macbook pro

[ildanach]

l'm looking to get a 13" macbook pro february 2011 model. Does anyone know where is the best value to be found north or south it doesn't matter. Best at the minute seems to be about €1200. 

[Minder]

Mac Book Pros and most Apple products have a fairly uniform pricing structure and there isnt usually much in the way of "shopping around". Your best bet would be to get someone to bring you one home from the USA. There is a refurb one on Apple Store for £1099.

[Minder]

You can get the new lower specced 13" MBP for £999 from Apple store.

[ildanach]

thanks minder, taking into the account the rate of exchange its about the same price.

[JimStynes]

If you know someone with a uni account or is a teacher then you get quite a good discount.

[JimStynes]

So the new MacBook is a bit of a disappointment going by some of the threads i've read in other forums.  Serious money to pay for the new mac book and the 13" mac has been given a shit update apparently. Anyone know anything about the Air?

[thewobbler]

I've been working with an Air for the past 9 months and for the life of me I can't work out what the attraction to Mac products is - and I speak as an iPhone and iPad lover.

Keynote is a wonderful presentation tool that's miles ahead of PowerPoint.

But in every other aspect a Windows PC is either as good or better. Finding a file on a Mac is a pain in the arse. Print settings are a pain in the arse. Shareware software is nowhere near as good. Numbers is like Excel of 15 years ago. Pages is painful.

And despite lies and promotion to suggest otherwise, it crashes just like a PC.

Yeah it looks great. But a PC at half the price is a better job.

[thebigfella]

So the new MacBook is a bit of a disappointment going by some of the threads i've read in other forums.  Serious money to pay for the new mac book and the 13" mac has been given a shit update apparently. Anyone know anything about the Air?

The new retina machine is a serious piece of kit. If you have to ask why then it's not the machine for you.

As for the 13inch Pro, the expectations were far too high. There was no way it would get the same quad core i7 as the 15 inch models or a dedicated graphics card.

[thebigfella]

I've been working with an Air for the past 9 months and for the life of me I can't work out what the attraction to Mac products is - and I speak as an iPhone and iPad lover.

Keynote is a wonderful presentation tool that's miles ahead of PowerPoint.

But in every other aspect a Windows PC is either as good or better. Finding a file on a Mac is a pain in the arse. Print settings are a pain in the arse. Shareware software is nowhere near as good. Numbers is like Excel of 15 years ago. Pages is painful.

And despite lies and promotion to suggest otherwise, it crashes just like a PC.

Yeah it looks great. But a PC at half the price is a better job.

Spotlight? The little magnifying glass in the right right of the menu bar? Not only does search the file system but also return matches based on file/web page content. Otherwise you could do a search via unix terminal.

As for your comparison of pages/numbers to office; just get office 

[mc_grens]

Agreed. Numbers is more comparable with Works than Excel.

As for the new MacBook, as someone who's really getting into Photography and modern post processing of photographs a retina screen on a MacBook would be spectacular!

[blewuporstuffed]

If you know someone with a uni account or is a teacher then you get quite a good discount.

what way does that work?
do  you just need a   .ac.uk email adress to get the discount?

[Jonah]

Agreed. Numbers is more comparable with Works than Excel.

As for the new MacBook, as someone who's really getting into Photography and modern post processing of photographs a retina screen on a MacBook would be spectacular!

If you were any good at photography you wouldn't need to post process them 

[mc_grens]

If I want to make it look like I'm walking on thin air a couple feet off the ground I've no choice!

Also- if I shoot in RAW all the time, which I do, then the photos MUST be processed before anything can be done with them. A retina display would mean that the level of detail/ colour/ etc. would be much closer on screen to what would be on a print.

[Aoise]

As someone who went through three microsoft based PC's in 7 years due to multiple virus crashes and just slow operation, I would never go back.  I have a Macbook Pro now for the last two years and its as fast as the day I bought it.  I couldn't praise it highly enough.  I need Office products for my work so I just got the Mac version and its technically the same thing.  Don't understand anyone who would prefer microsoft windows operation system products over this machinery.  Now also with the App store, most software is available for mac and its just a click away.  To each their own but to me there's no comparison.

[thebigfella]

Just to throw it into the mix, I love windows 8. I hope the sort it out before the official roll out as the UI is pure class.