I'm going for an interview for my first job and I need a new suit, should I finance it? No never mind, I think I'll just do welfare.

Oh, and a little known fact from the Fanboy Club... we all get a discount at Starbuck's.

10% if you're sporting a regular MacBook, 25% for a MacBook Pro. 40% for a MacBook Air.

And a cool 50% off if you're perusing the tubes on a 3G iPad.

Just something to think about.

Little know fact is if you drive up in a Toyota Prius, you get an additional 55% off.

I do even better...100% off :).

Just buy one of these metal chassis Dell business refurbs from Dell Financial Sevices on Ebay for about $300 w/ free shipping and be done with it. Many of my coworkers and myself have been buying these for the last couple years and are very happy with them... they appear brand new and come loaded with only XP business w/ latest updates..... Much better than buying the cheap home use crap from Bestbuy for hundreds more IMO.

1 DELL LATITUDE D630 DC XP-2 CDRW DVD WiFi LAPTOP NR - eBay (item 170583942642 end time Dec-28-10 14:11:03 PST)

Tim, sorry, the Dell is 1.26" thick and Sid said no more than 1"

My wife's mother actually owns a magnesium frame Dell, three years old now. I helped her pick it out. It was expensive (in my opinion, ~$900 IIRC), but she is an inspector for the State of Minnesota and travels to all four corners, three days a week on the road. She's very hard on it and it is constantly getting bumped, dropped, banged, and shaken... it is a road warrior. Anyway it hasn't broken....yet. I'm sure it will.

Now you can buy a new mag frame Dell for $500??? That's a great solution for those who are concerned about toughness.

Then again, I used to fly all over the country three days a week, about 75,000 miles a year. My laptop was in my carry on. It was a pretty hard life for a computer. But I never broke a cheap one. Not once.

I did accidently step on my son's old HP and badly cracked the screen. The screen still worked, but had an annoying LCD bleed. Bought a $75 replacement screen, did the hard labor myself, and was back to new in 15 minutes.

And Jeff, $1000 buys a lot of coffee, especially if you make your own

Coffee & beer...you're just pi$$'n money down the drain if ya ask me :)

I'm done with this.... I don't need to be belittled for asking a simple question, and then asking one of you to back up your claims.....

Does my iPhone 4 get me a bj from the cute waitress?

ah . . Yeah, ya do.

..well, not for the 'simple question' part of it. But for the on-going rationalization? Yeah, you're getting what you deserve.

PS; and you should be thankful for it.

Snow tires?

Sidney you clearly got bogged down in the bs and did not read some of the very thoughtful posts here.

By the way, the good advice in this thread has less than zero to do with Mac vs. PC. You could be asking about a $1600 Dell and most of the advice (on both sides of the argument) would be the same.

You are probably pretty mature compared others your age, but you still have a long way to go. I know I still do.

Well, I'm thinking that if you don't approve of my Mac purchase, I won't even bring up the stupidly expensive coffee machine I have at home.

Wouldn't want you to have an aneurysm or anything.

I'm 1/2 tempted to buy cheap new laptop and hacking OSX into it.

why not?

rjp

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The Dell Mini 10V is about the only one that's 100% compatible. Least it was last time I checked. They come up often enough on the Dell outlet.

I got bored one day and hacked it onto the Dell rack server in my home office.

Worked pretty well. Stuck a copy of OS X server on top and that worked. Tried to get it up to Snow Leopard Server and things went down hill fast. Not something you want on a machine that needs to be up all the time.

Wiped it and tossed Cent back on it.

I am going to be financing some stereo cable....

there's always a catch, isn't it? The way they make it sound in forums it's like scot-free deal.

I just created a fake, underpowered ipad by running a script that installs android marketplace on a velocity cruz reader. Works pretty good, but a bit laggy. DOes everything an android smartphone does except make calls and take pics n GPS.

I'm all amped up to hack firmware now.

rjp

Sidney,

Take it for what it's worth but heres some advice from someone about your age who went from a top of the line ThinkPad to a Macbook Pro. I made good use out of both of the machines through engineering school where I could justify the cost of both. I like my Mac a lot for many of the reasons you liked your roomate's so I won't try to convince you to buy a PC. They are nice machines and arguably worth the price if you can afford it. I have always been stubborn so if i wanted something bad enough, I would not compromise and I would buy it, but only after thinking about it hard and making sure I could afford it. I think the advice said here a few times that you should not finance a laptop is good advice. I have paid for everything I own outright with cash (Lexus, 911S, motorcycle, macbook...) but was only able to because I worked my ass off. Most of the satisfaction of owning these things is knowing that you've put in the work to be able to buy them and enjoy them. You said you can pay off the computer in 3-4 months... then I suggest you save for 3 months and buy it then outright. Thats not a long time. Get what you want you won't be disappointed, just wait a bit longer and do not finance it.