So - new laptop comparison. Opinions?

[tzikeh]

I need to buy a new Mac laptop., but I am going back and forth between the white casing on the right, to the 2.0 aluminum casing on the left. Part of my dithering is due to the $300 price difference, and part of it is due to not knowing that I need DDR3 memory over DDR2 memory, or 160GB storage vs. 120GB storage. (My laptop is never my main computer; I have a dual 2 GHz G5 tower at home that serves that purpose, with over 1,650 GB storage [1 TB drive, 1 300 drive, 1 200 drive, 1 150 drive].)

I mostly used my old laptop for chatting, surfing, viewing youtube and tv shows, and schoolwork. I don't have heavy-duty software on my laptop--no Final Cut, no AutoCAD, not even photoshop (though photoshop may be an option in the future).

I'm soliciting opinions: aluminum unibody, or white polycarbonate shell? Cheaper, or more 40GB more storage? Anyone have any experience with either/both of these laptops? Please keep in mind that this laptop will be doing a lot of traveling, from home to school to coffee shops to bookstores to whichever high school at which I'll be doing my 100 observation hours in the fall, and who knows where else.

Many thanks for any advice you can give me!

Comments

[pocketmouse]

Have you looked at them in-store? The aluminum case is more wear/damage resistant, especially to things like drops, but I've only seen the unibodies once, for about half an hour, half a year ago, and I can't remember how easy it is to take the shell off for maintenance. I had my first laptop, aluminum frame, get dropped and it wasn't under warrantee, and they spouted some BS about if they take it to fix some other problme, they have to fix anything they find wrong, so they'd have to fix the case and the whole shebang would cost about as much as a new laptop. After I dropped it there were alignment issues with the optical drive, which was why they wanted to open it. With my white one, they just adjusted some screws, without opening anything. But my basic point is that you want to think about innards accessibility.

And you'd damned well better be getting an AppleCare plan. :)

[tzikeh]

I've had macs since the first one came out in 1986. I *always* buy AppleCare. Always. I factor it in, cost-wise, automatically.

Hm. Accessibility is something I hadn't thought of. And yeah, I can go down to the store; it's just easier to buy online and be done with it. :) Plus any advice from people I trust before I go to look at them is a good thing. If the vast majority preer one over the other, I needn't bother to go.

[slipstreamsurfr.livejournal.com]

I've got the last model g4 ibook, and a 15 macbook pro (procured last september)..

Neither is the laptop you are asking about, but if it was me, I'd probably got for the white polycarbonite macbook. I never worried about bending a hinge or screen or warping a case on my ibook. I do worry about it some with my macbook pro. Also, I think you'll like the smaller size of the macbook. the 15 macbook pro is a bit too large for me I think. I wish apple would go ahead and join the netbook market and release something. It's possible something might be coming during the developers conference this year.

[twistedchick]

The metal shells may *look* more damage-resistant, but they have a weakness; they are likely to warp right around the DVD/CD drive, and the shell *is not covered by AppleCare*. I know this because it has happened with my black metal MacBook, and the nice man at the repair shop had to bend the case back into shape. The polycarb case doesn't do that.

[tzikeh]

I don't recall a black metal MacBook --- when did you buy it?

[xenacryst]

I'd go for cheaper, if it's not your main computer. I've not used the new unibodies, although I'm not impressed with the ruggedness of my MBP - the case has gotten out of alignment a couple of times. I may see if $work has one tomorrow that I could take for a test drive.

[tzikeh]

I may see if $work has one tomorrow that I could take for a test drive.

Oooh, that'd be awesome. I'm not buying for at least a couple of weeks.

[j00j]

I have no experience with the unibody, but I've been fine with the polycarbonate, and take the laptop around between home, school, work, coffee shops, etc. Note: I carry it in a water-resistant sleeve inside a laptop bag, so it's well-protected on the go, but I also move it around the house while it's open, eat while working on it, etc. so it can deal with some not-so-gentle treatment.

I do pretty much what you do with my older white MacBook, plus some Photoshop and other stuff that can take more processing power (e.g. Second Life, ugh). Sometimes I feel that it would enjoy more RAM, but it can handle the work.

[twistedchick]

Pretty sure it was last year, about a year ago. It came in white or black, and I went for black this time. We have earlier Macs, one in polycarb and one in aluminum, and the polycarb is definitely sturdier overall and more shockproof. The aluminum doesn't get scratched as easily but it is more subject to jarring.

If you can, get one of the protective cases that go over the plastic or polycarb that protect them. Those appear to be well worth the money; there are some that are govt./military quality, I'm told.

[saraht]

Normally I vote for buying the most capacity you can, since you want to extend the time you can go before being compelled to buy a replacement, but if it's not your main machine and you don't do heavy work on it, I say go for the cheaper one. If nothing else, you'll be out less if it's stolen while you're hauling it around. Certainly you can run Photoshop on the lesser machine if you decide you want to.

[tzikeh]

Huh - I can run photoshop without having the thing slow to a crawl?

[lapillus]

I can't speak to Macs but even most low end PCs can run most parts of Photoshop without a problem (you might run into issues doing 3D stuff in Photoshop CS4 Extended or doing something really exotic, but for most fannish level uses you really should be fine, although, with Adobe, more memory and faster processing never, ever hurts. However for the occasional use you should be good to go.)

[saraht]

Loads slowly but should still be usable. Of course that's somewhat subjective, but I think Photoshop was displaced from the top of the heap as consistent resource hog some time ago.

[hubbit]

Assuming that this laptop will take the functional place of your current one, I'll add my voice to the polycarbonate crowd, with the following points:

* 40GB of storage is really nothing these days, especially if your main machine has over 40 times that. You can easily transfer between machines with FireWire, I think. If not, there are always external drives.

* For your intended usage, DDR2 memory probably exceeds what you need. You really don't need a lot of firepower for chatting/surfing/YouTube/schoolwork, either alone or in combination. DDR3 is faster, but with what you're doing it would not make a noticeable difference. Or so I surmise.

* So long as you exercise proper care when handling your laptop, and carry it in a protective bag or pouch to prevent knocks and bumps while traveling, the polycarbonate case should be fine.

I noticed on the MacBook page that an Education Discount is available. It applies to college students or any staff/faculty/administration members of a college or a K-12 school. If this applies at all to you, it would be worth investigating.

[tzikeh]

:nod: I know about the ed discount - been using it since 2006 ;) But I'm torn--more storage, more RAM, and... it's so much *prettier*.

[hubbit]

Actually, not more RAM; all of the MacBooks on that page have 2GB RAM, at least in the default configurations. The RAM is just a different, faster type - but it's in multiples of 400 MHz. You'd notice it on intense editing apps, but not your average Firefox + $DOC_EDITOR usage.

I can argue Storage. I can argue RAM. I can't argue Pretty. I also have no first-hand experience with aluminum cases. I run a year-old Dell Inspiron 1720, which got its Vista replaced with Ubuntu before it even booted for the first time. Pretty sure it's poly.

ETA: I found comparisons here. Both have the same display size and resolution, but the poly RAM is 667 MHz while the alum RAM is 1066 MHz. The Aluminum version weighs half a pound less, and its battery lasts half an hour more. Both are expandable to 4 GB RAM and up to 320 GB HD.

So it's not so cut-and-dried as I thought. There may be some advantages to the aluminum model.

[xenacryst]

I believe that all of the MacBooks have dropped FireWire by now, which is bloody annoying, if you ask me. Means you can't boot to FireWire target mode for easily transferring data to another computer. It really puts the kibosh on easily upgrading our faculty's laptops and transferring their account to the new one.

[tzikeh]

I believe that all of the MacBooks have dropped FireWire

...

WHY? What on Earth would they do that for? Seriously - WHY?

[xenacryst]

I seriously have no clue. I really think that a significant portion of the Apple design team has lost touch with what people are actually using computers for.

[hubbit]

The white version still has it, according to its specs sheet. The specs list NO FireWire for the aluminum model, but FireWire 400 for the white version. This is very curious to me.

[xenacryst]

That settles it. Get the white one. ;P I think the white one is a leftover model, actually -- I haven't paid terribly close attention, but I think it's the last of the prior generation that they've been phasing out.

[fox]

I'm v. happy with my white polycarbonate one. Also, if that's the way you decide to go, and it's the 13" (and not the 15"), and you'd like a purple InCase hardshell case (new in box! discontinued color!), I can hook you up. :-) Let me know.

[hubbit]

There are several cases and shells on MacMall.

Macbookcase.com is based in Los Angeles. They tout their own case in an enthusiastic, if somewhat Babelfished, English. :)

[artkoala]

I'd say go look at them at the store. The unibody was built to counteract the comments above about the aluminum ones warping or having alignment issues, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. The Firewire thing may be make-or-break for you, though - it's on the white one, not the aluminum one. You have to go up to a MacBook Pro to get Firewire on an aluminum one. (Which means my next computer is going to be expensive...)

Also, depending whether you want to spec exactly the computer you want, look at the refurbished Mac page - they're cheaper, have the same warranty, and are actually more likely to be trouble-free since they've had an initial problem fixed and then run through a whole battery of tests to make sure they're up to speed. I'm typing this on a 5-year-old PowerBook that was refurbished, and it's never had a single problem.

And depending on how immediately you need it, consider waiting a month - WWDC is the second week of June, and Apple is prone to announcing upgrades during it (like possibly the release of the Snow Leopard OS).

Good luck!

[hubbit]

I asked my MacGeek friend Sabrina what she thought. She recommends aluminum:

"go with faster cpu, nobody uses firewire anymore except me and people with camcorders, all cheap external disks are usb2.0...welll...unless she likes to hook the macbook up to the g5 /as/ an external disk -- you can put macbooks into 'firewire target mode' at boot-time and connect them to other hosts that way, so if she's transferring loads of files back and forth she might do that. but i used that feature, seriously, like 4 times ever"

Quoted with permission, of course :)

[tzikeh]

Thanks for asking her - could you check with her re: all the concerns about the aluminum being fragile, or warping?

[mayhap]

I went through three polycarbonate iBooks and bought an aluminum MacBook as soon as they were released, and in my experience, it is like night and day. (Admittedly, I never had a polycarbonate MacBook, but my friend Sam who does is jealous of mine.) I recommend handling one in person if you're wavering.