Win or Mac Laptop for college?
Hey! Can you please tell me whether it's any use buying a Mac over a Win PC laptop for a student about to start college in a Graduate course of Electrical & Electronics OR Computer Engineering?
I'll be mainly using it for preparing assignments, internet surfing and maybe playing games (not those demanding extremely high resources)
Oh yeah! I am comfortable with Win XP as such, have been using Windows for like 12 years i think.....but i am prepared to try Mac too! (+ i can use the Apple boot camp to run windows anyway)
Does Mac have any advantages? Does it make work any easier?
I understand it costs more...so consider only the models available at a price below , 00 or 00...
Please tell me what you think...Best answer if u convince me with your view!
Thanx in advance! 
 USED HP DV6000 173 DUAL CORE 120GB LAPTOP T2080 DV6403  US $132.59
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 A Barely Used Laptop in Very Good Condition NO RESERVE US $222.50
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 Toshiba M115 S3094 Laptop w Windows XP MC Used US $132.50
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Filed under: Used Mac Laptops
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I’ll make it short…I’ve been in the pc repair and programming biz for over 30 years. I’ve used Apple pcs, I’ve used IBM compatibles. Without going into details, ask yourself…"Do I want an expensive, incompatible toy or do I want a powerful computer thats economical, cheap to upgrade, and ready to run most software out there?". If you want a toy, get the Mac. Stop and think about it…Apple has been in the business for as long as IBM compatibles have, 30 years later, they STILL only sell to 5 percent of the computer buying market, PCs are predominantly used in every facet of business. What does this tell you? The entire Apple scam to allow their systems to run windows outta tell you they are in trouble! Dont assume either that just because you can run windows on it that you can run other windows based software!
If you can afford it, I recommend the Mac, and here’s why. I switched from PC to Mac after working in the computer industry as a programmer and network tech for almost 20 years. One of the reasons I left the computer industry was that I simply got tired of maintaining Microsoft products. I was a Mac basher for years, and told Mac users that they needed to get "real computers." In my first year of graduate school at Wake Forest University, I needed to play a video for a presentation, and all of sudden my PC started playing the audio in the video I had at half speed while playing the video itself at full speed. i was able to fix the problem after about an hour and half of work, but it was, for me the straw that broke the camel’s back. I had been reading some about the new Intel Macs that could run both OS X and Windows, so I decided I had nothing to lose and bought my first Mac.
I also purchased Parallels with the Mac so I could run Windows. Within a few months, however, I was not running Windows at all, and I decided to delete it off of my system, and I have not run Windows on my Mac since. I simply have no reason to.
The biggest thing for me, is that in the 3 years I have been a Mac owner, I have never had to re-install a single piece of software to get it working right. I have not had to re-install the OS. (I typically had to reinstall Windows every year to year and a half because it simply got too slow.) When the case on my Macbook developed a small crack, I took it to a nearby Apple store, and the problem was fixed within 2 hours. Apple has much better customer service than any other computer company I have ever dealt with.
After years of making fun of Macs, I decided that Apple does indeed have a superior product. It is going to take a lot for me to ever go back to using Windows. Do they cost more, yes. But I believe they are worth it. Not to mention, they are the only computer on the planet that allow you to easity run Windows, Mac, or Linux software.
So, obviously I recommend the Mac.
Here is the thing about asking a question like this. Make sure you get an answer from someone who has used both Macs and Windows based PCs. It is the only way you can give a fair answer. You won’t see me bashing Windows in the same way that some PC users bash Macs. What I am posting is my own personal experience.
It is also nice not to have to worry very much about viruses or spyware. Do Mac viruses exist? Yes, but there are very few of them. A PC virus cannot run on a Mac, so I don’t have to worry about any of my office mates infecting me. (I run the only Mac.)
If you decide on getting a Mac, you will have some choices in word processors. The first and most obvious choice is Microsoft Office ‘08. The second choice is OpenOffice.org (or the special Mac version called NeoOffice, both are free). This is starting to be used a little bit more in university settings, and is very compatible with Word. (You can load and save Word files.) When I was in Grad school, I used Apple’s Pages (the version of Word available at that time ran slowly on Intel Macs) and e-mailed my papers in .pdf format (I never had a professor have a problem with that.) Pages can also save in Word format, but it is not quite as compatible as OpenOffice.org. (I have not had any need to write a paper in the new version of Pages, so I don’t know if the new version is any better.) Pages is a part of the iWork suite, and is still my favorite word processor on the Mac. It combines the features of a Word Processor and desktop publisher, and is a great program, in my opinion.
I have included links to all the software I mentioned below. As for which model to get, any Mac is going to be a nice computer. I personally use one of the new aluminum MacBooks. I like their compact size, and don’t need any of the features in the MacBook Pro. (And the difference between the two is now much less than it has been in the past.)
My suggestion would be to buy your Mac and then try the free demos of Office and iWork to see what you like best. Links for all these programs are below.
BTW, once you get your student ID, you become eligible for a student discount from Apple AND you will get a free iPod touch.
Bonjour,
Apple’s next-generation Mac OS X operating system and Microsoft’s Windows XP second beta. Windows XP, if you didn’t know, will succeed Windows 95, 98, Me and 2000 and is slated for release later this year. Mac OS X is the most serious overhaul of Apple’s operating system since its 1984 introduction.
Mac OS X and Windows XP Beta 2 rolled out last weekend, and they share some interesting similarities: slick new graphical interfaces, consumer and commercial features wrapped into one package, wide use of XML, and new tools for Internet entertainment, such as updated versions of Windows Media Player and Apple QuickTime.
But the differences between the operating systems also are striking. At the core, Mac OS X is based on Unix, while Windows XP derives its heritage from Windows 2000. Windows XP seeks to do lots of things, but Mac OS X focuses on doing much less really well.
In some ways such a comparison might appear unfair, since Windows XP is only a beta release. Frankly, given some of the missing features (more about that later), the small number of available applications, and that Apple won’t ship the operating system on new systems until summer, Mac OS X is closer to beta than spit-and-polish code.