Cheapest place to buy a Macbook

[Tina]

Ok I've decided I love my Mac too much to go  to Windows when this laptop goes to Mac heaven. So where is the cheapest place to buy a Mac. I don't know any students, so can't use the apple store student thing. Thanks guys

[Bill]

If you don't mind taking a chance on what you get, eBay is probably cheapest.

If you'd prefer to buy peace of mind at the same time, keep an eye on the Apple Refurbished store:

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac?mco=MTM3NTA4Mzk

[Steve]

KRCS seem to be an ok company imo https://www.krcs.co.uk/shop/categories/search/end-of-life-products

[Bill]

I didn't know about them... thanks for the link.

[Technical Ben]

China?

Oh, you mean shop? 

[Tacitus]

Try Jigsaw- based in Nottingham
http://www.jigsaw24.com

[Baz]

why are these SO expensive 

bad news is my daughter is wanting one for a replacement to her laptop....I just cannot see what extra you get for the amount they cost.She will just not see this

any one tell me, please 

[Rik]

Brand name = extra cash. 

[Gary]

OSX is great to use, a OS update is about £25 so that's cheaper than windows, and they don't come littered with trash like a normal laptop, look at recon units, or ill post you some apple stickers for whatever you buy 

[Baz]

    I could draw some apple stickers

but still Gary,what extra do you get.what does it do that a laptop cant or doesnt.OS update is £25,how often do you have to do this?What about compatible hardware/software? lots/not so much 

[Baz]

how many people who use this forum have a Mac.

views on them please 

[Glenn]

All the OSX EULA states is, that machine must be Apple labelled, so does that mean, if you put one of the Apple supplied stickers on a Hackintosh, it's legal?

[Rik]

[Gary]

  I could draw some apple stickers

but still Gary,what extra do you get.what does it do that a laptop cant or doesnt.OS update is £25,how often do you have to do this?What about compatible hardware/software? lots/not so much 

All my hardware is compatible no issues there, OSX comes with ilife which is a very complete set of extras for photography movie editing and music creation etc, you have the simplest back up system ever with time machine, you can restore an email for a year ago if yoo need in seconds or the whole OS, you have no registry to go bonkers, say your Firefox profile got messed up, you can nip back to yesterday and just restore the profile on its own and firefox is happy no issues, new versions of OSX I am not sure on but you should be ok for  afew updates and thats very simple as well. The built in  isight camera takes pictures using the screen as a flash (on iMac) not sure about mac book, also records video, it has its own built in PDF reader. OSX boots faster and operates faster than Windows 7 just the nature of the OS, stability is good, I rarely turn off my machine or reboot. They do cost way to much but they are great machines simple intuitive and they come with pretty much all you need built in, I just plugged my printer in and downloaded the driver update and was done.

You really should visit an Apple store of re-seller and ask to be shown around OSX its the easiest way to see what its all about.

[Baz]

thanks Gary  something else for me to look at.wont let my daughter see this post 


are you on comission 

[Gary]

thanks Gary  something else for me to look at.wont let my daughter see this post 


are you on comission 

Nope there are good and bad to all OS's but I like what I have in OSX and although uou can get better hardware in a windows box for the same price the simplicity and uncluttered OS and its features make it all very worthwhile. Also with Apple care you have three years warranty. I would suggest getting a refurb with the full warranty one years warranty from Apple, and then buying  apple care for the extra two years, its well worth it.

[Bill]

how many people who use this forum have a Mac.

views on them please 

I think Rik has given part of the reason they're expensive- brand name. It's also valid to ask why PCs are so cheap, the answer there is equally simple- competition. Only Apple can build Macs and you break the EULA if you run Apple software on anything else. Whether that's a good thing or not is a separate argument.

As to why I prefer my Macs to PCs... not easy to quantify. They're just so easy to use, and they seem to work with you. They just work, and don't bombard you with "Are you sure?" dialogs all the time. If you get one of those, it usually pays to look hard at what you're about to do

And if you want to, you can shell out to a full-blown Unix prompt. That can be dangerous if you're not too familiar with Unix so I don't often do it!

They don't crash so often either, in nearly 4 years I think I've had 3 crashes (1 of which was my fault), it's on 24/7 and only gets rebooted when an update requires it.

Apps written for the Mac, especially graphics ones, work better than those for Windows I believe, Photoshop being the usual example. Rik can probably say more about that than I can. But if you need to run a Windows app there's any number of ways of doing it.

[Rik]

Photoshop was built for the Mac originally, Bill, as were most DTP programs. For Photoshop, the Macs always supported colour profiles, and that was essential for commercial photographic work. For DTP, Macs spoke Postscript - and there is no other language in the graphics industry.

Windows has caught up a lot, but a Mac is still the best 'closed loop' machine for graphics.

[Tina]

OK I can't afford a new Mac yet, but which if these on this page would you got for if you were me? I don't play games (well cafe world on FB) i do a bit of web design, and just general surfing. I do find my fan on this one struggles a bit on cafe world, but on the whole it's OK.. so here id the page


HERE

[Steve]

Probably the 320Gb drive and I would get the additional memory from crucial to increase to 4Gb