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Computers again!
Thank you all very much for all your comments yesterday - I'm sorry I've not replied to more of them (I might get to some of them at the weekend).
As a general point - you're all utterly predictable and pedantic:-) BASIC as a programming language of choice was meant to be a throwaway line, not generate tens of comments! And yes, yes, I fully accept it was never a language of choice.
I'm almost certainly going to buy a Mac - I'm looking at the 15" Powerbook (http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/uk_Ind.woa/91009/wo/M51VXW0MuYIu3qXQuGT1DD51QHh/1.0.11.1.0.6.23.1.1.1.1.0.0.1.0) - this is the education store link (enter 'College of Law' and 'London' if it takes you to an entrance screen rather than PowerBook details). I'm still technically a student till my NUS card expires - presumably at the end of August though it doesn't have an expiry date. I guess I might get away with using my ISIC which is valid until the end of December, but I don't think I want to wait that long/chance it.
If I buy from the education store it'll cost me £1 269.00 and I should be able to let the company reclaim the VAT (the ex VAT price is £1 080.00). It has 512MB RAM - upgrading that to 1GB is £91.99. A DVDR/CDRW is another £91.99. An AirPort Express Base station is £82.85 - I'm guessing I'll need something like that eventually though wireless networking isn't all that important when you're living somewhere small enough to run the cables around. An extra battery is another £82.25. Office 2004 is another £109. And now we're getting into silly amounts of extra money, so which extras I should buy now and what I can leave for a while longer? this page lists the software - is there anything here I'm going to need?
As a general point - you're all utterly predictable and pedantic:-) BASIC as a programming language of choice was meant to be a throwaway line, not generate tens of comments! And yes, yes, I fully accept it was never a language of choice.
I'm almost certainly going to buy a Mac - I'm looking at the 15" Powerbook (http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/uk_Ind.woa/91009/wo/M51VXW0MuYIu3qXQuGT1DD51QHh/1.0.11.1.0.6.23.1.1.1.1.0.0.1.0) - this is the education store link (enter 'College of Law' and 'London' if it takes you to an entrance screen rather than PowerBook details). I'm still technically a student till my NUS card expires - presumably at the end of August though it doesn't have an expiry date. I guess I might get away with using my ISIC which is valid until the end of December, but I don't think I want to wait that long/chance it.
If I buy from the education store it'll cost me £1 269.00 and I should be able to let the company reclaim the VAT (the ex VAT price is £1 080.00). It has 512MB RAM - upgrading that to 1GB is £91.99. A DVDR/CDRW is another £91.99. An AirPort Express Base station is £82.85 - I'm guessing I'll need something like that eventually though wireless networking isn't all that important when you're living somewhere small enough to run the cables around. An extra battery is another £82.25. Office 2004 is another £109. And now we're getting into silly amounts of extra money, so which extras I should buy now and what I can leave for a while longer? this page lists the software - is there anything here I'm going to need?
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The battery can certainly wait - but don't wait more than a couple of years to pick up a spare or you may run into problems finding one. This happened to me with my old Powerbook but I managed to find one, just. Third party suppliers will probably be able to get you a battery, even if it's not Apple branded, three or four years down the line.
Software: Your PB will come with iLife, so from that list the only thing that might grab your attention is iWork. However, if you're getting Office then iWork is redundant.
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A base station would be handy, but its also something that you can invest in later. One thing tho, how does your ADSL currently connect to your PC? Is it a USB modem or a CAT5 one. Is it yours or theirs? Depending on how you connect its worth seeing what support your ISP offers for Macs ...
The ability to write your own CDs is handy for backup purposes. Depends if you really think you need to burn DVDs rather than CDs.
I think that anything you buy will come with iLife and Tiger, So the only software you probably need is right now office and you might get an educational discount with that too...
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Being able to burn DVDs isn't necessary, I'm just wondering whether it'd be a shame to not get it while I've got the chance.
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(still *jealous*)
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Apple are switching to Intel CPUs for new machines over the next 2 years (announced yesterday). I can't decide what this says about buying one now (our resident mac geek at work reckons BUY BUY BUY).
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Other people mentioned Apple switching to Intel CPUs - I'm not too bothered about this. I don't think I want to wait until they've switched 'cos my need for a machine is more pressing than that.
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Work-mac-geek reckons it'll be good, due to the vast installed base of Power based Macs, you'd be stupid to make your software unavailable to the majority of your potential customers. It's obviously going to drop off over time though, but it's hard to predict how much how fast.
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If you
a) plan to have your laptop for a while (a while being a year or more)
or
b) want to have a decent resale value for your laptop
then you may want to be concerned over Apples new direction.
Buying a Mac right now may be similar to buying a Betamax video system even when you could see into the future.
But hey, the laptop will do what you want it to do now, and won't stop doing that. And in the future you'll still be able to install Linux on it :)
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I believe new PowerBooks still come pre-loaded with a preregistered version of GraphicConverter (http://lemkesoft.de/en/graphcon.htm), which would be more than enough for these needs. The majority of Mac users consider it the most worthy software purchase they've ever made, for the price.
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I'm still using 256MB though!
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I really don't want to repeat the mistakes I made with my current machine - I paid around £800 for it on the recommendation of a friend and I've been landed with an unstable machine for four and a bit years.
How expensive/tricky would it be to go for your suggestion of VMware + an X server? I'm slightly wary because it sounds like an over engineered geeky solution to something which shouldn't be that much of a problem.
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VMWare is $189, the Cygwin X server seems to be good enough (I've been using it at work for a few weeks now) and is free. It is a geeky solution, but VMWare is solid and easy to use, and it's a good alternative to dual booting.
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Meg gave me this Dell laptop, ooh, nine months ago and I've been very happy with it, though my use is hardly demanding. However, she had problems (had to replace the hard disk twice?) over the two years she had had it beforehand.
I'm inclined to believe that Dell are probably OK - you hear a lot of complaints about them, but in proprtionate terms, probably no more than for any other manufacturer. Data point from close to home if you want it.
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Pro: built like brick shithouses.
Con: weigh about as much.
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My and my parents' Toshibas have lasted well. Mine has personally been put through vast amounts of unreasonable abuse and still works fine. (I can't remember how old it is, but it's a P3-600 if that gives any indication?)
A colleague with an identical laptop to mine actually had over one year of continuous uptime on his.. Which IMHO is quite amazing to get on any PC, let alone a laptop. (Although I guess having the battery meant it wasn't affected by power outages.)
(Although it was running Linux, so you could upgrade most software without needing to reboot.)
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I'm twitchy about you buying Office too ;) Is there anyone you know who could, er, provide you with a copy? I'd happily do it, but I only have the Windows version. Software is so expensive. One day I might actually have enough money to be able to buy MS and Adobe products legally...
I'm currently eyeing up a DVD burner. You definitely want a DVD drive, and some method of burning would be very useful. I'd say you need a CD-RW at a minimum. You can currently get external DVD-RWs for £50 though, so have a think about whether you actually want it internal. It's probably more convenient that way, but also more expensive.
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