Vaio FZ or MBP?

[Saiato]

So I think I've narrowed myself down to two laptops, the Sony Vaio FZ 180 series or the Macbook Pro 15". Both are around $1.9K, and I can get the student discount with the mac. I'm taking it with me to college where I will be doing graphics work (3d modeling and animation, photoshop and graphic design work, and maybe movie editing) and some gaming (lower end games such as Fable or WoW). I do have a desktop I will be taking with me that is quite powerful and will be able to pick up the slack for situations my laptop can't cover while I'm on the go. If I get the MBP, I would install windows XP on it and run that most of the time.
There are two big differences between these two systems that caught my attention. One is the graphics card. The vaio has a geforce 8400GT 256 MB while the MBP has a geforce 8600GT 128mb. I wasn't sure which was better because I have heard that the 8400 can be slow. The other difference is the OS. With the Vaio I would run vista, which I hear is very resource consuming and slows down graphics work. I would be able to switch between OSX and XP on the MBP, but I haven't heard anything about how windows runs on the MBP. I was also worried about installing a second OS on the MBP since it only has a 120GB hard drive and a lot of the high end graphics software and some of my games are known for taking up a lot of space.
So I'm looking for input and advice. Thanks for all your help.

FZ 180 on newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16834117504

 

[Commodus]

Don't get a Mac only to run Windows - use it for OS X. You can play WOW natively on it using the copy you have, and boot into Windows only when you have to. The amount of texture memory will matter relatively little unless you're running the very latest games and you're not bottlenecked by the notebook GPU itself -- in which case, the 8600M GT will definitely be faster.

That's especially true since you'd be doing a lot of creative work. You can get Mac versions of pretty much everything you need on that side, so unless you've already got a huge investment in Windows creative apps, you might as well go for the Mac versions. OS X is more parallelized than Win XP, anyways (i.e. it regards resources more evenly).

More importantly, I'd advise against the FZ just because of Sony's less-than-stellar reputation for tech support. I can't comment on build quality, but I still hear of problems calling for help. IF you'll be near an official Apple retail store at college, you can take the system in if there's a problem (they may not repair it right there, but they sometimes can or will even give you a replacement).

Don't forget, by the way, that you can custom-order the MBP online through Apple's educational section. That'll drop the price to about $1799 and give you enough financial room to order with the 160GB drive option.

 

[TheStu]

I agree with Commodus. Getting the a Mac and then running windows on it primarily is kind of silly. OS X is built to run on it, and runs very very well. Sure, windows works just as well (if not better at times) on a Mac than on something like a Sony or a Dell (2 finger scrolling FTW), but since you are doing graphics work, video editing, photoshop, and WoW then all those things run on teh Mac natively, and if you get some of the Apple made applications they really make use of the hardware. From what I have read, most all of Apple's apps that work with photo or video work (particularly their non-iLife apps, e.g iPhoto, iMovie) actually hand off their work to the GPU since that is a processor optimized to handle image processing, and the 8600GT in the MBP has hardware level h.264 decoding that makes it great for converting and playback of HD videos, and stuff for an ipod.

 

[Butterbean]

The Sony HZ's have rep for having the best displays outside of a S-IPS. People who see them rave about them. I also read a lot of scary stuff about Sony reliability. Even Sony camera sensors have had many recalls the past few years. I want a Sony because of the screens but I'm not sure its smart. Apple on the other hand just lost a legal case because people sued them over some of their laptop displays. Apple said the dispaly renders "millions of colors" leading people to believe display was 8 bit when it was only 6 bit with dithering. The other day I did a cutom config of a MacBook that would equal the stats of my $950 HP. I added a gig of Ram (you want 2 gigs with Vista) and expanded the HD to 200GB. The MacBook got to about 2K. Granted the Mc processor was a 2.2 (about) and I have a 1.5. (both on Santa Rosa) but otherwise a 1k price dif is crazy. The display on my HP is a wxga made by LHPhilips and not considered a bad screen. I am used to a desktop S-IPS display though and looking at a photo on my HP lappy vs my NEC monitor is scary. Laptops probably look bad all around anyway. Oh my lappy connected to my NEC renders nice image too and thats only with X3100 integrated.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Butterbean
The Sony HZ's have rep for having the best displays outside of a S-IPS. People who see them rave about them. I also read a lot of scary stuff about Sony reliability. Even Sony camera sensors have had many recalls the past few years. I want a Sony because of the screens but I'm not sure its smart. Apple on the other hand just lost a legal case because people sued them over some of their laptop displays. Apple said the dispaly renders "millions of colors" leading people to believe display was 8 bit when it was only 6 bit with dithering. The other day I did a cutom config of a MacBook that would equal the stats of my $950 HP. I added a gig of Ram (you want 2 gigs with Vista) and expanded the HD to 200GB. The MacBook got to about 2K. Granted the Mc processor was a 2.2 (about) and I have a 1.5. (both on Santa Rosa) but otherwise a 1k price dif is crazy. The display on my HP is a wxga made by LHPhilips and not considered a bad screen. I am used to a desktop S-IPS display though and looking at a photo on my HP lappy vs my NEC monitor is scary. Laptops probably look bad all around anyway. Oh my lappy connected to my NEC renders nice image too and thats only with X3100 integrated.

Sony does tend to have nice displays, but they also have those reliability problems that you pointed out.

Your price comparison thing that you did is moot however since he is talking about a MBP not the standard MB.