Laptop? Tablet? Mac???

[pattimelt]

Husband's 2005 MacBook finally died.  He needs, for lack of a better term since I'm not fully awake yet, a new toy. 

 

Looking for input. 

 

He understands the cloud, and how to use it, so that's one less thing I have to teach him, but would have no problem using an external hard drive, either. And while he used to be a "Apple or Die" type person, he borrowed my pc laptop, and now has no preference.  He basically needs something that will allow him to surf the web, and can handle the following:  Word, youtube, movies, music, flash, java, pdf's..  

 

He travels for work, and one of the deciding factors will be weight.  He's interested in that Surface tablet that's advertised on tv, but says if he's gonna pay $1000 for the tablet and keyboard, he might as well spend the other $200 and get a brand new macbook.. 

[nate]

Probably better off getting a laptop than a tablet if he is going to do a lot of typing.  As for Mac/PC that is all preference.  The Apple laptops are the best made laptops as far as build quality but they are much more expensive and the internals don't match up performance wise with PC laptops that are cheaper.

[Thomas]

Requiring flash pretty much eliminates all the tablets from the discussion.

[mrwicked]

get a macbook pro or macbook air.

use a time capsule for automatic no-hassle physical backup over wireless.

get one extra external hard drive you manually back up once a month, store it somewhere else.

done.

 

if there are certain windows programs he cant live without, throw fusion on there and fire up a windows vm whenever he needs it (its easy).

macbooks are the best laptops even for running windows.

[gotbeer]

I say a laptop.  It'll all come down to how much you want to pay.  For what you want it for, PC or Mac will do the job fine.  But you will probably want an ultrabook of some type.  

 

Also, take into account personal preferences.  10 key pad on the laptop.  Large/small screen.  Number of usb ports.  

[Brandon]

Look into a Commodore 64. The most advanced tech specs and comes with a pretty legit floppy drive.

[2002_halos_II]

Husband's 2005 MacBook finally died.  He needs, for lack of a better term since I'm not fully awake yet, a new toy. 

 

Looking for input. 

 

He understands the cloud, and how to use it, so that's one less thing I have to teach him, but would have no problem using an external hard drive, either. And while he used to be a "Apple or Die" type person, he borrowed my pc laptop, and now has no preference.  He basically needs something that will allow him to surf the web, and can handle the following:  Word, youtube, movies, music, flash, java, pdf's..  

 

He travels for work, and one of the deciding factors will be weight.  He's interested in that Surface tablet that's advertised on tv, but says if he's gonna pay $1000 for the tablet and keyboard, he might as well spend the other $200 and get a brand new macbook.. 

If he has  no preference then a laptop (b/c they are much, much cheaper.)

[RePLAY]

how bout one of those laptops that are also a touch screen tablet.

 

It'll do MS Words, Flash and all the other things you described .

 

Husband's 2005 MacBook finally died.  He needs, for lack of a better term since I'm not fully awake yet, a new toy. 

 

Looking for input. 

 

He understands the cloud, and how to use it, so that's one less thing I have to teach him, but would have no problem using an external hard drive, either. And while he used to be a "Apple or Die" type person, he borrowed my pc laptop, and now has no preference.  He basically needs something that will allow him to surf the web, and can handle the following:  Word, youtube, movies, music, flash, java, pdf's..  

 

He travels for work, and one of the deciding factors will be weight.  He's interested in that Surface tablet that's advertised on tv, but says if he's gonna pay $1000 for the tablet and keyboard, he might as well spend the other $200 and get a brand new macbook.. 

How bout one of those laptops that are also a touch screen tablet.  I played around with one in Costco.  Looks pretty neat.

 

It'll do MS Word, Flash and all the other things you described .

[Sully151]

If you ate still undecided, wait a couple of weeks. Apple is having their big whoopdy do and will be announcing new lap tops and maybe a new iPad.

The old ones, which ate still awesome, will go down in price.

Also look at the apple refurb store.

[Tank]

We just bought a MacBook Air for her 8th grade graduation gift last night. We bought it thru QVC and are doing a five payment easy pay with them. So far so good.

[nate]

We just bought a MacBook Air for her 8th grade graduation gift last night. We bought it thru QVC and are doing a five payment easy pay with them. So far so good.

 

As an educator you get a discount through Apple.  Could always finance it and just pay it off in five months.  Apple cost controls their products so you can't get them any cheaper anywhere else. I think the educator discount is 15%.

 

I hope your statement wasn't sarcastic.  If it was disregard this post.

[Jay]

Macs are nice but you get more bang for your buck with a Windows system

[Tank]

Nate, I know about the educators discount. In the apple store I asked about it, and it amounted to a savings of a whopping $50. That's just not enough to really bother.

My wife's boss (he's the education superintendent r our school system) went in to buy 15 iPad minis. His discount? An insulting $5 per iPad.

$5.

Not a typo.

[nate]

Nate, I know about the educators discount. In the apple store I asked about it, and it amounted to a savings of a whopping $50. That's just not enough to really bother.

My wife's boss (he's the education superintendent r our school system) went in to buy 15 iPad minis. His discount? An insulting $5 per iPad.

$5.

Not a typo.

 

Yeah, I know the discount isn't much.  QVC usually marks it up though.