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Desktop or laptop?iMac?

30 replies

pigsinmud · 07/02/2011 14:24

Desktop has nearly died. Dh has laptop that he wants to keep child free. Do we get replacement desktop or another laptop? Is there a big advantage in having desktop? Dh is keen for another laptop, whereas I want desktop.....think ds1 will keep wandering off with laptop if we get one.

We got an iPad last year and I love it. I am lusting over an iMac. Anyone got an opinion on them?

OP posts:
studyinghard · 21/02/2011 19:45

OMG - over £1k for a refurbished fashion accessory - people are suckers. But then image is everything. Gotta buy the iPhone with all the accessories (all those atrocious ipod docking stations) and the big iPhone iPad. It's an iFad and people are lapping it up. Well done Apple - good job.

Before I get attacked - great for Music composition software and Image editing. But everything else is just office software and browser.

Clearly the cuts aren't hitting everyone. :)

You can buy a decent laptop with no operating system and install Ubuntu for free with all the glorious software that comes with it and is available. And you can get a decent laptop for less than £400.

Niceguy2 · 21/02/2011 22:02

Studyinghard, you know what. I used to think like you. In fact my mate reminds me occasionally of the time he asked me what I thought of the iphone and my reply was "It's for fashion victims with more money than sense"

I have now had the 3G, 3GS and now on my iphone 4! Oh and I own an iMac.

The thing with Apple is usability and experience. If you compare getting an imac up and running against installing Ubuntu on a generic laptop then its a world apart. The former is so easy my 4 year old could prob do it. The latter, well i've lost count of the evenings I've spent looking up the syntax of various commands like vi, grep & ps!

Most people don't care about the technology and just want to use it. Indeed that was what drove me back from my brief foray into Android. After living with an iphone for 18 months which just worked, i resented having to live with bugs and delve into menu upon submenu to find that tickbox i needed.

Where Apple Mac's are excelling is the hardware is drop dead gorgeous so passes both the male desire for gadget porn and the wife test of not having a butt ugly box which doesn't coordinate with the curtains. It's also very well thought out so my imac has a single power lead. That's it. Compare that to a PC with USB mouse/keyboard, speaker cables etc. If I go behind my PC I'm in danger of getting garroted.

In short, for most people there is a value to be placed on their time. Its better to pay £x more for something simple to use and just works. Than the cheapest and tear your hair out trying to make it work and not understand it.

For me the imac has removed all the "DAD!!!!" from the kids and the hardest question was from my partner who couldnt find the speaker port. Bliss!

pigsinmud · 23/02/2011 08:23

Studyinghard - do you have anything made by Apple? We don't have fancy iPhones, but last year dh bought me an iPad for my birthday. It is fab. We have 4 children and they all love it. It is simple and works.

4.5 years ago we bought a pc for £500. Within 2 months it had died. Sent back. Hard drive replaced and it was returned to us 2 weeks later. Nearly 2 years later it died again. We should have ditched it then, but we took it for repair at local independent computer shop. He eventually replaced the hard drive. From then on it was crap. Before it died it had slowed to the speed of a snail. It was no better with a new hard drive. This has been our experience with pcs over the past 14 years.

When I met dh 17 years ago he had a Mac. I persuaded him to change to a pc after a few years. We got the Mac out of the loft last year. It still worked.

OP posts:
BadPoet · 28/02/2011 11:34

studyinghard - I have an Android (HTC Wildfire) over an iPhone. And I have owned several desktop PCs and laptops in the past. It's not about the gadget love for me, it's about having something that enables me to work more effectively and makes life simpler and just that bit more beautiful.

ursusnix · 02/03/2011 10:55

iMac.

Finally bought one last year, after the financial controller managed to get hands-on in a mac-store, and the Mac peddlar confirmed everything I'd told her...

I work with technology day in day out - the iMac just sits and does its thing, unobtrusively, without complaint, without a shed.load of extras, without screaming 'do you want to do this' after you've just clicked the 'OK' button, I could go on.

I now have free time. Maintaining the home PC properly was taking 3 or 4 hours per week.

U

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