Laptop purchasing decision

[pezking]

Thank you...that would be counterproductive to the extreme

No problem

The plural of anectdote is anectdotes NOT evidence

I am well aware of this, dude. I never stated anything as evidence, merely my experience. Apologies if this came across wrong.

I have yet to acquire a pair of high heeled shoes, but Im going to go on a bbs and state my opinion of wearing them

I never gave an opinion of firewire interfaces. Merely stated that I have not come across anyone (at uni or in day to day life) with these problems. Perhaps I should not have separated the two paragraphs. The statements "The macbook is the most popular laptop within the audio-people I come into contact with through Uni." and "I have not heard about anybody having issues with firewire interfaces." should have been contiguous, where the second sentence referred to those in the first. Again apologies for my ambiguity.

About blaming an otherwise unknown fault on the chipset, when the chipset is all that you change and it all of a sudden works, you might want to consider that as a cause right?

This is not news, or some secret. Take manufacturers at their word when they insist on a specific chipset. You might want to reword their statement as " You can try this on whatever you'd like, but if you do have problems and you arent using the firewire chipset we specifically reccomended several times in our litterature, product box, website, and forums, you can probably expect no more troubleshooting help from us until you use the reccomended one.

There are soooooooo many variables and issues to deal with here that it's best to avoid known problems if possible

Well I've searched about, and I've not found a manufacturer who has released official confirmation of these issues. All I find are posts on user forums, which I hardly count as official. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.

I'm not discounting anything you say, merely stating that I have no experience whatsoever of this myself, and I know a heck of a lot of people who use macbooks for audio on a daily basis. I was also stating that their is a hell of a lot of bullshit floating about the internet on forums like ours, which is simply hear-say. It becomes rumours and before long, common belief - that angers the hell outta me!!

I wasn't aiming anything I said AT you. I don't think your response needed to be so condescending but what the hell, I'm not gonna cry about it, we're all grown up.

Rant over.

Pez

 

[dgatwood]

presonus, but then again that is some iffy stuff...anything dice 2, motu and rme...other brands I usually deal with are so long associated with PC's that I dont hear much mac from them.

Yeah, I heard muttering about the DICE II FireStudio/FireStudio Project. You'll note that I listed that in my list of devices that I'd seen reports of being pretty unreliable in Leopard in general. I can't see how Agere could make those things worse than horrible.

 

[dgatwood]

Two different issues here. Noone is saying "dont go for a macbook". I am only arguing to get a macbook with a TI chipset, which appears what they are going back to.

I'd actually much prefer to see Apple figure out what's wrong rather than switching back to TI. In the long run, using the Agere chipset is better because it is a much smaller chip and thus probably has significantly lower power consumption. Also, if they can work out the reliability issues, they'll have two vendors they can play against each other for lower prices, which results in lower product cost for end users and less cost cutting in other areas.

Finally, switching silicon periodically keeps device vendors from becoming complacent and forces them to test their devices regularly against a wide range of silicon. It's bad enough how many non-compliant USB devices we see where the manufacturer says "well it works on Windows" which doesn't stress the hardware nearly as much. The last thing I want is for FireWire device vendors to make similar assumptions and not bother getting anything working reliably except TI chips.

Just my $0.02.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I'd actually much prefer to see Apple figure out what's wrong rather than switching back to TI. In the long run, using the Agere chipset is better because it is a much smaller chip and thus probably has significantly lower power consumption. Also, if they can work out the reliability issues, they'll have two vendors they can play against each other for lower prices, which results in lower product cost for end users and less cost cutting in other areas.

Finally, switching silicon periodically keeps device vendors from becoming complacent and forces them to test their devices regularly against a wide range of silicon. It's bad enough how many non-compliant USB devices we see where the manufacturer says "well it works on Windows" which doesn't stress the hardware nearly as much. The last thing I want is for FireWire device vendors to make similar assumptions and not bother getting anything working reliably except TI chips.

Just my $0.02.

These are some good points. I didnt realize the argere ate less power too.

What else besides computers do we allow people to get away with "complies with the standards" to mean " well it might work...lets you plug in the same cable anyhow"?

This is frustrating beyond measure. I understand that a lot of issues come from the "necessity" of reverse engineering instead of paying for the IP rights to manufature something, but when something is a standard it oughtta mean what it does in any other field.

Argere, VIA, TI, Ricoh, whatever, it all oughtta just work

I'm trying to work on a dropped buffer notification standard right now (the part a dumbass like me can say in english anyhow, I'll leave the real wording to the rocket scientists)...but why should we even need that?

of all the things to worry about...

 

[boingoman]

Let's not turn this into another Mac vs PC thread, that's being discussed to death elsewhere.

Wouldn't think of it, I'm a solid Mac fan, have been for awhile. I just personally think Macbooks don't make the cut as a good product. I think they are poorly designed and flimsy. G4 iBooks were way more solid. Plus, I just plain don't like glossy screens.

 

[dgatwood]

These are some good points. I didnt realize the argere ate less power too.

I don't know with certainty that it does. The only thing I'm pretty sure of is that it requires less board space. That usually translates to lower power consumption, but that is an assumption on my part, not something that I know for certain.

 

[dgatwood]

Wouldn't think of it, I'm a solid Mac fan, have been for awhile. I just personally think Macbooks don't make the cut as a good product. I think they are poorly designed and flimsy. G4 iBooks were way more solid. Plus, I just plain don't like glossy screens.

The glossy screen debate notwithstanding, speaking as somebody who has owned both (well, a G3 iBook), my experience has been the exact opposite, and fairly dramatically so. IMHO, the Macbook is much more robust. My iBook (both the original and the replacement a year later) went through logic boards. My year-old Macbook has been flawless.

 

[tojo]

macbook firewire not working,

i doubt it...

research logic before you say no to mac.

seriously...