Realty World Northern California & Nevada

Everyone knows that one of the biggest shopping days of the year is Black Friday and Apple has posted a teaser of the special shopping day.

After the Tech Talk training from November, many of you walked away asking yourself, “Am I a PC or am I Mac?”

For many of your I had made a recommendation that you go to the Apple store and take a look for yourself as to the fit and finish and overall quality that the Macs had to offer. Additionally, for those of your who wan/needed to run Windows for those pesky situations where you are required to run Microsoft Internet Explorer to render a specific website properly you can always run VMWare. However, please remember that you will need someone technically capable to install Windows and you will need to now maintain both your Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, which can be quite time consuming.

If any of you are out there contemplating one of the new Apple MacBook, MacBook Pros, or the brand new MacBook Air, keep in mind that some discounts might be coming your way soon!

Recently I’ve been asked for my two cents on the matter of selecting a new notebook computer. I am partial to two laptops – Dell for PCs and MacBook Pros from Apple. I don’t tend to care for other manufacturers for a variety of reasons.

Right off the bat you may decide to go with one or the other simply because of the operating system choice of Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X. One advantage with the Mac OS X is that you have the capability of installing Windows on the Mac using VMWare or Parallels. This requires a bit more of technical knowledge in being able to setup but it enables you to run your Windows applications on a Mac. Another main difference between the two of them is their price. Often times, Dell will offer notebooks starting at $499. The starting price point for a Macbook is $999. One can make the argument that the two prices are not comparing apples to apples (no pun intended). Pound for pound, I feel that the Macbook Pro is a better machine (hardware and software).

Dell offers a phenomenal warranty program with next (business) day and onsite repair for hardware issues with your computer. Apple does not offer that, but instead requires that you bring your laptop to an Apple store. Any issues found may be resolved at the Apple store while other repairs could take several weeks to resolve.

• In selecting the specific model I would recommend thinking seriously about which what types of things are most important to you. Some things to consider are:
• Size of screen
• Screen resolution
• Weight
• Ports (DVI / USB / Firewire, etc.)
• CPU speed
• Memory capacity
• Misc. Items (Onboard WWAN / Bluetooth, etc.)

For the Apple products, it is relatively easy to select your choice. You are fairly limited with choices between two models (Macbook and Macbook Pro) both of which come with many items such as wireless, ports, etc. as standard items while they may be considered “add-ons” by other computer makers. The Apple stores are a great place to see and hold the models first hand. The Apple store staff is usually very helpful and knowledgeable. The Dell site offers roughly a dozen models, all of which allow for customizations.

I hope this helps in your notebook search!