Mac Book Pro

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I had one.

Did you get Boot Camp or Parallels?

I went the Parallels route. Parallels runs Windows in a VM inside of Mac OSX, and you can flip between Mac and Windows programs much as if you have one giant OS. However, since Windows is running inside of Mac, you have to essentially boot up two computers every time you turn on your machine and want to get to Windows. You can't just turn on your Windows PC.

My general assessment was that it works, but you can get a lot better performance at a significantly lower price from a good straight-Windows laptop. I also had other sundry problems, like I could never get Windows to recognize all the buttons on my five-button mouse from inside Parallels. The Mac is only beneficial if you REALLY want the Mac side for other purposes, and are willing to trade price, performance, and ease of access on the Windows side for the benefit of having both worlds in the same laptop.

From what I've heard of Boot Camp, it's similar, in that you pay a lot more for lower performance than you could for a straight-windows computer, so you should really want that Mac side. But Boot Camp is more like a dual-boot system, so I think you can boot Windows straight, without starting up Mac first. It also sounds like it yields better performance, since Windows is really running natively, instead of inside a VM inside of Mac OSX. But you can't flip between Windows and Mac applications as if they were all running on one computer, the way you can with Parallels.

I think the main benefit of the Macbook Pro is quality of the hardware. Personally, I have little to no use for MacOS, but since Macs use Intel processors now, you can install Windows directly without any need for MacOS at all.

I could never justify it though. For the price, you get much lesser specs and you still have to buy Windows. For around $500 less than a well-equipped Macbook Pro, I got an ASUS laptop that will blow the doors off of nearly any other laptop on the planet without going to a $5k price point and the quality is superb.

Sorry, not trying to burst your bubble, this is just my humble opinion. 🙂

That said, I still think the Macbook Pro is a great choice, if not for its excellent quality and customer support (from what I've heard). I don't see any reason why it won't do anything a PC would do in terms of surveying software and uses, assuming Windows is installed.

[flash width=480 height=390] http://www.youtube.com/v/7L2fsubA2-c?version=3&hl=en_US [/flash]

Thanks for all the good info guys... Yeah...my actual priority is for graphics, photo and video editing and all that surveying stuff is secondary.
The guys from Topcon University were using it in a class I attended on Topcon Tools and that kinda pushed me over the edge. If it gets to a point where there is a hassle jumping back and forth I'll just have to be a two laptop surveyor. More gadgets, the merrier.

my daughter has a macbook. The plastic on top finally failed on top after years of abuse.

She took it to the Apple Store and they repaired it gratis.

That was impressive.

And that computer lived through a lot of abuse.

My little 15" hp cried uncle after a few months. We kept repairing it until about a year in I got her the MacBook.

Lenovo T-Series

You don't buy an Apple product for hardware quality. If one wants a quality (hardware) Windows laptop, get a Lenovo T-series.

> my actual priority is for graphics, photo and video editing and all that surveying stuff is secondary.

From what I've heard and read, that is a great reason to use MacOS because it caters directly to graphics and video. I hadn't thought of that (duh on my part), but it makes sense for you especially.

🙂

Lenovo T-Series

My ASUS is the most solidly-built laptop I've ever owned or used. I love it! 🙂

Here's what I'm dealing with at present... an HP DV 8000.. these came out as replacement desktops back in 2005... Now the cooling system (which sounds like a particle accelerator)is failing for second time causing it to shut down instantly... but the box of frozen veggie burgers I found in the freezer is helping to keep it cool..at least long enough to download data and get it on a backup drive.

Wow, that looks EXACTLY like my old laptop. It was an HP dv8333cl from Costco. I used it for many years before selling it for $400. I was sad to see it go, it never had any problems.

Your DV8000 looks like the big brother to my DV5000 series that I've been surfing the internet on daily since it was new... Despite the high volumes of cat hair the fan ingests, it keeps right on running. My wife's HP laptop even survived the rollover accident in her 4Runner. (fortunately, the wife survived that also, but the 4Runner was totaled).

I can't say as many nice things for the Dell Precision M4300 that faithfully lived on my desk at work. It died two weeks ago from a catastrophic graphics adapter failure. I dropped the hard drive in a SATA>USB cradle to retrieve the contents, and resurrected a several year old desktop machine out of the corner to use at the office...

Enjoy the Mac Book Pro. I have a black Apple II+ that still runs (built in the late 1970s), and a IIgs (built in the mid '80s). My iPod Touch (3rd gen) will need a new battery in the near future after 18 months of daily use.

Wow! I used to have an Apple IIgs. I thought it was the cat's meow when I bought it new.

Did you have the signed version Wendell? We had it, PLUS 1 MB of RAM!!!!!

Yes, it was the signed one. Now you got me wishing I still had it. LOL

Back in the '90s one could say the Macs catered to the video/graphics market, however Mac OS has fallen far behind. Mac OS X (10.6.8) only supports OpenGL 2.1 (circa 2006) not OpenGL 4.0 (2010). Modern video cards are a bit of a waste on a Mac. Unsurprisingly a lot of big graphics software vendors have reduced their support for the platform over the last couple of years. When you see Mac graphics benchmarks in 2011, using Quake III Arena (a game released in 1999), you know things aren't state of the art.