Deciding on a new laptop. Opinions needed!

Jens

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Usually I know very well for myself what I want/need in terms of computers, tablets, smartphones,... But right now I'm having a bit of a struggle justifying it.
A few weeks ago I made the switch from a self-employed freelancer to a large company. The day after receiving my company laptop my 4 y/o MacBook died on me (logic board failure).
Repairing it would cost me between 600 and 800 euros according to the guys at the Genius bar. So obviously that option is out straight away.

The laptop I received from work is actually pretty decent (Lenovo T450s). It has an i7, SSD and 12GB of RAM. However, there are a couple of downsides:
- Running Windows 8.1
- In theory not allowed to install any personal software (in practice it's less strict but for me the deal breakers are P2P software and VLC).
- Battery life isn't that good
- No graphics card, but I do some photo and video editing in my spare time.

In an ideal world I would buy a new 15" MacBook Pro, but they retail for 2249 euros. An amount I have a hard time justifying considering I will no longer use it professionally.
As a result I am currently considering:

1) Not buying a laptop at all and use my girlfriend's 13" MacBook Air for the occasional work I do in Photoshop and Premiere Pro.
2) Buying a cheap Windows laptop to perform these tasks, I at least have a personal laptop I can use for whatever I want then.
3) 13" MacBook Pro for 'only' 1689 euros, which is still a lot of money.
4) 13" MacBook Air for 1099 euros (accepting the limited performance)
5) Save some money over the next 6 months and then go for the 15".

Things I will be doing on a regular basis:
- Connect a 2K external display
- Use it on the go for a prolonged period of time (so battery life is important)
- Web browsing
- Streaming services (Full HD or better)
- Photo editing
- Video editing (time it takes to render is less important because I don't do it on a regular basis)
- Some coding (involves several apps for which I prefer OS X)

Currently my preference goes out to option 1, but I hate the idea of not having a private laptop.

What would you do?
 
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No shipping to Europe though :( first one would have been perfect. Can RAM be upgraded to 16GB after purchase on these new Retina display MacBooks? I remember reading somewhere that it can't.
 
No, it's all soldered in.

As for no Euro delivery, just find a U.S. Finalgearian willing to play post relay or engage a postal forwarding service
 
Bummer! If anyone's willing to play postal service send me a PM :D
 
Bummer! If anyone's willing to play postal service send me a PM :D

I would but I'm having issues with mail and packages being 'lost' by USPS and don't want to complicate the issue until I get it resolved.. I'll ping a couple other people that may not read this subforum.
 
I have been summoned to this thread and will happily assist :)

We can take it to PMs from here.
 
Why so set on Apple? AMD has the APU market pretty much cornered (GPU built into the CPU) because they own ATi, and they actually perform like a proper CPU+GPU setup. They also get really good performance numbers doing video editing due to their architecture. If you're really worrying about price vs. performance, you shouldn't even be looking at a Mac.
 
Bummer! If anyone's willing to play postal service send me a PM :D

Pay the extra for FedEx. You would come to regret it otherwise.
 
Why so set on Apple? AMD has the APU market pretty much cornered (GPU built into the CPU) because they own ATi, and they actually perform like a proper CPU+GPU setup. They also get really good performance numbers doing video editing due to their architecture. If you're really worrying about price vs. performance, you shouldn't even be looking at a Mac.

1. Are you proposing to pay to replace his Mac-only copies of Photoshop and Premiere Pro with Windows copies? That will only be the minor sum of about $1700 for Photoshop and $3000 for Premiere Pro. People who use PS or Premiere for work do NOT pirate it (because that would be stupid) and that software costs a lot of money. Please let us know what form of payment you will be using. Oh, and before you mention the Creative Cloud versions, you'll need to pony up for at least four year prepaid subscriptions (4 years is the average pro graphic artist upgrade cycle.) For both programs.

2. AMD is dying. They have been late to market with the last three generations of GPUs and nVidia is eating their lunch. Support for AMD products is getting worse and worse; more and more high end graphics programs don't work as well with AMD/ATI, if they even work at all without crashing at an inopportune time; even their Windows drivers keep getting worse. There's a reason nVidia has 76% of the GPU market and increasing, while Intel has 81-83% of the desktop processor market and over 90% of the laptop market. AMD is in serious trouble as a PC CPU and GPU provider.

3. You know, when even people like PC Magazine and Laptop Magazine (not to mention hordes of other press reviewers) keeps being forced to admit year after year that the most compatible, least troublesome, best possible laptop you can buy to run Windows is a MacBook, perhaps you should rethink your position. Specs mean nothing if your drivers are hastily slapped together in India or China instead of carefully programmed and bug-checked. In fact, the endless and grudging award of best laptop year after year to the MacBook caused PC Magazine to give up and make their award "The 15 Best Laptops" so they'd still have ad revenue. And yes, the MacBooks are still on that list.

If you're more worried about *actually fucking working*, maybe you shouldn't be looking at an AMD PC.

To say nothing of the disaster Windows 10 is shaping up to be for troubleshooting - the 'no patch notes' patches, the lack of documentation and my personal favorite, this ever so helpful error message.
windows-10-installation-errors.png
 
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I hadn't even considered that, but you are right. My copy of the Adobe Suite CS6 is OS X only.

After doing the maths buying a refurbished one in the US and having it shipped to Europe isn't much cheaper than buying a new one. Customs will add 21% VAT in Belgium + the actual shipping cost. Totaled up I would save 150 euros approximately and only have a 1 year limited warranty instead of two years unlimited.
 
I'm agreeing with Spectre. What the hell is happening to me?
 
I'm agreeing with Spectre. What the hell is happening to me?

HKn2aft.jpg


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I hadn't even considered that, but you are right. My copy of the Adobe Suite CS6 is OS X only.

After doing the maths buying a refurbished one in the US and having it shipped to Europe isn't much cheaper than buying a new one. Customs will add 21% VAT in Belgium + the actual shipping cost. Totaled up I would save 150 euros approximately and only have a 1 year limited warranty instead of two years unlimited.

Well, there's another option - Apple does sell refurbs in Europe through the UK and occasionally even the .be store (though the latter currently has no Macs.

UK refurb page: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

Candidates:
http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/produc...-27ghz-dual-core-intel-i5-with-retina-display
http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/produc...-27ghz-dual-core-intel-i5-with-retina-display <-- actually i7 16/512.
 
Indeed. The Belgian Apple store has refurbished MacBooks/iMacs in stock for I think maybe three days a year.

I did the maths, and total cost including taxes and shipping would amount to:
- US 8GB RAM ?1268
- US 16GB RAM ?1725
- UK 8GB ?1200
- UK 16GB ?2049
- BE 8GB (new) ?1362
- BE 16GB (new but default CPU) ?1587

It really bothers me, because my top-spec 2011 15" still did everything I wanted and purchasing a new 13" feels like downgrading on many levels.
I am going to try and reflow the GPU myself this weekend and see if I can put some life back into it. If not, I am going to go for a new 8GB 13" model here in Belgium. The price difference just isn't worth stealing other FG members' time and losing one year of warranty. According to Google this is a common problem with 2011 MacBooks, even resulting in a lawsuit, so DIY manuals are plentiful.
 
Is it a MacBook or MacBook Pro that's failed? If the latter, there is a free service program for them now.
 
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It's a MacBook Pro. The people at the genius bar didn't mention it and after reading about it online I assumed it would probably be a US only thing. But I will give the shop a call tomorrow to see whether I'm eligible :)
By the way, can someone +rep Spectre for me? I have to spread the love first!
 
It's a MacBook Pro. The people at the genius bar didn't mention it and after reading about it online I assumed it would probably be a US only thing. But I will give the shop a call tomorrow to see whether I'm eligible :)
By the way, can someone +rep Spectre for me? I have to spread the love first!

The program was US only to start as their overseas ops didn't have the parts available - international coverage under the program became active February 27 of this year. I'd get it done right away because while the program ends February 27, 2016 or three years after original date of sale, whichever is longer, better to be in line for the constricted parts supply sooner rather than later.
 
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The US Spec Asus Zenbook Pro UX501 is rather nice. 512GB SSD and a 96whr battery. 4k Display and 960M graphics.

https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ZenBook_Pro_UX501/

unfortunately most euro variants are just 128GB with 1TB HDD and only the 60whr battery.

it runs around 1600?/USD

if thats not portable enough there is also a Asus Zenbook UX303 with the U variant of Intel CPU's and only up to 940M graphics.
 
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