Poll: Finally geting a new laptop - Mac or PC?

[direkiller]

So the stars have aligned (by which I mean I've reached a point of desperation with this) and I'm finally going into the market for a new laptop. I figure given my current one was low-end tech when I bought it 5 years ago and has now degraded to the point of having to use an external mouse and keyboard to make it not try to sabotage my every desire, it was about time.

Thing is, I know sod all about laptops or the technology involved with them. So what do you do when you know sod all about something? Ask other people who actually do have even half a clue what they're on about.

So here's me asking you: Should I go for a Microsoft PC laptop or a MacBook of some description?

Some information about where I'm at right now:

1) My current laptop is a PC. A Compaq Presario CQ60, to be precise... I know, don't judge me.
2) I am very much NOT a techie sort of guy. I couldn't tell my arse from the hardrive of a computer or me elbow from a stick of RAM.
3) The main things I shall be using it for consist mainly of intenet browsing, downloading stuff, watching videos, listening to music, and doing a lot of word processing. so basically, gaming is not on my priority list for this thing.
4) My financial situation is not great and I'd be dipping into some savings to get this thing, so I can afford a bit but not massively decadent pricing. So I'd ideally like to get as good a machine as I can while keeping it under £1000... if that's at all possible, that is.

With that in mind... help!

Please?

Also, please try to give actual specific suggestions instead of just saying PC or Mac, because just saying that doesn't give me much clarity given there are probably hundreds of different laptops each of those answers could encompass.

Cheep beater labtop that will last 5-10 year? hold the win 8
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834257544

You will need to buy office yourself Which is another $100 or cheaper though your school(or if you know somebody in school/your brother).

The biggest drawback is on-bord Intel Graphics do not play nice with indi-games. So you may run into issues with something like Amnesia. It dose not sound like a deal breaker but fair warning all the same.


1) My current laptop is a PC. A Compaq Presario CQ60, to be precise... I know, don't judge me
If you can give me a litte more information on this(CQ60 is the Case type it tells very little about the internals), but most came with 2g of ram and ~250gb HD which is more then enough for a web browser/work.

The issues you have is most likely related to vista support/out of date drivers/clutter buildup. Your cheepest option may be to buy a windows upgrade and a portable hard drive.

 

[Uhura]

PC, I've had my laptop for over 5 years and it's still running smoothly. Haven't seen a mac last that long

Huh, I'm currently typing on my late 2008 Macbook and it still works like a charm and looks brand new.

 

[CWestfall]

I owned a Lenovo Thinkpad in college. The motherboard died on it about a month after the warranty expired. Turns out that at the time, the motherboard getting fried on a Lenovo wasn't an uncommon occurrence, but Lenovo just didn't bother actually fixing the issue. So in the end what I ended up getting was an overpriced, underpowered, ugly piece of junk that died on me. Got a decent Acer for $650 (huge sale, amazing deal) and 3 years later it's still going strong and still manages to play pretty much every game I've bought on medium to high settings (played Bioshock Infinite on high settings at 80 fps).

I don't know if Lenovo's build quality has improved since then, but I would never recommend one to anyone I know just because of my personal experience with their laptops, and their customer service.

The disparity between the Thinkpad line and the Ideapad line is massive. You'll pretty much never see a larger gulf between build qualities all at one company. Though Acer does come close, funny you mention it.

In my experience, the Thinkpad line is a load of chunky black boxes for people who just need something to type on and the Ideapad line is where the fun happens. The ultra-portables are apparently quite nice, but I'm a huge fan of the multimedia/gaming laptops. The specs there are generally reserved for the Desktop market, and if you catch one of the frequent sales, the prices are fantastic.