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Anyone know of any websites where I can buy a 2nd hand mac laptop relatively cheap.trying to avoid ebay as don't fancy being taken for a ride by some bait nigerian

Second hand Mac and cheap don't normally go together. Depends on how old and how much you want to spend.

For recent models (last year or two) I'd always go for the Apple Refurb store, but you need to be careful that you don't end up paying over the odds for something old. You can get a bargain there if you do your research first.

Just buy new and sell after a year or so and repeat each year. Macs hold their price really well. (Especially if you upgrade them yourself after purchase - costs less and pushes the price right up.)

This


And this

I confess to being a bit of a mac freak and it's the fact that after 4 years my iMac still runs perfectly and holds 60% of it's value whereas the equivalent PC would have been, in likelihood, fucked over by virus's, worth about 50 squid or, at worst, binned through being just frustratingly slow

Does anyone even get viruses anymore? Haven't had one in years now.

Would you like me to send you one? XP Home Secuirty 2011 was a bit of a bugger.

I'm good thanks.

how did you manage to get rid of it in the end nmh

I removed this fucker a while back. I think I did it by booting in safe mode, then going into MSConfig and removing the start up item and looking for the path. I found it was located in some temp directory within Docs and settings, then removed it from there using a shredder. It was then seemingly sorted. (I think.)

Yeah the security virus is not a difficult one to remove at all, I have done about 30 of them this year already, as virusses and trojans go its one of the easier ones, another nasty one is the one that puts everything into hidden and changes the attributes of all files, it is just a bloody annoying one, but again easy to remove.

I have never got a virus in 20 years of surfing the net by not going to dodgy web sites or not downloading shit and not cluckin on links in emails easy peasy.

Yes but you and I are geeks but most of us have at least one member of the family who has absolutely no idea what they are doing on a computer or what threats lie in wait - that's the problem I have with PC's - I can't just take it out of the box and let it loose on the world without installing something else to protect it. With a mac, I can...

This is very true, the only thing with Macs is that I hate apple and all of my software is windows based so I cannot afford to change systems now, otherwise yes I agree, but I have heard that virusses are being written that will soon start to affect macs also but yes virusses are much less prevalent on macs so for the less computer literate then a mac could well be more viable virus wise.

And yes we do all have friends and family that will click on any link no mater what, just because they can!

I use my Mac at work which is all Windows - I run Windows 7 under VMware Fusion, Mac on one screen and Windows on the other. Performance is great and better than most people's native Windows 7 laptops, though I admittedly I've got the latest MacBook Pro with 8Gb of ram which helps.

Snap...

When I first moved to a Mac I did wonder whether I could find all the software I was familiar with so I ran XP in VMware. After a while though I found VMware a pain in the arse and had actually found programs for OSX that were better than I was familiar with on Windows.

I haven't actively used Windows, personally, for well over a year now. I do have it on another machine, but it rarely gets turned on and even then it's only for FM - which I could run on the Mac if I could be arsed.

How long ago was that? Virtualisation is a lot better now, I've found Fusion a lot better than Parallels as well. Though I'm somewhat biased against Parallels due to the piece of shit they refer to as Plesk for Windows. Plus we are heavy users of VMware ESXi at work which we seldom have any problems with.

You need plenty of ram as well, 4Gb isn't enough to run side by side but 8Gb does the trick (even more would be better).

Just in case

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-mac-shield

Mac's are alright if you've got the money, but you can get similar spec'd Windows laptops for >£500 less.

I do only have 4GB of Ram, but it wasn't the speed or stability that I found a pain in the arse, it was the whole pointlessness of loading a virtual machine within a machine. I eventually found, or at least learned, I had no use for it, as I slowly found a means of achieving the same results while remaining within OSX.

For a while I did still, on occasion, use Notepad++, but I refused to use Fusion just for that and found CrossOver. CrossOver is like a Windows Emulator and requires no Windows OS, it sort of converts an exe to an app and works in much the same way (albeit taking longer to load). To be honest, I don't use that anymore either.

And for any Mac users who don't own LaunchBar yet, buy it. (It's like QuickSilver only better. Everyone should own it!)

http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

I had Crossover on my old Mac but didn't use it much. It works by replicating the Windows API so can run most things (even stuff like Office) though I'm pretty certain it does actually fire up a Windows OS of sorts (and definitely a file system).

Depends what you need though, for an app or two then Crossover is fine. For more than that you need full blown Windows and seeing as my job is supporting Windows desktops and servers I don't really have a choice. I use virtual machines a lot anyway for testing and training, I even have machines running within ESXi within Fusion (which works surprisingly well).


Not quite that straight forward. Resell values for Mac's are a lot higher. Main thing for me though is I can work a lot quicker and more efficiently with a Mac, so the extra cost is more than offset. Plus it all hooks up with my other Apple gear seamlessly.

I did have a Mac G4 for a while, stuck a pci graphics card, 1gb ram and an extra HDD in it=flying machine. Just think it's a design thing, they look nice. Wouldn't mind a play with a G5 next

Getting back on subject....how much were you looking to spend?

this site any good to you

http://www.used-macbook.co.uk/

edit: how shits that. the adverts just link you to ebay. scrap that then

Haha martin you twat

Thought you wouldve checked the link beforehand...

300notes or so

You will be able to get one of the original Intel White Macbook's for that but it won't be up to much - they're 4 or 5 years old now. Watch out for the plastic case cracking around the edges as it was a common fault. Look out for one with 2Gb of ram and an upgraded hard drive. I'd keep to eBay, just be careful who you buy it from and make sure you get buyer protection.

Cheers mate, will have a look