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I need a new computer!


Twigs
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I need some advice. I need a new laptop and was wondering what type will last the longest - a Mac or a PC?

Tell me about your experience!

Thanks.

 

ETA: Thanks to everyone for their input. I ended up with a MacBook Pro. So far, so good!

Edited by Twigs
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Macs last longer in our house. We have a MacBook laptop from 2006 that still works - it's needed a battery replacement before, but it'll still work fine. DS uses a hand me down 2010 (I think?) and it works great. All of the PC's I've had barely work after a couple of years and they're so slow.

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We had a 2007 Dell, he bit the dust in 2010. We had harddrive and different malfunctions after maybe month 3, but I don't remember details. 

We had a 2009 HP laptop, he bit the dust in 2012. Both battery and harddrive. 

We have a 2011 iMac (maybe 2010) that needed a $90 new harddrive last year, otherwise running fine.

We have a 2012 Macbook Air that has a sad battery life but otherwise is fine (what I'm using right now).; I basically keep him plugged for most use. He can go maybe 1 hr without being plugged in.

We had a 2013 iMac that had to be replaced due to a faulty harddrive -- it was within warranty and part of a recall. Replaced with:

We have a 2015 iMac that so far has shown no issues.

While I don't like the general direction of Apple and have been having worse customer experiences (with phones, iPads, etc), we'll probably stick with the Mac lines, specifically iMacs and Macbook Airs. 

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It would be interesting to know the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) between a popular Apple Laptop and a popular Laptop made by Dell or Lenovo that is designed for and sold to "Enterprise" (corporate or government) customers.  I suspect the MTBF would be about the same.  The Foxconn factory that builds Apple products has 200,000 (?) employees and I believe, for example that iPhones are built by hand, but the OP is interested in a  Laptop.

We have Dell Enterprise grade Laptops in our house. The Dell Latitude E6410 I am using to write this was probably assembled in 2010 - 2012.  The Dell Latitude E6400 which is my backup laptop was probably assembled during 2008-2010.  Have they had components fail? Yes, of course. Hard drives and batteries. The Assembler (Dell or Lenovo) doesn't make those components, they buy them.

With the Dell Laptops, we have had approximately 3 machines that required new Keyboards.  I would think on the Latitude models from that era, the Keyboards were problematic. There are, at this time, 7 Dell Laptops and a very low-end ACER laptop in our house. One of them (a Latitude E6400 laptop that was my machine) has a display that apparently I damaged and is out of service. The others all work.

My cousin the eminent M.D. replaces his Apple products every 2 or 3 years and they take good care of him.  If you want bang for the buck, look at a Dell or Lenovo and try to compare apples to apples.  Or, Apple to Lenovo and Dell.

DD will be getting a low-end Lenovo laptop when she begins attending university in August.   I suspect it is going to be a fine machine for her.  We have no experience with Lenovo laptops in the house, but some years ago I bought a very used Lenovo Desktop (Enterprise grade) and an old Lenovo CRT monitor.  The Desktop had a failure and I junked it, but the old CRT monitor was in use for years after that.. 

Our Motorola phones are made by Lenovo and they have a lot of "bang for the buck"

In the end, it is going to come down to what Software you need to run on the machine!

Good  luck with whatever you purchase!

 

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For the most part, the life of a computer depends way more on the user than the brand. Sure, you can always get a lemon from any manufacturer, but if you clean it out regularly with compressed air, keep it cool, turn it off at night, shut it down correctly and avoid viruses and so on, that will matter much more than Mac vs. PC. So just get what you like and take good care of it.

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10 hours ago, Patty Joanna said:

I should add that we don’t buy the cheapest system from any manufacturer.  We get the middle of the road.   

 

Our laptops are in the house the majority of the time. In the house, they are always sitting on top of a Cooling Pad. Those are very inexpensive but will extend the life of the laptop. Electronic components hate heat.

Enterprise Grade laptops, like those we have in our house, are easier to service and some of the components are higher quality than those in Consumer Grade laptops, which are less expensive.

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From my own person experience Macs last longer, but the also can last too long. We have many Apple devices that mechanically work just fine but have long outlasted there usefulness. They cant support any more system updates which eventually makes the obsolete. My DH has a MacBook Pro that lasted 12 years,  it the last few years it wasn’t good for much more than watching videos.

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Your computer will last longer if you use a surge protector. Ask my dd how she knows, sigh. Fried a $3500 macbook pro. :angry:

So nothing outlasts stupid. Other than that, what gets me on my mac products (which I LOVE btw and am highly in favor of simply for how they FUNCTION and the fact that they FUNCTION and don't require all the pc hassles I used to go through) is the graphics card. So like right now I have an imac 28" that I'm on right now that is crazy awesome. I can't update to the newest system because the graphics card is too whatever (underpowered, old, pick a word). Could we replace it? Dunno, it happens. My unit says it's a mid-2010. I bought it refurb and added some things privately because you still could in those days. 

So my two cents is the best future-proof you have is making it as bad as you can in the first place, maxing out those cards, etc. As far as component quality, all the components Apple uses are going to be good. 

The other thing to notice is whether it does WELL what you want to do. I do a LOT with opening, altering, converting to pdf, and that is so easy, so normal on a mac, built in, free, right there, boom. I use that feature a LOT. I own a pc that we bought for my MIL and it doesn't come out of the box ready to do as much as our macs do. 

The other thing about macs that is beautiful is that everything is set up the same way every time. So if you pick up a new piece of software, you're not going to wonder where things are hidden. You'll just pick it up and go because it's so obvious how apple/mac organizes stuff. Now maybe the pc people have fixed that? I'm just saying it used to drive me crazy on pcs and the same tasks are more obvious and intuitive on macs.

When it doubt, go mac and be done with it. PCs are barbaric in comparison. :biggrin: Seriously, like if you don't know and there's nothing really driving it of something you HAVE to use on a particular platform and you *think* you want to try mac, just for it. Besides, aren't you able to buy and return for x number days or something? 

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On 4/27/2019 at 9:32 AM, Lanny said:

It would be interesting to know the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) between a popular Apple Laptop and a popular Laptop made by Dell or Lenovo that is designed for and sold to "Enterprise" (corporate or government) customers.  I suspect the MTBF would be about the same.  The Foxconn factory that builds Apple products has 200,000 (?) employees and I believe, for example that iPhones are built by hand, but the OP is interested in a  Laptop.

We have Dell Enterprise grade Laptops in our house. The Dell Latitude E6410 I am using to write this was probably assembled in 2010 - 2012.  The Dell Latitude E6400 which is my backup laptop was probably assembled during 2008-2010.  Have they had components fail? Yes, of course. Hard drives and batteries. The Assembler (Dell or Lenovo) doesn't make those components, they buy them.

With the Dell Laptops, we have had approximately 3 machines that required new Keyboards.  I would think on the Latitude models from that era, the Keyboards were problematic. There are, at this time, 7 Dell Laptops and a very low-end ACER laptop in our house. One of them (a Latitude E6400 laptop that was my machine) has a display that apparently I damaged and is out of service. The others all work.

My cousin the eminent M.D. replaces his Apple products every 2 or 3 years and they take good care of him.  If you want bang for the buck, look at a Dell or Lenovo and try to compare apples to apples.  Or, Apple to Lenovo and Dell.

DD will be getting a low-end Lenovo laptop when she begins attending university in August.   I suspect it is going to be a fine machine for her.  We have no experience with Lenovo laptops in the house, but some years ago I bought a very used Lenovo Desktop (Enterprise grade) and an old Lenovo CRT monitor.  The Desktop had a failure and I junked it, but the old CRT monitor was in use for years after that.. 

Our Motorola phones are made by Lenovo and they have a lot of "bang for the buck"

In the end, it is going to come down to what Software you need to run on the machine!

Good  luck with whatever you purchase!

 

I have an even older latitude which I bought from someone who cleans up ex business lease machines.  It runs really well though at some point I will need to make ds12 remove some of his rubbish.  He uses it to do AOPS on and I use it when I have to work away from home or need two computers running at the same time.  I will get him one with a better battery for high school next year as they require a device then.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I was just jumping in to say go Mac. I just picked up a refurbished iMac from the Apple site, after being "iPad Pro only" for a few years, and I just LOVE this thing! I'm definitely an Apple geek. I have had wonderful success with iMacs and just Apple products in general. They all just work together so seamlessly.

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