Quote Originally Posted by Citizen's Nephew View Post
I use Macs & PCs every day for game development projects so have a fair bit of experience using this kit. The Macbook Pro 2015 is a really good laptop at the spec you've just mentioned and is priced about right at £440 with a 12 month warranty. It's an intel chip so will run Windows 10 via Bootcamp (which means you can run MacOS and Windows dual boot from the same machine) effectively giving you 2 laptops for the price of one (be aware that will half your SSD capacity though - but you can also boot from an external SSD via Thunderbolt 2 which means you can up-spec the machine if needed).

It'll run Big Sur (latest MacOS) really well which makes it as good as a current 2020-21 model.

It will even run an external eGPU (Radeon graphics card) if you needed to run 3D software in the future (though Apple will say it can't but if you need to I can explain how it's done).

I've still got a 2015 and it's a real workhorse. I run Macs until they drop and I've yet to have one give out. All PC laptops I've ever owned and used eventually give up - compare that to a 2009 Macbook Pro I have that's still running (admittedly it's now a basic laptop but it still works).

As someone else has mentioned, low-end PC laptops are a waste of time IMO. I'd go with the Macbook Pro 2015 before a new Windows laptop.

To the OP, sounds like you don't need that kind of power so I'd return it and buy a refurbished Macbook Pro/Air (for a third of the price) as suggested by NYCBlue. It'll come with 12 months warranty and you can find them on Amazon (so you get Amazon's return policy too - I've had a Graphics Card recently refunded that gave up just before its 12-month warranty - so they can be really helpful).

Another thing that's worth noting is if you've bought the new MBP with the Apple chip it WON'T be able to dual-boot into Windows 10 - only the older Macs with intel chips will do this. This is important.

To anyone else considering a Mac - buy anything from 2020 but no older than 2015 (for lots of reasons but I really can't write anymore).

Hope this helps. I'm happy to answer any Qs if needed so feel free to ask.
thanks

I love my Chromebook, its a great bit of kit, spending £1500 - £2300 on a new macbook pro just seems alot of money, imho the best option for my daughter ( going to uni ) looks like the 2015 macbook pro and maybe upgrade the SDD ( which i am comfortable with doing on a win Laptop, so i guess the MBP is similar ), she isnt really into having the " latest and greatest " tech stuff, she still has a iphone 7

Whats the score with External Screens ? ? ? ? as a nice 29" screen would be great to work with

Of course she could take her old Win10 HP stream laptop ( but it really does struggle with the 32 gig SDD and does slow right down when it updates win 10 ) , but thats not going to make doing course work / assignments much fun