thoughts

[seventhe]

i think if i'm going to be working from home and trying to make it happen sustainably, i may need a new laptop. this one is at least 5 years old and i hate that that's obsolete, but i can tell with the screen, the speed, watching movies, etc. i hate how fast technology gets old these days, but im old get off my goddamn lawn.

the thing is that i've been trying to get in the habit of working from my iPad Pro because i got the top of the line one for that very reason. and it's great for general writing; so much more convenient, i've learnt to work with the touch screen, and it lets me work in positions comfortable to my back (very important!).

but the clients im working with RN are sending me work that's either in excel (and spreadsheets SUCK on mobile and CONTINUE to suck on mobile) or it requires a good amount of hotlinking, both of which are so much easier with an actual mouse. yes sure i could get a mouse like device for the iPad but that doesn't change the spreadsheet interfacing which blows some chunks.

so this is Ye Old Speak To Me About Apple Vs PC post. normally i wouldn't ever consider apple for a laptop not because i dont like them but namely because i dont do anything special with a laptop so i may as well save money there to spend on my mobile / tablet devices or gaming systems. that being said, i'm thoroughly entrenched in the iPhone & iPad world right now (i do not need suggestions on why i need to change that) so the thought of being able to more easily synchronize devices is an intriguing one. although i dont know how easily mobile and laptop sync up in the Apple world? maybe it isnt that much of a difference?

i mean i also have money but not a lot of income at the moment so i need to balance conservative spending habits with making sure i have something that can keep up with that income as well as potentially better suit my writing habits as i start to branch into fiction.

so yeah yo talk to me bros

Comments

[zen_monk]

I’m in a similar position since I pretty much abandoned my laptop in favor of working on my iPad Pro. There’s just something of having a device turn on immediately than waiting for a laptop to boot up and have a think when on desktop. My own laptop is about 6 years old now and its sound system is a mere tinny volume even at max levels without headphones, and it heats up way too fast even after changing to a solid state drive.

I’ve been eyeing on Macs, either desktop or laptop, because I’ve been trying to practice design work like Adobe InDesign to build up skills, and also for the ease in syncing up with my iPad if need be. If it weren’t for my more nomadic tendencies, I might have invested in a desktop Mac due to being somewhat cheaper (?) than MacBooks. But man, I remember when Mac Blueberries can last for like, ten years before switching, you know?

[lassarina]

HEY HI SO

There are, like, four varieties of Mac and they come at different price points depending on what you want them to do. Your iPad and phone can sync with them pretty well depending on how you have some things set up, which I'll get to in a second. I am speaking as a person who owns an iPad Pro, an iPhone 8, a MacBook Pro (high end laptop) and the beefiest iMac money would buy in 2017, so I am primarily a user of high end products, BUT I think I can speak to the experience of the more entry level things as well.

Since you're talking about laptops, we'll throw the iMac and the Mac pro right out the window, figuratively speaking; they are very expensive and very powerful, but also immutably desktops.

If you look at a Mac laptop, you have two choices: a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air. (Technically there's a third choice; we're ignoring it for now.) The fancy Retina MacBook Air costs about $1300, is about the same weight as your iPad Pro, has a 13" screen, and will handle things like Excel and Word exceptionally well.

The pro is higher end; mine is a 15" 2.6GHz i7 with 16GB of RAM and I bought it for a combination of writing and, importantly, playing video games. If you do not intend to use your Mac laptop for intense graphic editing, video, or video games, you do not need a MacBook Pro. I think I paid $2200 for it but I expect to get heavy development and gaming use out of it for at least 4 years.

As far as how long they last: my prior MacBook Pro lasted a full 9 years and honestly, there wasn't anything really wrong with it when I replaced it (in fact I gave it to my aunt and she's happy with it), it was just slow and I wanted something I could game on when I was away from my big honking desktop.

My prior iMac gave me 6 years of good service with very heavy gaming usage, and when I replaced it, I handed it over to my mother, who got another year of use out of it before it kafutzed.

As far as stuff syncing: your iMessages (texts) can hand off automatically between your iDevices and your MacBook. If you have Dropbox, things like Scrivener can be synced between the two (I will sing the praises of scrivener any time you like.) Calendars and the like can also sync. I'm not sure what else you might want to move between them, but I do stuff on many platforms through Dropbox and love it.

I am open to any further questions. :D

[lassarina]

I gave sev some thoughts here, if you'd like.

[samuraiter]

If it's any consolation, this laptop is pretty vintage, too (seven years old), and I won't be updating any time soon. Then again, I've got thing for keeping old tech in service. :-P *looks over shoulder at various consoles*

As far as Apple versus PC, I'm ... not the guy to offer anything resembling an objective opinion there (because I don't like Apple; the last one I used was the Apple IIC back in the '80s!), so I'd look at what Rina has to say on the subject instead.

[zen_monk]

It was a helpful response, thank you.

[seventhe]

i would love to keep this poor dell in service, and i'll use it as long as i can, but im noticing its weak spots more and more. SIGH.

[sarasa_cat]

Like lassarina, I fall solidly into the high end of the tech side. Her comment already says much of what I might say so I'll just add the following:

In the past, when purchasing lower powered machines I have ended up regretting how underpowered they were within just a couple of years, if not sooner. I currently have the top of the line MacBook Pro that was fully maxed out on all specs/options (it is pretty light weight -- Hardly heavier than my iPadPro) and I have zero regrets about the sticker shock when they ran my credit card for it because even though it will be 2 years old this august, it is far more reliable and far more responsive than the parade of shitty work laptops (windows) that my partner brings home.

Whenever I purchase a top of the line Mac, I tend to get quite a few years of use out of them and whenever I am ready to upgrade, the machine is often still good enough that someone will want it.

As for the ecosystem and interoperability between a mac and an iPad/iPhone, it has certainly improved a lot over the past decade. I can pretty much seamlessly move between my various apple products and have ebooks, audio (music, podcasts, etc.), and various files/documents appear wherever I need them. I use Scrivener A LOT (note: I was an early adopter so Scrivener has been important in my life for at least a dozen years) and it is great being able to quickly pop open a Scrivener binder on my iPhone, type something there, and then work on it later on my laptop.

Obviously, GoogleDocs works well for this sort of seamless back and forth.

[crankyoldman]

I replaced my laptop with a Microsoft Surface Go, which was a reasonable price, v portable and it runs very fast and doesn't run mobile apps; they are essentially desktop apps. Since the keyboard they try to sell you with is is RIDIC EXPENSIVE I got a Logistech bluetooth keyboard that the little guy sits in a tray if I wanna get SRS BUSINESS with doing some writing on it. The touch keyboard is pretty great too, which is what I use when I'm on the bus.

My phone's an iphone as well, and I have an old iPad for certain games, but if you're looking for a reasonably priced laptop-but-not this one has been working out extremely well.

And it runs Excel.

I use a MacBook at work, and I've noticed no weirdness switching between operating systems. Only issue I have is I sometimes touch my work laptop screen, it doesn't respond and I curse at it.

[ser_pounce_alot]

i've got a dell, and it's been amazing for me. it was only $850, and it's a dual tablet/keyboard model that folds in and out, plus a touch screen when you have it in tablet mode OR keyboard mode. it even games, which is impressive, and i've been a computer-only gamer since being abroad for so long. the only game it couldn't handle on steam was inquisition, which i had to mod to be low-spec, but inquisition was hard even on high end machines due to being such a RAM hog.

also, i do design work with photoshop, illustrator, and indesign on it, and it can comfortably handle having all three apps open at the same time as well as play music, which my old laptop definitely couldn't do. i have no complaints about mine, but the only apple product i own is an ipod (and this is purposeful), so i might not be the best person to ask. :)