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I LOVE my 13" Macbook Air (and mine's the "old" 2010 model). It boots up in < 10 seconds. It's silent and weighs less than 3 pounds. Amazing machine. I'll never buy another computer that doesn't have an SSD.
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Originally Posted by macskull
Okay, find me a non-Apple equivalent to the Macbook Air - in terms of size and power - at the same price point. I'll save you the time and effort searching and tell you you can't. There's a reason Intel's handing free money to OEMs to build their 'ultrabooks.'
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PRTECTR4EVR
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I said no such thing. I said their accessibility for the visually impaired is the worst I've ever had to endure, something which I consider important in an operating system, something which reflects attention to detail. Oh, they claim their accessibility is the best in the business and you probably get along just fine without those features because you don't need them. I hope you never do because they will be inadequate.|
Originally Posted by CuppaManga
Saying you hate Macs and everyone else should too, and implying that everyone else should too.
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Originally Posted by CuppaManga
The Macbook Pro has been serviced once, when it was brand-new, for a very minor issue.
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Originally Posted by CuppaManga
I do wish the Mac version of CoH would be better.
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You might get your wish, as Paragon cuts Leopard support loose to focus on Snow Leopard and Lion. Although Leopard is only a 4 year old operating system, it's already been completely abandoned by Apple, as well as any computers that are incapable of upgrading to Snow Leopard due to arbitrary, forced obsolescence built into the code.
Yes, Leopard was only released on October 26, 2007 and already it's useless. In contrast, Windows XP was released on August 24, 2001, over 10 years ago. Machines running it are still able to play City of Heroes and use almost any other Windows software out there.
While you may be loyal to Apple, that sentiment is not returned to its customers.
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Originally Posted by CuppaManga
I have a Windows 7 PC I built myself.
And fail me the PC does. Even though I did not cut corners with the hardware, it's extremely difficult to get reliable hardware even when it's brand name. |
You could just as easily damage a Mac by handling its guts, if you decided to assemble one of those from scratch somehow. Would you still fault such a creation for failing? My point is, your experience with PCs sounds self-inflicted, and could have been vastly improved if you hadn't done it the hard way, if you had ordered a pre-built machine just as you do when you order a Mac.
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The $650 figure is exactly what I paid for this laptop brand new without any sales. Keep looking, because you just lost $200 for nothing.|
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
For the record, I can't even do that with a PC. Just ran that gauntlet with my future brother in-law last month. His machine, which is just slightly below those specs (Geforce 330M card, 512 dedicated video, 4GB RAM) clocked in at $850.
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Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
getting the brunt end of every jerk on this forum just for using a mac.
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I'm not telling you Macs are bad for you. I'm telling you Macs are bad for ME, that this is my personal experience, that this is why I switched to PCs, just as others in this PUBLIC discussion are doing. No, not everyone who dissents is automatically a troll.
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Brand new. Non-refurbished. Brand-name hardware with warranty. Really? Because if I put in your EXACT SPECS on Google Shopping or Amazon I'm not looking at anything under $780 before shipping. Granted I'm not about to waste the effort to go out and hunt at Best Buy, so I'll leave that possibility out there.|
Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
The $650 figure is exactly what I paid for this laptop brand new without any sales. Keep looking, because you just lost $200 for nothing.
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Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
Playing the "poor, persecuted Apple apostle" because of anecdotes of a former Mac user? I thought that was reserved for people who had never used a Mac!
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Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
I'm not telling you Macs are bad for you.
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Oh yes, macs are bad for just you and you're just voicing your fair and balanced opinion.
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Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
I'm telling you Macs are bad for ME, that this is my personal experience, that this is why I switched to PCs, just as others in this PUBLIC discussion are doing.
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Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
No, not everyone who dissents is automatically a troll.
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I ask you again, why did you even bother posting in this thread?
My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
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Yes, really.|
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Brand new. Non-refurbished. Brand-name hardware with warranty. Really? Because if I put in your EXACT SPECS on Google Shopping or Amazon I'm not looking at anything under $780 before shipping. Granted I'm not about to waste the effort to go out and hunt at Best Buy, so I'll leave that possibility out there.
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It's a Geforce 525M per the tech specs in the PDF below:
http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/produ.../10175890.aspx
http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=ht..._datasheet.pdf
And the brand outscores Apple for reliability:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/app...lity,7364.html
I have a 13" Air (I'm typing on it right now) and a 13" Acer TimelineX 3830TG. The Acer can play CoH MUCH better than the Air, to be sure. On the other hand, it doesn't have a 1440x900 display, and nor do any of the other 13" or smaller PCs I've seen of late.
YMMV. I get computers based on what I want them to do. The Air doesn't have the video hardware to do anything fancier in CoH than update my WW/BM activities, but then, it runs fine for everything else I do, and uses a LOT less power than the Acer. The Acer plays CoH on its lower-rez display and has required more software maintenance effort in the couple of months I've had it than the Air has since last December. If I were planning to get stuff done, I'd be using the Air. If I just wanted to play video games, I'd be using the Acer.
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In the interests of accuracy, that PDF spec sheet says "Up to Geforce 525M". At the price you indicated, it has an Intel 3000 HD. The Geforce would be more. I blame Marketing.
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Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
It's a Geforce 525M per the tech specs in the PDF below:
http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/produ.../10175890.aspx http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=ht..._datasheet.pdf |
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
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Yeah, they do that a lot. The Acer I got has a 540M, everything else in the product line is just the Intel HD.
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Originally Posted by CuppaManga
In the interests of accuracy, that PDF spec sheet says "Up to Geforce 525M". At the price you indicated, it has an Intel 3000 HD. The Geforce would be more. I blame Marketing.
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FWIW, I figured I mentioned that I switched to CoH on the Mac about 2 years ago and haven't looked back. Yes, there are crashes and occasional wierdness, but I saw that just as much on the PC before the switch. About the only real downside is it's impossible to run some of the nice add-ons (like that one that tracks your hero data automatically - forget the name) because of the way the Mac client is set up.|
Originally Posted by SuperJubb
Hey gang, I was thinking of buying a mac laptop, can they run coh well without all hell breaking loose? Because im not very tech savvy so I wouldnt be able to fix it very well if something crashes. CoH is the only game I really play. Also a laptop or a desktop? If the laptop can run the game as well as the desktop then Id grab that one since I travel alot =) all your advice would be mucho appreciato! thanks =D
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Oh, and a high-end Macbook Pro with enough memory will run the game just fine - that's what I'm on. Just make sure you grab a non-Apple mouse to work with it (multiple buttons are a good thing, despite what the guys in Cupertino keep trying to tell us)
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The unit I have is the exact one on the Future Shop page at the exact price, and it does indeed have a Geforce 525M with 1Gig of dedicated video memory. Future Shop isn't always accurate in their tech specs.
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Originally Posted by CuppaManga
In the interests of accuracy, that PDF spec sheet says "Up to Geforce 525M". At the price you indicated, it has an Intel 3000 HD. The Geforce would be more. I blame Marketing.
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Well the Mac client sucks here. When I started playin CoX there was no Mac client so I used winXP, and when the client was released there was no support for my Intel GMA 950 and the gfx were all weird, that's ok, I expected that.
Now that I have a 27' iMac with a 6990 ATI Radeon, I decided to test the Mac client. It crashed thrice in three hours. After that I rebooted into Win7 and had two play sessions of about 8 hours each, no freezes, no lockups. The mac client runs well here but it crashes all the time for me.
I'm running Lion, and maybe the fact that I have most gfx settings at the max may have to do with the crashes, but the same settings don't make my windows client crash. That's bothersome because while I would have win7 on my machine anyway (some programs I use once in while, plus now I can run modern games with good gfx that are only available on Windows), it bothers me because it makes me stay in Windows the whole week when I'm in the mood or have time to play CoX a lot. I like Win7, I like it a lot, but well.. The main reason I spent more on an iMac is the OS.
Anyway, it might be worth it, because the macbook pro is a great machine and even the nerdiest sites (like anandtech in their review) can't figure out why their battery lasts longer than other notebooks - note that this is on OS X, on Windows it's 'just like other laptops' according to the charts in their review, Apple only put the optimized switching from the Intel to the AMD Radeon GPU on OS X, although even the Intel GPU-only macbook pros have better battery life on OS X, blowing every other notebook out of the water (at least the reviews say that, I don't have one), than Windows where according to them it's regular.
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Every Intel-based Mac can run Snow Leopard, which means the newest machines that cannot run it were released in late 2006 so they're now 5+ years old. In the computer world, five years is a long time. Apple's generally very good about supporting older hardware with newer OS and software releases, but there's a point in time at which it's no longer practical to support older hardware, and the simplest way to keep your codebase from becoming a buggy, convoluted mess is to drop support for old architectures and simply move on.|
Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
Yes, Leopard was only released on October 26, 2007 and already it's useless. In contrast, Windows XP was released on August 24, 2001, over 10 years ago. Machines running it are still able to play City of Heroes and use almost any other Windows software out there.
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There are several reasons Windows is bloated, buggy, and crash-prone, one of which is Microsoft's insistence on adding layer upon layer of legacy support. That's also, strangely enough, one of the reasons Windows 7 is much more stable than Windows XP and Vista were - it got rid of a lot of the underlying legacy crap and started fresh. Sure, people will complain because app X or game Y doesn't work like it used to but it's a very, very rare case where you can't find a more modern version of the same or similar application that runs just fine.
Anyways, your insistence that the ability to use a 10-year-old OS as your primary, everyday OS is a good thing is laughable. No one should be running a 10-year-old OS as their main OS, especially not one like Windows XP.
@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
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That was actually a capacitor sourcing problem from I believe a Korean supplier. Everyone got hit by it, even Dell, and it made the news. Apple did offer a repair extension program for it, and if you still have that Mac you might be eligible for it still.|
Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
One of my former Macs, a 20" G5 iMac, emitted noxious smoke when substandard capacitors bubbled and leaked fluid in its power supply. No corners cut there! But my 4 year old self-assembled Desktop PC has never had an issue.
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Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
You might get your wish, as Paragon cuts Leopard support loose to focus on Snow Leopard and Lion. Although Leopard is only a 4 year old operating system, it's already been completely abandoned by Apple, as well as any computers that are incapable of upgrading to Snow Leopard due to arbitrary, forced obsolescence built into the code.
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Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
Not a problem I've had, either. Maybe the brands you're choosing are substandard or you shouldn't have attempted assembling your own PC. Most PC buyers prefer pre-built computers because it's extremely easy to damage internal components with static electricity discharged from your hands.
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It's not a horrible lie, really, it's just that they're so proud of what they built they don't want to admit that it was a horror getting it to work. I'm comfortable admitting that. It works *now*, and most of the time, but once in a while it's a pain. But that doesn't mean I'm not proud of what I built.
Manga @ Triumph
"Meanwhile In The Halls Of Titan"...Titan Network Working To Save City Of Heroes
Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination
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Then you got a hell of a deal. Because the same machine direct from Lenovo is $200 more.
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Originally Posted by Ruff_Tuff_n_Buff
The unit I have is the exact one on the Future Shop page at the exact price, and it does indeed have a Geforce 525M with 1Gig of dedicated video memory. Future Shop isn't always accurate in their tech specs.
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Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Thanks guys for the advice (especially the tip to wait abit for the upgraded pro!) Im going to buy one as im not a hardcore gamer just a little obsessed with coh =) PLUS the student discount is really good I think I'll save about £200! Lets just hope im one of the lucky ones who get few problems!
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That's weird. I usually get around 40fps on my 13" 2010 Air with 2.13 C2D and NVIDIA 320M with 256MB of video memory. I'm using UltraMode with it's default settings, except I turned off geometry buffers - that is key for getting Mac COH to perform well. I wish there was a Windows PC as smooth and quiet as an Air, but as long as one company makes the software and another the hardware, that will never happen.
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Originally Posted by seebs
I have a 13" Air (I'm typing on it right now) and a 13" Acer TimelineX 3830TG. The Acer can play CoH MUCH better than the Air, to be sure.
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PRTECTR4EVR
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I am not a hardcore gamer either. CoH is really the only video game I every play anymore, and the MacBook Pro has proven itself a fine machine to play on. |
Originally Posted by SuperJubb
Thanks guys for the advice (especially the tip to wait abit for the upgraded pro!) Im going to buy one as im not a hardcore gamer just a little obsessed with coh =) PLUS the student discount is really good I think I'll save about £200! Lets just hope im one of the lucky ones who get few problems!
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If you encounter any "problems" in the future, will most likely be around patches and/or issue updates, and those tend to be resolved pretty quickly. If you do encounter issues, just post them up here and hopefully we'll have a work-around for ya.
Welcome to the Mac Community!
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
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Huh, maybe I have settings wrong. Or forgot to turn off geometry buffers. I was getting pretty low settings.|
Originally Posted by Knowmad
That's weird. I usually get around 40fps on my 13" 2010 Air with 2.13 C2D and NVIDIA 320M with 256MB of video memory. I'm using UltraMode with it's default settings, except I turned off geometry buffers - that is key for getting Mac COH to perform well. I wish there was a Windows PC as smooth and quiet as an Air, but as long as one company makes the software and another the hardware, that will never happen.
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... To be fair, the Acer still runs rings around it, but maybe smaller rings.
(Heck, the Acer can run RIFT.)
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And there are only a few factories in the world that can produce the aluminum unibody necessary for something of the Air's caliber, and Apple's got those factories booked up.
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Originally Posted by Knowmad
I wish there was a Windows PC as smooth and quiet as an Air, but as long as one company makes the software and another the hardware, that will never happen.
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@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
FWIW, my 2010 13" air can't clear about 22fps at native resolution with any settings I've yet tried. I'd be interested in comparing settings. And yes, geometry buffers are disabled, and it claims to be a 320M.
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My settings are as follows. COH defaults for the AIR on a clean OS X Lion 10.7.1 install. The turn geometry buffers off and enable native resolution - 1440x900.|
Originally Posted by seebs
FWIW, my 2010 13" air can't clear about 22fps at native resolution with any settings I've yet tried. I'd be interested in comparing settings. And yes, geometry buffers are disabled, and it claims to be a 320M.
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Do you have the 1.86GHZ or 2.13GHZ C2D processor? I have the 2.13, but I doubt that makes more difference than the video cards which are the same. I just checked and my fps varies wildly in teams. I saw from 19 to 48 with an average in the 30s tonight. The only way I average 40+ is solo. Still I've never really had a rig average much over 40 so I don't know what I'm missing. I started playing COH in 2004 on a P4 with 512MB of RAM and a 64 MB ATI card. Each time I upgrade my computer, the game updates its graphics so my performance seems to stay about the same
No doubt a PC laptop would get better numbers for less money, but it would have lower resolution and cheap PC laptop screens have horrible quality and viewing angles. Maybe the Ultrabooks will change that?
PRTECTR4EVR
Huh, could be the environment -- I was just standing idly somewhere, I hadn't gone into a mission, which indeed might improve performance. It is the 2.13. And I have video settings other than resolution fairly low -- shadows off, reflections off, ambient occlusion off, water off, and so on.
Having some settings at the minimum can actually hurt performance in some cases. Can't recall exactly which settings they were, but they are there.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Where can you get a windows 7 license for $30? The cheapest I've found is a Win 7 home premium OEM license for $89.
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Originally Posted by EvilRyu
Its easy to get windows 7 for $30 these days.
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."