MacBook Pro vs. Acer TravelMate 8200

Hmm, I find the comments about defending against spyware and viruses on Windows being such a big deal kind of odd. I mean sure I like not having to worry much about those things now, but I never really worried about them when I use XP, I mean AVG 7 and XP's (Post-SP2) Firewall kept my laptop and desktop safe with no extra cost and about five minutes of actual setup, which incidently, was roughly the same amount of time spent tinkering with Little Snitch in OS X.

Also, not to inflame, but those early dev kits for intel macs led to several leaked x86-friendly OS X copies, many of which would run well on that Acer (oh wait, you probably meant couldn't run it 'legally' right?) Either case, with actual intel macs out the driver list should have bumped up too, and thus, in theory, you could run OS X on intel hardware (or in the case of recent cpus, AMD Hardware) and not have to buy it from Apple.

Did anyone notice that in the battery life comparison, the Acer display was lowered to 60-70 cd/cm2 while the Macbook was put at half power. Earlier they said the Macbook display output 269 cd, so assuming a roughly linear relation, that would put the Macbook at 135 cd/cm2. That is approximately twice as bright as the Acer.
Doesn't that seem like more than enough to make up the 8 minute difference?

So the review was, if you plan on buying a windows machines.. then acer is slightly better of a buy. I sell both Macs and PC, (don't mind selling em, just won't use one myself) and have taken a liking to acers line..

Acer actually has pretty decent industrial design as of late, and have kicked ass on the ThinkPads, and Dells. (K.. slightly biased by there use of Ferrari red in some products..come on Apple.. some of us like Red!)

However, the Acer will never run OS X, Final Cut, or Logic, and so who really cares.

@Silver,

They've been incorporating webcams into PC laptops forever. And they've always looked like a horrible tumor.

They didn't just use Rosetta in the comparisons. They also ran the software in Windows XP on the MBP to make the most direct comparison possible, and in those cases the Acer was still almost always *slightly* faster than the MBP. Maybe photoshop and/or some other apps will be faster on the MBP when we get universal binaries for them, but for now there's no way to say that the MBP is a faster machine.

The main problem I had with the review was just that each category was weighted evenly. The Acer beat the MBP by a very small margin in performance and battery life, for instance, and for a lot of people this is vastly outweighed by the fact that only the MBP can run OS X. Even considering just the time I used to spend defending against spyware and viruses on a Windows box, it wouldn't be worth it to me to buy another one for anything other than a *massive* performance increase.

The big issue that everyone misses is that the story compared mechanical/electronic performance - which can be argued both ways and is roughly equal, since the computers (as everyone has pointed out) roughly equal; the Acer wins in some areas, the MBP wins in others.

The difference is the Mac OS, as usual - which is barely mentioned and definitely not given a value. And I'm not talking about ease of use. Let me put it this way: the speed of photoshop, the length of battery life, and every other performance metric all are far less important than how much time I waste in Windows dealing with viruses and spyware, with running Norton and MS Defender and every other program that has to preload to keep my system safe, with the maintenance I have to perform in order to do all that, and in the numerous reboots I have to do DESPITE all this.

Even if the Acer were a Ferrari, and the Mac was something less - which it isn't - it would be the equivalent of a Ferrari with a one gallon gas tank and an engine that needed tuning up every afternoon. That's why the Mac wins (except, of course, when you're running it in Boot Camp - at which point it becomes a very gorgeous...Acer. I mean Ferrari.)

Anyone notice that the PC laptop makers are also starting to integrate web cams into their laptops? And anyone notice how the integrated web cams look like some kind of horrible tumor or something?

Just had an opportunity to read through the article and I'd say it was a good article.

My takeaway is that both laptops are quite even ... the turning point was the battery life with a difference of 8 mins.

Personally, it was a draw ... design and software features vs. gaming and cost. You'll have to be the final judge.

I hope they do a follow up to this when (if) the iBook replacement/Macbook is releassed. Surely it would be quite a bit cheaper and not terribly far behind the Pro's performance aside from memory, video and storage. Regardless though, the review is pretty biased which is made very clear in the end when they mention "You COULD factor in the big software difference into the price...", well of course you could and you SHOULD.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to run Bootcamp for this review?

Boot the MacBook Pro into XP and compare it the right way?