Slashdot linked to a great processor comparison today from The Tech Report, with this helpful scatterplot. I need a new computer and I’ve been thinking about whether to go Mac or PC. The introduction of the cheap 13″ MacBook Pros yesterday at WWDC complicated things. I like that form factor a lot, my 12″ Powerbook is a great size (but too heavy). I use a tiny ~10″ Sony VAIO now as my primary computer with Fedora, but that’s not very good for doing real work (OpenOffice and GIMP leave a lot to be desired). The 13″ MacBook Pro (2.53 gHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB hard drive) will run me around $1,399 with my university staff member discount. But, as the Tech Report benchmarks show (and further down on the page they compare whole systems, not just processors), I could get an Intel i7-920 with 6GB of RAM, a Radeon 4870 512MB, and a 640GB hard drive for about $820, or a great AMD system, similarly spec’ed and slightly slower for $200 less. Performance would probably be better than the MacBook Pro (with the Intel 2.53gHz P8700 processor), and even with peripherals and a good display, this option would still be cheaper than the MacBook Pro.
What’s the problem? Well, Windows and portability. I am averse to using Windows, and it would be nice to take the computer to the coffee shop and do real work. I haven’t had a desktop computer for years now. So, Hackintosh is an option but it’s dodgy to run an unstable, unsupported OS X on a production system. I can always keep using the VAIO for basic, fiddly stuff, and for displaying work to clients (and not being able to edit it on the spot, which I guess I shouldn’t be doing anyway). It’s a tough choice, but not one I have to make immediately. We’ll see what happens, and how Windows 7 turns out.