Thinking of switching from Windows to Mac? Read this.
August 2010; My HP mini 110 netbook’s motherboard had just burnt. As It had been bought from abroad and I had lost the reciept, I couldn’t claim the warranty here. The repair was costing me close to 40,000 PKR when the laptop itself was bought for 28000 PKR. I was heartbroken as the netbook wasn’t even 7 months old and my hard earned money went down the drain. And so began my search for my new laptop.
I had seen steve job’s keynote speech on the macbook pro already and how he boasted about the 8 hour plus battery and the “revolutionary” Leopard OS 10. A fear of windows laptops getting malfunctioned after sometime had been lodged in my mind due to my prior experience with the netbook and partly due to misinformed “computer experts”. I gave into the macbook hype and got myself a macbook pro for 1 lac 18000 PKR from Itech clifton. The first day I got my macbook pro, I was very excited to show it off to my friends and family. It was infact, a very good looking laptop, with it’s aluminium unibody frame, Island style keyboard and the huge multitouch trackpad. I remember at that time, I felt I made a good decision.
It was about a week or 2 until I realized the truth that I had made a terrible decision switching from windows to the mac OS. First off, the 8 hour battery which jobs claimed Macbook pro had was false. Infact, the battery would last you 2 hours 35 minutes of watching a DVD movie, and a maximum of 4 hours if kept at the lowest brightness setting with the power saver option. Secondly, the magnetic charger may look good on paper, but the reality is something else. Using it on a day to day basis, It becomes a hassle to position the charger correctly. As the charger cannot be rotated and is fixed to the charger port, it often results in its unplugging at the slightest tension in the cord. Third, the Mac OS is neither revolutionary, nor better then windows 7. It has limited application support, many applications which you may be used to on windows aren’t readily available on the mac.The Operating system limited software support from third party developers. Many of the cheap chinese accessories you find in the local pakistani electronic market will not support software suites for Leopard OS 10. You would be able to run windows side by side with leopard through parallels desktop, but it drains considerable speed and performance is subpar on both Operating systems. There are alternatives, but the alternatives may not necessarily be on the same level of performance and user friendly as compared to their windows counterparts. Adobe Flash plugin often crashes while watching youtube videos. There are only a handful of proper games available for the macbook pro. You can install windows on Leopard through bootcamp to play games, but then what is the point of a 1 lac 18000 rupee laptop you bought for getting the mac experience, when you have to go right back to windows. Lastly, the macbook isn’t any less prone to faults and malfunctions then windows laptops. 2 months after I got my macbook pro, It’s charger malfunctioned along with the superdrive. Though the customer support was excellent at itech, the thought of a 2 month old expensive computer malfunctioning is pretty scary. Besides that, the replacement parts are quite expensive, and the extended warranty costs 25000 rupees for 3 years. Compare that to dell or Sony, Dell offers an extended warranty for around 5000 rupees and Sony gives a 3 year warranty on local sony laptops without any extra charge.
I sold my Macbook pro just after 4 months of use for 98000 rupees. I got lucky that I found a buyer willing to pay that much, because the macbook’s resale value is also quite bad. Adding 8000 rupees to that money, I got myself a Dell L501X gaming laptop. It has a core i7 processor at 1.6 ghz per core (turbo boost upto 2.8 ghz), a 2GB Nvidia graphics card, a 500 GB hard drive, facial recognition, a multitouch mouse pad, 720p resolution screen, a Bluray drive, and JBL speakers. Compare that to the macbook pro 2010, I was getting a 256 mb graphics card with a core2duo processor, 250 GB hard drive, a 1200*800 resolution screen,aluminium unibody and a superdrive. I think you can guess which laptop is the clear winner here in terms of “value for money”.
I wouldn’t say the Macbook pro is all that bad. It has a beautiful and durable unibody aluminium frame with a beautiful screen. It is quite sturdy but is prone to scratches and heats up quite quickly. Along with that, the customer support for macbooks here is really good, infact the best I have seen in computers. The accessories for the macbook pro are beautiful and have a class of its own. The leopard OS looks good and runs quite smoothly.
From a practical point of view, I would never opt for a macbook. But if I had alot of money to spare and could afford to shell out more money for better design and looks, I would go for the macbook pro. Sure, it grabs alot of attention when you are using it in a public place, but when it comes to practical usage and value for money, It falls short. If the question of buying either a mac or a pc had been brought up back in 2008 when vista was Microsoft’s flagship OS, getting a mac could have been justified as practical. But Windows 7 has brushed up vastly on the mistakes vista made and is just as refined as the mac OS.
It has been 3 months since I sold off my macbook pro and got myself a Dell, and Iam loving it.
The First day I got my Macbook pro.