MacBook Temptation: Should I Be Stopped?
 

So I don't know exactly what happened but last night I went to the Apple website to see how ungodly expensive a MacBook Air is and, long story short, now I suddenly want a regular MacBook. I am assuming, of course, that Apple's website has subliminal messages and that I am apparently weak against any form of persuasion.

My Dell Dimension was bottom of the line when I bought it and intentionally so: I needed a computer and didn't want to pay a lot. However, I seem to be making more money than I'm paying out in living expenses for the time being and the possibility of upgrading seems reasonable. Furthermore, whenever I get around to moving again I'd like to have a computer that I don't have to pack up into several boxes and ship through UPS. My father's intrigued, as he'd be more than happy to take this computer off my hands should I buy I new one.

So out of all the laptops on the market, the MacBook seems to have grabbed my attention and I admittedly feel dirty, but should I? Is it a good system? Should I just get a basic model or are there other things I should have slapped onto it for good measure? How difficult is it to network a Mac and a PC?

Any and all insight and advice on the matter would be appreciated.

Despite my latent Mac-Lust, my view on the Macbook not-Pro has always been fuck paying over a thousand dollars for shitty integrated graphics.

I mean I'm not even asking for top-of-the-line here, Apple. Just a video card, somewhere in there, just so I know you're trying.

Also I can't support any product that charges you two hundred dollars extra for the exact same product in black plastic.

I mean if I could spring two-fitty for a laptop I would hit that Macbook Pro so hard it would void my warranty but the not-Pro always kinda struck me as a shiny sackful of Fuck You.

Yeah, I'm seeing the graphics issue now, which is a shame. I mean, I'm not by any means the most hardcore PC gamer around or anything but when it can barely even pull off games that are as old as dirt then it's pretty bad. And that extra $200 for black reminds me why I hate Apple.

Then I look at the Pro, see the price, and am reminded of all the rest of the reasons I hate Apple.

Meh.

Well, I can tell you three things.

1) I have a MacBook pro, and am in fact writing this message on one. I've absolutely loved it, it was one of my best purchases in a while.

2) They're sinfully easy to do anything with, except system recoveries.

3) They've got pretty stout warranties, so you'd have to hit it hard.

Sounds good, but what about the non-pro model? I'm not going to shell out a minimum two grand here.

What's the major thing that the Pro supplies that the basic model does not, and can I live without it?

I find Darth's second point a little stupid, as a normal Windows machine is sinfully easy to do anything with unless you're retarded. Aside from that, from what I've seen with Macs, it always seems there's some annoying issue that necessitates shipping it off to get fixed. For example, there have been a long line of battery issues with Macs, the latest being them not being able to hold charge after a month or two.

Careful, friend.

Yeah, I've been taking note of that issue, as well. Most stories I hear about Macs seems to go along the line of "it had this, this, and this problem so I sent it back and got a new one which works fine", which seems like an odd trend.

To add to the broken shit problem, they're power cords tend to overheat and melt if left plugged in for more than a few hours.

I'm seriously not kidding, Kait's laptop has gone through 3 melts now.

Same thing comes out of Microsoft for the 360, now that I think about it.

So really the lesson here is that technology just sucks and everybody's a cheap bastard that makes things poorly?