Laptop for digital side of workflow

[Frank Petronio]

The Sonys, Levenos, and the gaming machines - VooDoo and Alienware - are almost or as well built as the Apples. Note that these machines cost more than the bargain Dells and Toshibas that the magazines usually try to compare an Apple to.

I own a Toshiba. It is crap.

Yep, you can get 7200 RPM HDs for Mac laptops just like a PC. They are the same thing afterall.

And as for viruses, sooner or later some jerk will unleash something to attacks Macs. And right now I don't like any of the anti-Virus solutions...

[Marko]

Another important point to consider is the speed of the hard drive. Most laptops come stock with 5400 rpm hard drives. I'm not sure about Macs or whether their hard drives are easily upgraded.

Same as PCs. Just as as you said yourself further down in your post, they all use the same parts from the same manufacturers these days. So, yes, they are as easily upgraded. The reason why most laptops come with slower drives is mainly power consumption. It takes less power to make them run and they generate less heat. You can replace your hd with a faster one, but you'll likely pay the battery life penalty.

As for Mac vs PC laptop build quality, it simply depends on which brand you compare to the Mac. There are a number of PCs built as well or better than Macs. There is nothing special about the build quality of a Mac. They use the same oem suppliers as the PC industry.

True, and all those PCs that are built the same or better cost the same or more. Both quality and price differential stem from quality control. In other words, no free lunch, regardless of platform. And to top it off, being PCs, they still have to run the same crummy OS... ;-)

And for what it's worth, the new Macs are just as susceptible to viruses as a PC

It's neither PCs nor Macs that are succeptible to viruses - it's the operating systems they run. PCs mostly run Windows, Macs run OSX, which is a variant of BSD Unix and that's what makes PCs so vulnerable and Macs so resilient. Put Unix on a PC and it will be equally resilient as any Mac.

But bottom line is no operating system is fully bullet-proof. It's just that none of them are so widespread as Windows nor do they have as many holes.

[Charles]

POSTED BY MARKO
[U]It's neither PCs nor Macs that are succeptible to viruses - it's the operating systems they run. PCs mostly run Windows, Macs run OSX, which is a variant of BSD Unix and that's what makes PCs so vulnerable and Macs so resilient. Put Unix on a PC and it will be equally resilient as any Mac.

But bottom line is no operating system is fully bullet-proof. It's just that none of them are so widespread as Windows nor do they have as many holes.[/QUOTE][/U]

Actually the Mac OS has lots of holes, they just haven't been exploited. Go to GOOGLE and enter APPLE OS ISSUES. You'll find interesting reading including the following:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/securit...9234678,00.htm

[Charles]

"And for what it's worth, the new Macs are just as susceptible to viruses as a PC, there just aren't as many viruses out circulating intended to hit Macs. But the number of viruses being written now for Macs is surprisingly high and it will only get worse."

I'm not sure this is correct. AFAIK it might be true for Intel based Mac's that are booted up to Windows but still not for Mac's running OSX or any UNIX operating system for that matter. As far as the "suprisingly high number" my understanding that there have been less than a dozen Mac viruses in the "wild" in fact I think evenlower than that.

SEE PRECEDING POST

[Joe Lipka]

Arguing the physical merits of hardware is tough, because the machines change so often.
I make the wild assumption that you are going to use Photoshop as your image editing software. If that is the case, the only concern that I would have about using a mobile as a permanent machine for digital workflow has to do with the scratch disk. Adobe recommends the use of another hard drive as a scratch disk to help speed up photoshop while saving intermediate files. You probably do not have this option when using a mobile computer for photshop work.

That may not be a big deal for you.

That being said, I do use my Thinkpad when I make photographs. It is a wonderful place to store images and review the "dailies".

[Marko]

It's neither PCs nor Macs that are succeptible to viruses - it's the operating systems they run. PCs mostly run Windows, Macs run OSX, which is a variant of BSD Unix and that's what makes PCs so vulnerable and Macs so resilient. Put Unix on a PC and it will be equally resilient as any Mac.

But bottom line is no operating system is fully bullet-proof. It's just that none of them are so widespread as Windows nor do they have as many holes.

Actually the Mac OS has lots of holes, they just haven't been exploited. Go to GOOGLE and enter APPLE OS ISSUES. You'll find interesting reading including the following:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/securit...9234678,00.htm

ZDNet has far too much invested into the whole Microsoft thing that they can hardly be taken as an objective observer. Take the following quote from that article:

"The only thing which has kept Mac OS X relatively safe up until now is the fact that the market share is significantly lower than that of Microsoft Windows or the more common UNIX platforms.… If this situation was to change, in my opinion, things could be a lot worse on Mac OS X than they currently are on other operating systems, regarding security vulnerabilities"

Mr. Archibald has it right in the first part of the quote, insofar as BSD Unix could be considered less common 'Nix, but the second part of it is pure bull, pardon my bluntness.

Let me rephrase the part you quoted me on: Windows as an operating system is a patch of a patch originally built to sit on top of another patch of a patch, DOS, a Disk Operating System. It's vulnerability stems directly from the fact that it was built to accomodate as much backward compatibility as possible. Being essentially still a Disk-oriented system, real security is much harder to obtain than is the case with Account-oriented system like Unix.

Yes, Unix is vulnerable too, and yes, as Apple's market share increases, it will begin to get targeted as well. But the difference will be on an order of a magnitude at least, due to the differences in the operating systems.

My bottom line remains: it's not the hardware that matters in this matter, it's the software. And Microsoft - both Windows and Office - remains the Emmentaler of the bunch.

[Charles]

ZDNet has far too much invested into the whole Microsoft thing that they can hardly be taken as an objective observer. Take the following quote from that article:

"The only thing which has kept Mac OS X relatively safe up until now is the fact that the market share is significantly lower than that of Microsoft Windows or the more common UNIX platforms.… If this situation was to change, in my opinion, things could be a lot worse on Mac OS X than they currently are on other operating systems, regarding security vulnerabilities"

Mr. Archibald has it right in the first part of the quote, insofar as BSD Unix could be considered less common 'Nix, but the second part of it is pure bull, pardon my bluntness.

Let me rephrase the part you quoted me on: Windows as an operating system is a patch of a patch originally built to sit on top of another patch of a patch, DOS, a Disk Operating System. It's vulnerability stems directly from the fact that it was built to accomodate as much backward compatibility as possible. Being essentially still a Disk-oriented system, real security is much harder to obtain than is the case with Account-oriented system like Unix.

Yes, Unix is vulnerable too, and yes, as Apple's market share increases, it will begin to get targeted as well. But the difference will be on an order of a magnitude at least, due to the differences in the operating systems.

My bottom line remains: it's not the hardware that matters in this matter, it's the software. And Microsoft - both Windows and Office - remains the Emmentaler of the bunch.

Whatever.....at least Microsoft admits their OS issues as opposed to Apple where the company policy seems to be admit nothing. Admission would, of course, tend to shatter the myth of Mac superiority or at least weaken it.