Fragments From Floyd

Apple
Resistance is futile

I am so glad you sent it back. I have no advice to give, as I don't have a laptop, but I will be reading what your readers recommend for when I do buy one. Maybe you should see which ones Consumer Reports rate the best? Good Luck!!

I ordered some memory from New Egg Friday night. It arrived on Wednesday. Not quite a laptop purchase, but companies that can do the small things right usually get the big things right too.

I've never had direct experience of either; all I can say is that I've heard lots of good words said about IBMs and lots of bad words said about Dells...

Oh, and anyone who owns an Apple seems to use words that are positively euphoric

Apples are good machines and have, for a number of years, been part of the toolkit of any serious professional photographer or videographer. PCs have, for the most part, caught up but I still find a dual processor G5 the best setup for intensive graphics work.

But Fred needs a laptop that works best with his desktop (a PC). Thinkpads are good laptops. So are the Sony Vaios he considered earlier. I've got two Vaios (a notebook and a Pentium 4 laptop with as much processing power as any of my desktops) and haven't had a problem with either. With that said, I still edit most of my photos and do all my video work on a G5 or a Powerbook laptop.

Man, you have defintely had your problems with Dell! I have had three Dells and never had any problems until my 2-year-old laptop. About once a month it decides that the charger is the wrong model and beeps a warning until I hit a key to tell it just do it anyway. The other weird thing is that about once a week or so when I go to turn it on it just does nothing. Following instructions from the Dell HelpDesk I then remove and reinsert the battery and it works fine. Minor annoyances I guess but it does not instill confidence.

Before we wax poetic about Macs let me remind you of the 800mHz logic boards debaucle, the Powerbook 5300, the G3 iBook's dead pixel and backlight problems and Apple's hamfisted reaction. The G4 Cube had serious heat issues before Apple killed it. Apple is still having problems with iDVD as their forums show...

http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?14@238.nabra3xcmmz.0@.eebeb28

...and there's MUG buzz about iMac G5 machines encountering overheating problems, resulting in power supply brownouts and fan problems.

All manufacturers have quality issues, it's the nature of mass production, some handle after sales support better than others...Apple gets both good and bad marks in this area.

You can easily network a PC and a Mac with DAVE which creates a peer-to-peer bridge allowing the Mac to see Windows shared files and share its own files and printers to Windows users.

The PC-to-Mac switch issue for me and prolly Fred too is our investment in legacy software and the need to repurchase key software, especially Adobe...if Adobe offered upgrade pricing for the switch I'd buy a Powerbook in a heartbeat.

First: Newegg is the great.
I haven't bought from anyone else for over a year.
Haven't had a single problem.

I have an apple laptop and a self built pc.
if you have never used an apple and you can lay hands on one to try out, you really should give one a shot. you might become a convert.

having said that, the thinkpads are widely regarded as the best available pc laptops. if you don't want, or decide against a mac, then you can't do much better than a thinkpad.

I have already issued my advice several times......Have had Mac's for years with nary a problem.........a Mac is so easy to navigate.......The only problem I have is that iPhoto could be better........However, I use Photoshop for the majority of my pics.....Awhile back I was able to purchase Photoshop CS half price through a promotion with Epson & Adobe and am pleased. I use all Epson products for my pictures and notecards (have an Epson Photo 1280)- I order all my papers & inks online through Epson - if I place an order before 1 pm, my supplies are on my doorstep the next day........of course this has nothing to do with Mac but my Mac & Epson printer work well together........By the way, yesterday I bought a new digital camera- a Nikon 8800........wanted a longer zoom- the 8800 has a 10x optical zoom, equal to 300mm.........Will be working this weekend so won't have a chance to use it plus the weather here in St. Louis has been terrible - this will give me a chance to read the manual before I venture out with the new camera....

If you go PC then you miss out on the OS X.4 Tiger. It's fantastic for search functions...I love it already.

I just bought my wife a T42, with a gig of RAM. What a wonderful piece of machinery. Rock-solid, quiet fan, bright screen. CD/DVD burner is fast.

Solid lid hinges, coated exterior, you can feel the quality in the thing.

Beats the pants off of my work laptop (Dell) and my old Toshiba.

Pearl-Ordered Tiger & looking forward to it......worked Friday & FedEx wouldn't leave on my doorstep, so must wait until Monday......I hope it is as terrific as it is said to be.......

I must assume that IBM has improved their Thinkpads. 5 years ago every one of the Thinkpads we had at worked required new screens within ~2 years. Needless to say, we have not purchased another one since.

can anyone tell me whether i can use photoshop , flash mx, and premiere in mac or not . i have the windows version of those softwares

Photoshop and Flash are available in current releases for the Mac. Premiere is not. Adobe stooped supporting the Premiere platform for Macs after version 1.0. Final Cut Pro is the current video editing standard for Macs. That's what we use in our studio. I have Premiere Pro 1.5 running on a PC at home but do all my pro work in Final Cut.