Time to switch? - Thinkpad vs. MacBook Pro - Part I
I’ve been an IBM Thinkpad user for the last ~7 years. By and large they’ve been good to me. I think in those 7 years I’ve had 6 different Thinkpads. On average one a year. Only two failures to speak of; the first a hard drive failure on my T20 which had been whining for weeks so I had good backups. The 2nd a screen failure when an airport screener (one of those new anal post-9/11 types) dropped it taking it over to the bomb residue tester. So for 7 years of heavy laptop use not a bad record. However more and more I’ve got my eye on making the switch to Apple. Thinking back; my first ever computer that I did any *real* work on was an Apple IIe. Wrote some LOGO programs in an after school computer class.
Today my first reason to consider the Mac is that my day-to-day work can all be done(I think) without the support of Windows or Linux as my primary OS. Using Windows as my primary desktop for more than a decade has I’m sure left some scars. However most of what I do these days can be moved to just about any modern OS. Let’s see… Web based AJAX email, calendar, and contacts client. Thunderbird for offline IMAP mail. IDEA for software development. Firefox for web programming and surf’n the net. FTP, SSH, WinZip, etc. Lots of little productivity tools that can be replace in any OS. So for the most part being internet connected a bulk of the time let’s me do most things on the web.
The second reason is a common one echoed by geeks around the blog-sphere and the net. OSX is more secure, it’s Unix, it s *real OS*, it’s got nice UI candy, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing new there but for the most part I agree. The third and key factor is that Mac laptops have finally caught up speed wise with Apple’s switch to the Intel chips. For years the even the highest end Apple laptops suffered severe lags in performance compared to their IBM counterparts. For a developer or someone who uses a laptop for more than just a word processor and internet kiosk this is a huge deal. Before the MacBook Pro it just wasn’t feasible to use a Mac laptop as your primary machine if you wanted to get the most performance. The forth and final reason I’ve identified is that in my space and geek space in general an Apple is just cooler than a Windows machine. Ok so this is hard to prove and it’s a bit of a religious topic but I had to add it. So with that my delima begins. To Mac or not to Mac? Stick with Thinkpad and the new Core Duo T60’s or leave IBM (ahem.. Levono) behind and take the plunge with MacBook Pro?
I’m obviously not the only person looking at this issue.
What do you think?
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December 12th, 2006 at 3:17 am
i got the same question. t60 2007-b28 agains macbook v2 black. you can take both on a stage, no problem concerning style. hm….
January 9th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
I’ve got the MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo. I think you’ll be more than happy with this switch. The hardware is beautiful and since you’ll no longer be concerned about spyware and viruses, you’ll be experiencing true computing bliss. Best of luck.
May 8th, 2007 at 11:22 am
OK guys, What are you thinking about the heating problems that Macbooks got? Because I am thinking of buying a new Laptop, and I am choosing between Apple and Lenovo. I am most concerned about the reliability, Cuz I can not afford to buy a new laptop after a year?
Thank you for the help
July 4th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Ok. I’m wrestling with the exact same issue. But I have a couple of specialist issues. Any thoughts?
1 - I MUST keep the windows version of outlook, entourage is a poor substitute for outlook group scheduling and multiple PST’s (I keep all my old email and use x1 t search it ALL the time)
2 - I MUST be able to play games, preferably native, but if TOTAL WAR aint gonna do a mac port, then I’ll need to be able to run it on parallels.. any experience with 3d heavy games in parallels?
I LOVE the idea of a simple, safe platform with better battery life..
My alternate is a Lenovo Thinkpad t60 or t61. my last 5 computers have been Lenovo/IBM’s.
July 4th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
1) Parallels/VMWare will let you run Windows without a problem. Slight performance penalty but it’ll work. Apple’s Boot Camp will let you run Windows at native speed. So one idea is to install windows in boot camp and for day-to-day use Parallels to run the Boot Camp install along with Mac OSX. When you need max speed reboot and run native windows.
2) Parallels and Boot Camp.. for gaming Boot Camp is the answer.
July 4th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
if you have both installed (Parallels and bootcamp) do you need two copies of the win os? or can they share one?
July 6th, 2007 at 5:02 am
They can share one. Install Boot Camp then Parallels can run that same install when you are running OSX.
July 15th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
agree with you that MAC OS X is the best OS in the world…
but Thinkpad is better than the MacBook!
August 21st, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Thinkpads are the best laptops you can buy imo, and the new revamp of the T & R series are amazing. Macs are not more stable than a , stability issues come from poor 3rd party hardware & software. Most people compare the macbook pros ect with crappy laptops made with low quality parts, and software with horrible driver programming. Get a high quality windows machine and its just as stable & secure as a mac, with better flexibility and a myriad more application support.
As far as being virus free, well if you were a hacker/virus writer, why would you write anything for what amounts to a few percentage points of the worlds computers, when you can write one for a platform that accounts for almost every single one? If macs were more common, you’d find just as many virus’s taking advantage of the many security holes found in Mac’s OS just like you do windows. Good anti virus and being remotely intelligent about what you open in your emails = no virus’s ever.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:52 pm
OK I agree to Derek. I just want to sale my mac as soon as possible. I have it since 2006 and I am so disapoited that this “superstar-machine” works just on the same level as ‘regular’ and cheap pc machine. Even more that I found software like iphoto,imovie, dashboard, idvd so bad and primitive that I am still suprised of it.
Just sale it and get thinkpad asap !
January 19th, 2008 at 5:44 am
The argument I’ve most heard for picking Mac over Thinkpad is that a person can do most everything they need to on a Mac these days. I agree - can’t argue with that. So what we’ve got is two machines that will both do what you need them to do. A nice Thinkpad with discrete graphics is $1100. A Macbook with discrete graphics is $2000. Get the Thinkpad.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I’m thinking of buying a macbook or a thinkpad, I really don’t know yet.. I know that apple is gonna update in june 08, I believe, the intel penryn chips and their new design. The fact is that I had a powerbook in 2003 and I have been a bit disppointed too! the thing was so hot that I couldn’t put it on my knees, some soft problem, macos didn’t want to start several times. Something I don’t get is that many people told me that softwares crash a lot on windows and just don’t on mac. From my point, the problems I had with my powerbook during one year of strong utilisation is 90% I had with my previous PC in 5 years.. I noticed something very interesting between win XP Pro and macos 10.2 (version I had that time). When a soft crash on PC, you have the time to save your work, but on Macos it really crash, it happens to me so many time that I am a bit afraid about getting a new one, even its macox 10.5 now..
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Thinkpad = rugged (not so sleek looking), ultranav
Macbook = sleek looking (not so rugged), no ultranav
Those are really the only differences now (other than price i guess) - you can run OSX or WinXP on either.
I like the thinkpad running OSX personally. The touch-pad mouse thing gives me carpal tunnel issues, and I don’t like the external mouse - because I like to be able to compute in full effect while, for example, sitting on an airplane or whereever without carting one more misc item.
Ultranav kicks ass once you get used to it, and I believe apple has some ego issues to deal with before they would adopt something similar.
m1
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I just sold my Mac pro days ago and get new TP X300. I’m not saying MAC is not good enough, but it’s really hard and unconvenient when I used MAC in the school….terrible!!!
TP X300, i really love it.