Just this Sunday, A friend of mine asked me what I thought of Mac laptops because his sister was in the market for a new one after struggling with viruses and low-end performance on her HP for the past three years. My response via text message, “I can’t recommend Mac’s because it’s the same hardware, but way overpriced.” Normally, if this were a phone conversation or in-person, I would have time and a forum to better explain my answer, although this is how I feel. Mac’s have built a reputation with many people who do not know much about computers that they are better-built, contain better hardware and never have viruses, at least this was my friends’ perception. Adversely, it was also his perception, garnered by “I’m a Mac” ads, that PC’s were made of out-dated hardware and are riddled with viruses because they are not protected.
Her main reason for wanting to switch to a Mac was that she was tired of dealing with viruses. I will try not to beat a dead horse because we all know that there is a reason that PC’s are infected more often than Mac’s, and that is because there are simply more PC’s.
Another concern was that she complained about her laptop being way too slow to do simple tasks. The hardware in a PC is the same and can be better than those components in a Mac. Mac refreshes their hardware line usually on a yearly cycle, sometimes more often, while other manufactures are constantly developing new versions of their products to run Windows OSes.
After talking with his sister and looking at her laptop I found out why she struggles so much with speed and viruses. I looked over her laptop and noticed that she was running an older HP laptop with a Celeron-grade processor. Please people, do not buy anything less than a dual-core PC if you want to do anything more than surf the web and write English papers.
Her RAM was also a whopping 512 MB. The minimum amount of RAM I would recommend is 2GB (2-4GB if you plan on doing anything graphics-intensive like photo or video editing).
Her graphics adapter was onboard with 128MB of shared memory. Even if you are not planning on running any 3D games, it will help greatly to invest in a machine with dedicated graphics from Nvidia or ATI.
She was also running Windows XP Service Pack 1. I’ll not bash XP because it is a suitable OS, but the fact is that Windows 7 will take advantage of newer hardware and security has been at the forefront of Microsoft’s focus with the new Windows.
I understand that consumers are always looking for a deal, as I am. The fact is that computers are being pushed to do things that most were not meant to do for years past their prime. Before throwing Windows 7 under the bus: check the specs, do your homework and be sure to rid your new pc of crapware.
Moral of the story: Do not expect your laptop or desktop to do great things with less-than-great hardware. Software is constantly changing and the internet is changing the way we do things, so it is necessary to stay ahead of the curve with hardware that can handle not only today’s tasks, but tomorrow’s tasks as well.
