Mac vs PC, Laptop Choice, Computer Degree: Advice Please
I'm looking at buying a laptop, and I immediately assumed I would get a standard windows PC computer. However, my sister just bought a Mac laptop, and she's been raving about them. Which is better?
I would need it to do all of the standard things a college student needs a laptop for - email, browsing, and the like. I would also need to use it to complete a minimal amount of programming, as I will have to take a few low level programming classes for a business information systems major.
I might minor in film or music, which is where the mac sounds handy. I hear they are better for that sort of thing, though why, I have no idea.
Finally, I want to be able to run games. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do enjoy playing games now and then (think guild wars, call of duty level games).
Suggestions? Thanks.
I would need it to do all of the standard things a college student needs a laptop for - email, browsing, and the like. I would also need to use it to complete a minimal amount of programming, as I will have to take a few low level programming classes for a business information systems major.
I might minor in film or music, which is where the mac sounds handy. I hear they are better for that sort of thing, though why, I have no idea.
Finally, I want to be able to run games. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I do enjoy playing games now and then (think guild wars, call of duty level games).
Suggestions? Thanks.
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Comments
PC will do the games better.
They'll compete evenly on common tasks.
PC will be cheaper.
It's the same with music stuff. Most pro audio apps lean towards the mac side of things.
Functionally, the machines are the same nowadays. You can do everything you need to do on both. The mac is more expensive for the same speed as a PC. Gaming will definitely be much better on the PC.
sure macs are more expensive for the same processor, usually, but i gotta say my powerbook is the most well-built laptop i've ever owned and i've owned a large array of laptops, from acer to ibm. so they may cost more, but you get nice hardware. same goes for the mini's and desktops.
i'm currently a student at university of michigan, EE major, and i love my macbook.
and if u ever need to run windows, u can always get parallels desktop, i am using it as well, works great.
My friend luke has a mac and he's always raving about how good they are too. But i've noticed most Media courses now-a-days always use macs.
http://www.parallels.com/
kewl
Thanks for the heads-up lightnin
SEE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tySx0g0LUjE
~FA
I'm either going to be a CompE or EE major next year and I'm seriously thinking of getting a mac book if the price is right and running boot camp so that I can run XP Pro also as some of my classes will require that I have XP. All of my classes require a laptop in the college of engineering at OU.
I have heard that I will be able to get software and the mac substantially cheaper at the universities store or what ya call it. Does anyone know if this is true? Buddy J, I know you went to OU, do you know anything about this? I have to have a laptop one way or the other next year.
The university of oklahoma does also if I have heard correctly, I am just wondering how much cheaper they actually are. If the cost is too high, I may end just buying a pc.
i like parallels much better than boot camp because you don't have to reboot into windows just to test something and then shutdown and boot back into osx, you simply click the run button and boom, there's windows. when you get sick of it, shut windows down. you still have full control of your osx desktop, you just have windows running as if it's another app along with ff or eclipse or something.
edit:
added some screenshots.
edit 2:
lol i found more screenshots
http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/ss/
so how is the performance with parallels? That is sounding like a good option if the performance is up to par.
snapshot of right now
Processes: 73 total, 2 running, 1 stuck, 70 sleeping... 289 threads 14:56:29
Load Avg: 1.46, 0.66, 0.37 CPU usage: 15.1% user, 27.6% sys, 57.3% idle
SharedLibs: num = 191, resident = 18.4M code, 2.55M data, 3.04M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 10467, resident = 206M + 6.97M private, 443M shared
PhysMem: 506M wired, 336M active, 169M inactive, 1012M used, 11.3M free
VM: 14.0G + 125M 352518(34) pageins, 259145(88) pageouts
uptime
15:00 up 3 days, 6:58, 4 users, load averages: 0.69 0.75 0.49
i'm using it right now, surfing on ie6 in parallels/winxp, i have an IM going, running eclipse, X11, evolution, ff, jboss, mysql, sqldeveloper for oracle and 2 bash terminals up, on top of that netscape is hung up yet again and my mini is chugging along very nicely. not slow, not choppy, and toggling quickly between windows is speedy.
if that gives you any ideas.
the mouse in parallels isn't always ultra smooth, but programs open and run quickly.
For engineering at OU, they say you have to have a laptop. I know some people who graduated without every buying one, but for the most part, it's a good thing to have. If I were you, I'd contact the school and ask what sort of programs you'll need to use for the major and buy off that spec.
I have the lowest end MacBook currently and love it. I dual boot OSX and XP Pro SP2 with BootCamp. No issues there. Everything is nice and stable. No crashes or BSODs or anything. I've had it since July.
Once you know what specs you need, I'd consider buying a refurb MacBook or MacBook Pro from the Apple Store online. You save quite a bit there, puting the price of the laptop closer to that of your average Windows laptop. You get all the OSX lovin without paying the premium, and often times, they tend to uprate the refurbs with extra ram or bigger hard drives!
As for Paralells, I've yet to use it. The development of it seems to be progressing at a very fast rate and now you can pretty much seamlessly run OSX and XP together using it without taking much of a hit to performance. As development progresses, I think it'll only improve until the two OSes are almost integrated.
Cool, I'll look into it. But with my computer engineering degree I was up there at Sooner Saturday and I talked to some of the engineering professors and some of the students. The professors told me that a laptop was necesary. The kids said it makes life so much easier as you 'plug-in' in your classes. It looked pretty sweet to me. I can't wait.:headbange
Gentleman, it is so refreshing to see a MAC vs. PC discussion that is an intelligent discourse without flaming or useless cliches and absent of childish egos. You are giving Short-Media a good name! Thanks for a thread that is interesting to read and informative.
and for those of you with childish egos who are suppressing them...good job!
http://forums.parallels.com/thread8028.html
Sounds cool and should happen within the next couple months.
there are a lot more choices with windows machines (size, speed, graphics).
I see it as a matter of buget and machine size, not OS.
This just... wow... made my day.
Now I'm going to get back to work programming on this Windows machine at work.
Anyone have a George Foreman grill that I can borrow? You might not want it back afterwards...
Also, if you're currently a Windows user keep in mind that switching to another OS is like moving into a new house: all your stuff is there but you haven't quite figured out where it's hiding and there are a whole lot of switches and you don't know what they go to. Keep an open mind and you'll be fine.
-drasnor
P.S. At least you'll be moving into a friendly neighborhood.
I don't need it anymore, it's all yours boss
this is awesome advice!! if nobody you know has a mac, maybe find an apple store or a place that sells them that will let you test drive it a bit.
TBH the only difference in the 2 types of systems these days are the OS.. and Graphics.
and pro tools
and .... (insert high end pro video or audio tool of choice that is mac-only or is much more widely used and supported on a mac)
True, pro tools runs on a PC but the support team is very mac-centric (as well as the community)
The base MacBook is $1000. A comprable HP or Dell or whatever is $700. Is it worth it, to you, to spend $450 ($300 + XP) to get a laptop that can take advantage of each OS's strengths?
For me, using a Mac is part of my job. It's the industry standard for publishing it seems. But I'm a car guy and I dig open source EFI projects. I want something that'll tune a MegaSquirt and 90 percent of it's software runs through Windows. I also want to play my old games. So I spent the money and killed two birds with one stone. Work and play are covered. To me, it's worth it.