To Mac or not to Mac

[dflux4]

Yo

 

In the market for a new laptop. I have been a PC boy through and through and im considering jumping ship.

 

Ive had my eye on the new Dell XPS 15 but im holding out to see what the new Macbook Pros have to offer.

 

Obviously the less i spend the better but im wanting a good quality build and dnt mind spending money on something i plan on having for a while.

 

What do you boys run? Whats your insight?

 

Cheers 

Dflustaaaa

[eggssell]

i got a macbook pro from about 3 years ago

 

its aiight. theres a lot about macs that piss me off (i still havent figured out page up/down) especially if using things like excel (no excel for mac is not the same regardless of what people say). but yeh nothing major.

i think its just transition pains for being different to what you are used to

 

as to why i went mac over pc when i deaded my trusty 7 yr old XP laptop, i think it was because it seemed like traktor was putting mac users ahead. 

but tbh the number of times ive used traktor i can probably count on my fingers.

 

when doing comparisons, you do get less for more. from a looks point of view they are pretty schmick.

 

for work i got one of the new slimline dells with the touch screen. only had for a day. nice design and very lite. my 20 mins on the new windows though pisses me off (haha i really do struggle with chnage). took me a while to find out where programs are. haha

[LabRat]

Mac all day errday. Downside is you can't upgrade the new ones once you've bought it (example: ram and hard drive) but if you fish around for an older one (2011 - 2014) you can make it a little work horse - and it'll work out cheaper. My mac book pro is from 09 and it's only now starting to run out of juice. I've hammered that thing for years and it's proper tough

[Mitch]

Depends what you're going to use it for. I've got the 15" macbook pro for all the music things, which is 3 years old now and still beast. Also have the new Dell 12" latitude ultrabook for all the work things, which is good for what I need it for. So it really just depends what you're going to be using on it primarily, and go from there.

[SolDios]

For me it comes down to budget, The 15" macbook pro is a beast but last time I looked it was like $3k.

The XPS is abit lighter on the wallet but is still a awesome machine though, Doesn't feel like a 15" laptop to hold too.

I think the 15' macbook pro is a good choice as long as your okay with using adapters for ethernet and such. It really comes down to budget though.

[dflux4]

XPS 15 purchased...

 

Just wow, I picked it up for 2997 with 4 years extended warranty from JB HiFi.

 

A review will be written shortly on my new toy.

[eggssell]

i gots the xps 13 for work. nice little unit

windows 10 is balls though

[SolDios]

On 6/13/2016 at 7:59 PM, eggssell said:

i gots the xps 13 for work. nice little unit

windows 10 is balls though

The search in win10 shits me to tears. I swear 7 wasn't as bad as this.

[dflux4]

So its little over a month since getting the new laptop and I thought would write up a quick review.

 

Specification:

 

Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz)

15.6" Ultra HD LED Touchscreen Display (3840x2160)

2GB NVIDIA®  GeForce® GTX 960M

16GB RAM

512GB Solid State Drive

 

It definitely looks the part, I'm a fan of the outer brushed aluminium look and the carbon inside is a nice touch. The finish on the inside does attract a lot of fingerprints, but with a quick wipe over with a damp microfibre its back to look as good as new. The keyboard is lacking with the shallow feel however I don't do a lot of typing on it so it doesn't faze me too much.

 

The display is beautiful to look at with deep colour and dark blacks, all I need now is a 4K screen or TV to couple it with. One thing to note is that with some programs due to the pixel density, windows often look stretched or warped. Nothing to be a game changer but hopefully with time updates to those programs will fix it.

 

Battery life is somewhat non existent... For a premium ultrabook its a shame they couldn't get more hours into a single charge. It runs programs with a breeze, multi tasking doesn't seem to falter or slow it down too much. There was a little bit of lag with Rekordbox in performance mode however the most recent update seems to have fixed that. it analyses songs way faster than my old laptop, but that was a dinosaur so I'm sure most decent spec'd ccomputers would do the same.

 

I have only been able to play BioShock on it so far, but with the display set to the maximum setting it gives the PS4 a run for its money. No lag and shortload times make it decent enough to play on, the only problem i have encountered is pairing a mouse with it. Current bluetooth drivers were supposed to fix the issue, where wifi and the bluetooth with blocking each other causing problems. I have to constanly re-pair my mouse which is f##king annoying. The trackpad however is the best i have ever used on a windows laptop.

 

I am yet to install a DAW on this so i cant comment as to how it goes with production but once I have i will be sure to update the thread.

 

[Mitch]

Nice one

[Thomaswhite]

Always Macbook.