40k To Spend - Vaio Or Macbook?

[nikster]

No troubles using WiFi. Never heard about that to be honest. I don't know what a "technician" would do to "help" you connect to the wireless - you click on the network you want and enter the password, I think you can manage that all by yourself.

Great customer service at Apple authorized dealers in Thailand, and world wide - they all must honor the warranty. Do pay for the extra 3 year warranty though, it's always worth it. Because great as they are, because if something breaks out of warranty and you have to pay for original custom Apple parts to fix, it gets expensive quick. If you have the 3 year warranty they'll do anything for you for 3 years free of charge...

So yeah if you're out in the sticks this could be an issue.

Definitely no, zero, nada slowdown over the years on a Mac. That's IMO one of the really big advantages. I don't know why Windows is so crappy in this regard but I have yet to own a Windows system that's not at half speed after about 18 months. Migration to new systems is dead easy and fast too, I might have mentioned that. That's how a new Mac for me pays for itself in the first 2 hours of ownership - because after 2 hours, I can continue working where I left off, on the new machine.

[namoo]

Just picked up a couple of OCZ Vertex Generation 2 60GB SSD's from JediCool in pantip (8900THB each not a bad price for BKK).

Actually they were the only shop in Pantip to have any SSD at all of any brand.

Anyway firmware updated them to 1.3 and stuck them in first of all in Non Raid then in Raid 0. The performance is as can be seen below pretty impressive to say the least. It makes any machine fly in both non raid and raid0. however Raid0 is a bit special!

Raid0 gives the capacity of 120gb with the two 60gb and combine this with a non ssd storage drive for media etc. simply great.

Below is a western digital 7200rpm HD xbench results followed by single disk Vertex 60gb results and finally RAID 0 Vertex. on mac os x 10.5.7

500GB 7200 RPM:

Disk Test 84.74

Sequential 129.24

Uncached Write 135.04 82.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 133.91 75.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 102.86 30.10 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 157.35 79.08 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 63.04

Uncached Write 24.03 2.54 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 202.91 64.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 95.75 0.68 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 154.46 28.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Single 60GB Gen2 OCZ Vertex:

Disk Test 246.85

Sequential 247.62

Uncached Write 437.64 268.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 232.83 131.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 146.87 42.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 361.60 181.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 246.08

Uncached Write 81.61 8.64 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 402.61 128.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 3230.30 22.89 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 828.23 153.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Raid 0 2x 60gb OCZ Vertex:

Disk Test 390.35

Sequential 324.99

Uncached Write 649.90 399.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 467.72 264.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 145.30 42.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 571.76 287.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 488.61

Uncached Write 182.48 19.32 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 668.15 213.90 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 2922.56 20.71 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 1152.68 213.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[Gary A]

I think the Vaio quality has gotten REALLY bad. I base my opinion due to the fact that a friend of mine is on his third one. Not that he bought three of them but because the first two failed catastrophically. The only good thing is that Sony did replace them under warranty.

[surayu]

Sony Vaio= Troubles

New machine, had to replace the DVD reader after just a few months, then when you have the earphones on and you switch the volume to the max the speaker will intermittently restart working, despite the earphones plugged in, very annoying, just to finish also considere that the silver paint will peel off from this plastic box soooo fast, i can't believe Sony went so down in quality, they have always been one of my first choices when making a purchase, not anymore....

This is just an update and a reconfirmation in full of my previous post, plus:

- The original rechargeable battery will completely fail, after exactly one year from the purchasing date, a replacement from any of the shops in Pantip Plaza in Bangkok will cost from 4 to 6 thousands Bahts, no cheap (2 - 2.700 Bahts) "alternative" unmarked batteries are available for Sony Vaio as they wouldn't work on it, or so i have been told by all the vendors i have questioned about.

My other laptop, a Dell, after more than 6 years of hard use, the battery pack is still alive.