<p>I don’t know which to get. which is a better quality? it says that pavillion has 6 hours of battery life but how true is that? I want to run photoshop on the computer. the macbook white 13" has only 2GB ram versus the pavillion that has 4GB ram but how does the speed of computer change over time? how reliable are those laptops? oh and I’m either doing premed or accounting.</p>
<p>I’m not a computer expert, but it seems to me that if you’re going to be running programs like Photoshop that take a lot of memory, you should buy the computer that has more RAM. All computers get slower over time as programs and files start to build up. So if you know you’re going to do be doing memory-heavy work on the computer, buy something that is faster to begin with, so that even if it slows down over time, it will still be reasonably fast. Also, don’t just look at RAM, look at processor speed. How many Gigahertz is each machine? </p>
<p>Frankly, I think if you’re not going to go for the Macbook Pro, because of cost factor I assume, go with the faster HP notebook. You’ll get more for your money than if you go with the plain Macbook. If the battery life doesn’t last a full six hours, in college the nice thing is that you’ll always be near a power outlet.</p>
<p>It’s unlikely you’ll ever reach the stated battery life on a computer, since batteries don’t maintain their maximum power for a very long time, and battery life is affected by things like screen brightness and what you’re doing - games and other memory/graphics-intensive activities would give you a shorter battery life than having nothing running with the screen’s brightness as low as possible. If I had to guess, a processor with overclock (turbo boost) would further lower your battery life when the turbo boost is on. My brand-new Pavillion (with which I’m very happy, but haven’t owned long enough to say anything about the durability) is supposed to get something like 6 hours of battery life, but I generally get between 3 and 5 hours instead. Even with lower-end processors, 4 GB vs. 2 GB of RAM would probably make a noticeable difference. As mentioned above, the processor speed would be very important too, though. Be aware that not all programs take advantage of quad or even dual core processors, and that IBM’s turbo boost only runs when certain conditions, including temperature of the machine, are met. If you’re playing graphics-intensive games, using the default graphics card would be what slows you down much more than the RAM or processor. I seldom think Macs are worth the cost, personally. Generally, you can get an HP machine with much better specifications than a Mac costing the same. If I had gotten a Mac with the same specs as this computer, I’d have paid three(!!!) times as much.</p>