friends of mine that are Dell fanatics say "I wouldn't ever buy a Dell laptop."  They own Dell desktops, btw.

At any rate, if you really want to convince her, sit down with the cold facts.  The cheapest laptop of her choice (Dell included) is going to have Intel celeron mobile technology.  Intel has just come out saying that they use "failed" processors to make the celerons.  They are going to do it in the future with dual core chips when only one core works.  Reduced waste = cheaper price.

On top of it all, it has a shared graphics processor, meaning none.  The processor is doing everything.  Even though she may never play a game beyond solitaire (games weren't mentioned as a priority, so that is why I am mentioning it), ALL of the windows and even IE or Firefox have graphics.

In order to get a seperate graphics processor, you are looking at a minimum of $1200 for a PC laptop.  Of any brand.

Compare this to an iBook which has a seperate graphics processor that is even Core Image compatible - $999.  There goes the cost arguement.

The iBook uses basically the same processor as the PowerBooks.  All PC laptops use different technologies - a celeron is not the same as a Pentium M.

MacBoy4139 wrote:

D'Eyncourt wrote:

MacBoy4139 wrote:

If she wants to buy a Windows laptop, fine.  Let it go.  Just don't buy a Dell.  They are the worst.
[snip]

Can I ask (again?): was this a Dell Inspiron?

Being as this is my first post in this thread, I'm not sure where the (again) comes from.  I really don't care what Dell calls it - even friends of mine that are Dell fanatics say "I wouldn't ever buy a Dell laptop."  They own Dell desktops, btw.
[snip]

Sorry, it's just that someone in another thread made a similar blanket statement about all of the Dell laptops, and I'm too lazy to try to find out if that was you.

My first reply here explains in part why I asked: I want to help confirm a story I've been hearing that the cheapest Dell laptop line (Inspiron) have overall problems due to not being designed to take the abuse that a travelling laptop might encounter, and that Inspirons should be thought of more as a desktop/tower replacement. This is not to say that you and your Dell-using friends didn't have problems with the more expensive Dell laptop lines.

So: was your Dell laptop an Inspiron?

Thanks, MacBoy4139.

I have no idea why people would want an nonmovable laptop, but this was how Dell's thinking was explained to me, albeit by someone who was burned by an Inspiron purchase ("burned" because it started falling apart and he couldn't get it repaired by Dell). Dell doesn't expect that the Inspiron's would be abused as much as the "real" laptops would be.

This story about burning reminds me of another story of a girl got burned when her dad's dell laptop exploded. IIRC I read it at Slashdot but couldn't find the article. Ten second google Found this (it was also reportedly Inspiron):

First came the man whose laptop overheated and burnt his nether regions (http://www.silicon.com/a56527 ). Then there was the girl whose machine exploded. South African Nikita Sooklal, 15, had been happily working away on her laptop - reportedly a Dell Inspiron - for all of five minutes when it blew up, causing her second degree burns. And that really isn't funny at all.
We've also heard from one silicon reader whose machine - also a Dell Inspiron - got a tad warm. He was working on it during a flight from Fresno to Dallas in the US and put it briefly on his lap as he folded his table up in preparation for landing - and got a nasty burn as a result. He complained to Dell, who replaced various components, but it was still seriously overheating. In an effort to prove his point to the company, he tried to find out exactly how hot it was getting. He held a mercury thermometer against the refurbished machine. That exploded. And hot mercury isn't very nice. This is beginning to sound like an unfunny episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'em now, but we think it's all true. Our friend then called poison control who told him (helpfully) to move the source of heat away from the mercury, get it off his skin and dispose of it. Our man did so, and (inevitably) cut himself on the broken thermometer glass in the process.

Whoa! Just whoa!