[ozz]

Quote:

That's really not true. While I don't dislike Macs (anymore), there are certainly PCs that offer features not found on Apple computers. Lots, in fact.

But how many of the features are actually useful in everyday life and at what expense to extra heat and life expectancy.
 

 

[Cymbal Monkey]

Apple computers are built like tanks, they're super stable and if anything does go wrong I wouldn't want to deal with anyone else but Apple, they're always on top of it. I've never felt under featured on my macbook pro.

 

[MCC]

Quote:

But how many of the features are actually useful in everyday life and at what expense to extra heat and life expectancy.
 

Plenty. Standards like a non-proprietary display port and ExpressCard. The lack of the latter means that you can't add support for USB 3.0 and eSATA, both of which are strangely absent for a "pro" level machine. None of these features would add measurably to the heat generated by the machine nor impact reliability. Finally, Apple solders the CPU to the motherboard further limiting upgrade options down the road. Rather than allowing the user to add new standards to an existing laptop Apple would prefer if you bought the latest and greatest.
 
Thinkpads have an "ultrabay" that can be used for a DVD drive (default config), extra hard drive, second battery, or a Blu-ray upgrade. The modularity provided by this design means that you are free to customize your machine to your needs. 
 
Correction: The 17" Macbook Pro does offer a single ExpressCard/34 slot but lacks support for the larger ExpressCard/54.

 

[mralexosborn]

Asus generally has the best "bang for your buck" gaming laptops.

 

[shnitz]

Sorry, as I said I have a Mac. Apple is definitely a latecomer, or me-too when it comes to technology. For example, they shunned bluray, dvi, hdmi. They made their own graphics cards, until they realized that someone else was doing it better. Now they have hdmi conversion adapters. Same goes for their processors, memory and graphics cards.

 

[ozz]

Quote:

Plenty. Standards like a non-proprietary display port and ExpressCard. The lack of the latter means that you can't add support for USB 3.0 and eSATA, both of which are strangely absent for a "pro" level machine. None of these features would add measurably to the heat generated by the machine nor impact reliability. Finally, Apple solders the CPU to the motherboard further limiting upgrade options down the road. Rather than allowing the user to add new standards to an existing laptop Apple would prefer if you bought the latest and greatest.
 
Thinkpads have an "ultrabay" that can be used for a DVD drive (default config), extra hard drive, second battery, or a Blu-ray upgrade. The modularity provided by this design means that you are free to customize your machine to your needs. 
 
Correction: The 17" Macbook Pro does offer a single ExpressCard/34 slot but lacks support for the larger ExpressCard/54.

I could be wrong but out of all the people i know most do not travel with any of their expensive Blu-Ray movies to watch on a screen less than 40 inches and as
far as laptop upgrades most mother boards don't support the newer tech when it comes out and they did a survey awhile back and express card slots were not
high on the lists not saying they are not useful just not enough support for them.
 

 

[Cymbal Monkey]

One thing to keep in mind is that I wouldn't want to upgrade the processor. Machines with replaceable processors have to make allowances for different processors, while Apple optimises the hardware for one processor, thus getting the most out of it.

 

[Scott_Tarlow]

I have had my Asus gaming notebook, over clocked constantly for 2 1/2 years and still no trouble. The thing is only 15 inches, but it barely fits into my timbuk2 17 inch messenger. I bought a little netbook recently for moving around, both cost me about 1700 combined, although i did get my netbook for 200 bucks under price.  Scratch that, my DVD burner doesnt work anymore, it still reads but doesn't burn. Oh well, so there has been a problem, but who burns dvds now anyway?
 
I wouldn't want to game on a mac though, small laptops heat up fast. Asus Laptops are huge, but they dont have heat problems.

 

[Cymbal Monkey]

I game on my mac all the time... no heat issues.

 

[windowphone7]

go for the Sony Vaio Z
with 2100$ you can get the top of the line 2400$ for around 2050$ on ebay
 
it is truly a portable laptop with powerful processor
you will also get 256ssd 
 
it is very light 3lb. and can last 3-6hr for standard battery
 
 
 

 

[MCC]

I could be wrong but out of all the people i know most do not travel with any of their expensive Blu-Ray movies to watch on a screen less than 40 inches and as
far as laptop upgrades most mother boards don't support the newer tech when it comes out and they did a survey awhile back and express card slots were not
high on the lists not saying they are not useful just not enough support for them.
 

 
Blu-ray drives aren't only useful for movies but also for data backup and storage. Plus, you're missing that the Ultrabay also adds support for a 2nd hard drive which is useful if you would like to upgrade the boot drive to a small SSD and retain internal mass storage. Future media formats may also be supported on these old machines. Finally, I myself use ExpressCard on my laptop for eSATA since my laptop's too old to support that feature natively. I could also add a TV tuner, USB 3.0 support, a nicer sound card, an external video card, etc., etc. It also gives me the flexibility to add a third PCMCIA WiFi card to supplement the two I already have installed inside.
 
Quote:

One thing to keep in mind is that I wouldn't want to upgrade the processor. Machines with replaceable processors have to make allowances for different processors, while Apple optimises the hardware for one processor, thus getting the most out of it.

There is no "optimization" done for a specific CPU. Any mobile CPU supported by the Intel HM55 chipset should be supported by the hardware and the CPUs spec'd by Apple have a 35W TDP so that isn't an issue. The only change made to support a different CPU is to adjust the multiplier, DMI and Vcore via software. Even if EFI doesn't know what the CPU is it will still work. Sometime down the road I plan on installing a Core 2 Quad CPU in my laptop and I like knowing that I can.

 

[ozz]

Correct me if I am wrong again but on laptops with Blu-Ray that is a player only and even though you can use an express card for faster data transport with newer
e sata and usb 3.0 it is bottle necked by the speed of the older motherboard and I still believe on systems that have swappable processors the entire motherboard
and ram were built around the slower processor making any gain marginal. Would you be able to take advantage of hyper threading and multi cores when more than
2 are present ?

 

[azncookiecutter]

A fully spec-ed out Lenovo T510 should fit your needs nicely.

 

[MCC]

Quote:

Correct me if I am wrong again but on laptops with Blu-Ray that is a player only and even though you can use an express card for faster data transport with newer
e sata and usb 3.0 it is bottle necked by the speed of the older motherboard and I still believe on systems that have swappable processors the entire motherboard
and ram were built around the slower processor making any gain marginal. Would you be able to take advantage of hyper threading and multi cores when more than
2 are present ?

 

1. If it can read a Blu-ray disk, it can read files off of it. Think of it this way: DVDs can store movies but that doesn't stop game publishers from shipping DVD media.
2. The ExpressCard standard is designed to transfer up to 2.5Gbit/sec. If it doesn't meet the spec it can't be labeled ExpressCard. 
3. Believe me, I have academic experience in this area. For the motherboard to work properly it needs to correctly implement Intel's design spec. The same chipset used on the latest Macbook Pro machines is used on many other laptops, many of which have a socketed CPU. RAM is standard and the Macbook Pro ships with the fastest RAM supported by the Core i5/i7 mobile processors in terms of clock speed. Remember that the core i* series directly interfaces with the RAM unlike the Core 2 series.
4. Yes, the OS should be able to take advantage of extra cores if available. In the past I've upgraded a single core machine with a motherboard not designed for dual core CPUs with one and it worked fine even without a BIOS update. The BIOS doesn't know what it is but I've confirmed that it's working to its full potential.

 
Edit: Yes, the USB 3.0 spec is designed for roughly 2x the peak bandwidth of what ExpressCard 1 affords. Yet even then an ExpressCard 1 USB 3.0 adapter has enough bandwidth available to operate 5x faster than USB 2.0. I have yet to see an affordable storage device that can come even close to that limit.

 

[shnitz]

MCC is correct, there's no such "optimization" for a specific processor.  They simply use the processor in the family (whether it's the core 2 duo in the 13 inch or the core i5 in the larger ones) that meets a price/performance ratio that will sell.  In the future, prices will drop on processors, invariably.  While it's being mentioned, the slight processor speed increase, and the associated cost, of a Macbook upgrade is not worth it.  For example, the 15 inch has a $400 upgrade to go from a 2.4 ghz/320gb hdd to 2.66 ghz/500gb hdd.  The speed difference means that, if you were to run a two hour long processor-intensive process, you would save about 6 minutes with the faster processor.  In a year or so though, there will be a much faster/ more efficient processor that simply plugs into the same socket.  Take that $400 and buy yourself something nice. 
 
Upgrading to a 500gb hard drive is simple in the future, and user-replaced hard drives don't void the warranty for opening up the computer.  In my white plastic Macbook, I waited until I had actually started using a significant amount of hard drive space, and then bought myself a 7200 rpm drive.  I bought an external hard drive with firewire and usb, and used the firewire to connect the old hard drive, installed in the enclosure.  The new hard drive will see it as a mac and literally upgrade everything to exactly how you had it.  It will be identical to what you had been using, just more space.  Then format the old hard drive, and use it for whatever (I formatted it with FAT, so that I can transfer files to friends with PCs, plus I can put movies on the hard drive that the xbox can read).
 
Regardless, this is threadjacking to the OP.  Get a Mac if you want, but if it's your only computer, I'd recommend a solid PC laptop that is more futureproof.  Then again, Macs hold their value enough to sell to the Apple-loving idiots that still pay 70% of a used products value, 3 years after it's released.