The Goat Pen

the biggest problem with my MacBook is that I bought it just before Apple switched to Intel chips. I should've waited but I wanted to get all the free software from my soon-to-be-ex employer in SF before I moved to NC

I ordered my new laptop. Ended up costing me $1900. 2.2 GHz i7, 500 MB hard drive, 8 GB DDR3, etc.

An equivalent Dell probably would have run me $800-1000, I'm guessing, with similar battery life, it would be bigger and heavier, and I think their displays are native 1280x720 and mine will be 1680x1050.

If you don't have a strong opinion about the operating systems, and the exrtremely easy integration of apple products (iTunes on a PC is a fucking nightmare) and such things, it's pretty hard to stomach the extra cost.

"An equivalent Dell probably would have run me $800-1000, I'm guessing"

Mine was $400...

What kind? What components?

It'll do anything that anybody (certainly anybody like Stu or anyone else in here) could ever possibly need and it cost $400, that's all you need to know...

This is really a gay argument.

MY COMPUTER IS BETTER THAN YOURS!!!!! BITCH !!

My computer is way better than Stu's, and brand new it's less than half of what he could get a used Mac for. But he'd rather hang onto a piece of shit that doesn't work than buy an affordable machine that can do everything he could ever possibly want it to do. He's a fool...

Never would I buy a Mac. Its like shopping at T.J. Max

Or Wall*Mart

hedge's needs for a computer are pretty basic: email, here and porn. because he assumes everyone else is like him, I understand why he thinks a $400 off-the-rack laptop is the answer for all. yet, at the first hiccup, he's stricken with a palsy and has to run in here and plead for hep.

Buying a Mac is hardly like TJ Maxx or WalMart, it's more like a pretentious high end store that sells slightly different stuff for a huge markup. Hedge's $400 is probably a better fit for a WalMart comparison. Also it sounds like its a Hedges machine is fine, I'm just curious what he got for $400.

TheOatmeal.com has the best blackout day (Google and Wiki are the most prominent) website message in protest of SOPA/PIPA: http://theoatmeal.com/sopa

In the last Simpsons episode, Homer went into a Mapple store and said "I want you to sell me a pricey computer and then charge me for the apps everyone else gets for free"

Watched the goat/koala bit, that was creative.

I've had a bumper sticker on my car (above my Ron Paul sticker) for years now that says "Keep the Internet Open and Free". When I first put it on , strangers would ask me what it meant. Now, no one asks me. I would assume its either because I put off the hard core porn watcher vibe or they all understand the concerns with the Net Neutrality act and now SOPA

THis is what I've got. The only complaint I have so far is that sometimes the volume isn't quite loud enough, even if I have it turned up all the way..

http://reviews.lenovo.com/8923-en_us/BC ... eviews.htm

You need some external speakers.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... 55/#slide1

#SOPA

with the way CPU's are today, heck, a 6 year old computer that isn't bogged down with a bloated operating system, virus check and firewall can still handle the day to day usage of the average user.

What is the average user going to do? Make a calendar in Word, balance their budget in Xcel, take the redeye out and crop pictures in an older pirated version of photoshop, read some user manuals in PDF, go to youtube, go to CNN, go to ESPN, go to hotmail, play farmville and then use google with the safe search off to find porn and then maybe stream netflix.

If you have an XP box with SP3, Microsoft Security Essentials and Malware bytes, and at least 2gb of RAM, with a 250gb hard drive - the computer is going to do all that.

Like ATM mentioned earlier, the cheaper computers aren't any noticeably less capable than the more expensive ones, but their components are the cheapest quality meaning they are more susceptible to heat, shorter battery life, poor quality audio, less wifi range, slower graphics.,etc but to the guy that sits in his recliner or desk at home and just does the things I said above, I doubt any of that will bother them unless the motherboard craps out on them in the first 2 years.

More expensive laptops aren't any more capable of doing the things I mentioned above with any noticeable difference to a user unless they open 100 pictures in photoshop as opposed to 3, or try to create a 150 page graphics filled PowerPoint.

More expensive laptops/desktops jump up the hard drive space from large capacity to huge (meaningless to an average user), the memory by tripling or quadrupling the gb's (the most significant upgrade IF you're doing the 100 picture scenario) and a bump in the CPU (again, meaningless to the average user).

Now if you are a gamer you'd want the Nvidia 580ti graphics chip which alone would add $600 to the price of a laptop or around $250 to a desktop, a quad core cpu with the 64-bit version of Windows 7, etc., but suffice to say if don't know why you need it, you probably don't - or if you are using it as a media player you might want a Blu-Ray and card reader - that's how you start bumping the price up noticeably on laptops.