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Thinking of getting an Apple laptop - are they compatible with PCs?

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  • 16-10-2007 11:54pm
    #1
    Scarinae
    Hosted Moderators Posts: 11,362 ✭✭✭✭


    I apologise in advance of my post because I know very little technical terms to do with computers...
    Anyway, I need to get a laptop for college. I was checking out deals that are on at the moment and there seems to be a pretty good Apple one going on, but everyone seems to have reservations about it because they're incompatible or at least difficult when you're trying to switch files between them and PCs... How true is this, and to what extent? My home computer is a PC and if it's going ot be a nuisance I'd like to know before I buy one! I don't need to do anything particular technical at the moment, just writing reports and stuff for college, however I'm a Geology student and it's likely that in future I will need to use it for my mapping projects. I'm going to try find out from the geology department if this will be a problem, but in general how do people find them? I'd appreciate any feedback because honestly I have no idea, or even if anyone knows of any good deals I'd be delighted to hear about them. Thank you!


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    #2
    mobileplaza
    Closed Accounts Posts: 237 ✭✭mobileplaza


    u can dual boot using bootcamp so u can run windows on the mac.. i dont know a lot about this but its an idea


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    #3
    the_syco
    Registered Users Posts: 37,295 ✭✭✭✭the_syco


    Fishie wrote: »
    however I'm a Geology student and it's likely that in future I will need to use it for my mapping projects
    Most software is written for the PC or MAC. Sometimes for both, but not always the case. If you map something on the MAC, you may not be able to transfer it directly to a PC program. Also, the file structure's are different, I think: what can be read on a MAC may not be read on a PC (although this may have changed).


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    #4
    art
    Registered Users Posts: 1,202 ✭✭✭art


    Fishie wrote: »
    I apologise in advance of my post because I know very little technical terms to do with computers...
    Anyway, I need to get a laptop for college. I was checking out deals that are on at the moment and there seems to be a pretty good Apple one going on, but everyone seems to have reservations about it because they're incompatible or at least difficult when you're trying to switch files between them and PCs... How true is this, and to what extent? My home computer is a PC and if it's going ot be a nuisance I'd like to know before I buy one! I don't need to do anything particular technical at the moment, just writing reports and stuff for college, however I'm a Geology student and it's likely that in future I will need to use it for my mapping projects. I'm going to try find out from the geology department if this will be a problem, but in general how do people find them? I'd appreciate any feedback because honestly I have no idea, or even if anyone knows of any good deals I'd be delighted to hear about them. Thank you!

    We have two PCs in this house, both using WinXP, two laptops - one using Win Vista and one using Win2000 and finally a MacBook using OSX. Given a choice, when someone wants to do something quick, they immediately turn to the Mac - it's just the best, most robust, least hassle OS available currently.

    However, key thing for you will be exactly what software you will want to run, you need to determine that first. If it has a PC and a Mac version, more than likely the files will be perfectly compatible but it will come down to specific software types.


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    #5
    dulpit
    Registered Users Posts: 10,269 ✭✭✭✭dulpit


    Out of curiousity what sort of offer is available with the macs?? Cos when i was buying a laptop there a while back i briefly (for like a minute) considered a mac, but it was way too expensive compared to what Dell were offering...


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    #6
    440Hz
    Registered Users Posts: 6,424 ✭✭✭440Hz


    For your standard 'office' type documents/reports there won't be any problem with portability of files from Windows to Mac. However, when you start using more specialised Geology software you may find that it only runs on Windows (in some cases) and therefore may not be able to get an application to run/open/work with these files on the Mac. However, as another poster mentioned, there are various ways to run Windows on Mac now, so if you did end up having to use Windows only software you could certainly get around this problem.

    Feel free to pop over to us in the Mac forum for advice on running Windows on a Mac if you like (link in my side profile)


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