Laptop specifications

I have no other reference apart from this brand new iMac 24". Quality seems excellent to me (Did read that the switch to NVidia graphics cards was partly to increase reliability.)
...now just trying to work out how to get one or two more Mac machines into my sphere ...oh, and how to afford the Adobe upgrades required
Matt

I use this Advent 4213 came with 1 gig as standard & 160gig hdd
link

Bought mine from Currys for £249 & I think 2 years cover was £30 or something similar, didn't get more as bound to be something better in a year never mind 2 years which covers for any accidental damage, as I use mine at music festivals I would not like to take anything more expensive.

I upgraded the memory to 2 gig with a 2 gig module from play.com for £19.99 delviered. The netbook comes with XP as standard so runs pretty quick.

What I like is that it has built in 3G so no need for any dongles or stuff sticking out of it, even has an SDHC port built in so literally take card out of body dump in netbook. Runs lightroom pretty good, not rapidly fast but well workable.

Definately an alternative to panasonic Toughbooks etc... I certainly felt more comfortable having a £250 netbook than a laptop which could cost triple that, along with all my other gear I have to carry too the weight is a godsend.

Hi Matt

My parent's 20" iMac is great as well, so far so good. I used a white 14" iBook for years and found it touch as old boots except for one hard drive replacement. I would also choose Apple every time but I commented about reliability due to the following:

1) Nov 2006 Intel iMac now unusable due to many (50+) coloured vertical lines on screen. Apparently a known problem with certain batches of those white iMacs. There is some debate about whether the problem is with the screen (if so a stand alone screen will cure the problem) or if it is with the graphics card (in which case you have to junk the computer)

2) Colleague's PowerMac G5 required replacement logic board within the year.

3) My MacBook Pro mains adaptor currently under repair due to cable cover coming away from adaptor.

4) Known problem with previous generation MBP graphics card.

As I said, I would still choose Apple due to ease of use, I just don't feel some of the components are of the right quality.

Upgrades are always a problem ... especially Adobe ... £600+ for CS4 Design Premium upgrade and to be honest we're still beta testing the software. With next Apple OS due in the Autumn, CS4 will probably gain even more bugs.

I've been thinking recently about alternatives to Adobe, for pure photography I reckon there are quite a few choices: Aperture, Pixelmator, Seashore, Gimp. Not sure how many support icc profiling though...
Cabstar: from memory the Toughbooks cost about 10 times your netbook, not 3 times You make a good point about the weight too.

I had to replace my recently purchased 17" MacBook Pro due to a faulty graphics card, it got replaced with the very latest spec machine, which also had a faulty graphics card. Nvidias problems are so bad that even their shareholders are suing them!

Hope they sort it out soon, as that was one desperately gorgeous machine that I'm missing like mad, but the shop couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't get a faulty replacement, so I got my money back instead. 'Losing' the K-7 AND the MacBook Pro in the same weekend was awful!

Interesting to hear the bits and pieces of issues (perhaps some of them are down to the relatively new processes of lead-free soldering. It's given us real headaches with manufacturing :roll
Heard today that there's now a 17" MacBook Pro with anti-glare coating
Might be interesting (think it may be £30 extra, but not available on smaller MBPs).
Matt

The anti glare screen was the one we had, and it had the new screen with 60% more colour gamut and it was very good, only available on the 17" model though and I think it was £40 more.

[quote:3496ace15f="mpjx"]Was comparing 3 times the price to the power pc,s not the tough books know how much tough books are from pricing up & the thought of losing or damaging one of those was enough to put me off