macs for college

huggs2

My kids all went through college using macs :)and i noticed this link this morning explaining 12 reasons why.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/drmac/5937754.html?sr=hotnews

Breezer

While I use my Mac pretty much every day in college, and love it, I have to agree with the commenter who said that article was more of an ad than news. Any modern Windows laptop can do almost everything on that list, and often at a lower cost. The first 2 points are fairly valid, possibly 3 (if a child is less technically gifted than a parent, which I haven't often seen). After that it just went downhill.

To me, the main advantage of a Mac is the ease of use of OS X. That and multitouch gestures, even the two-finger scrolling on the MacBook trackpad. Also a big advantage is the battery life on my 2 year old, well-used MacBook, which still beats most new Dells, HPs etc. that I've seen hands down - this is something vital for our wonderfully modern Irish lecture theatres with no sockets for students to plug laptops into. Connecting to WiFi or running Microsoft Word aren't exactly advantages over modern PCs. Nor is running Windows, although for those that prefer OS X but need compatibility it's a nice security blanket, and one that's proven very useful to me in my less than Mac-friendly college.

Disclaimer: I love Macs. If this post is overly cranky, it's because I had a long day at work

Passenger

Well point 12 is easily the most valid one.

Red Alert

The real cool thing about Macs in a college environment is the instant on/off on opening/closing the lid. I've never had any other laptop where it works as well as the Mac.

The other major thing is definitely the UNIX backend. A lot of free maths and science software will 'just work' because it's written expecting UNIX.

gerry87

Red Alert wrote: »

The real cool thing about Macs in a college environment is the instant on/off on opening/closing the lid. I've never had any other laptop where it works as well as the Mac.

As soon as i read the first post thats what i thought about, i don't know why it makes such a big difference but it really seems to.

If i got a windows laptop instead of my ibook when i started college 3 years ago i would definitely be on at least my second laptop by now. I'm not good at keeping anti-virus up to date.

Spotlight is one of the other lifesavers.

K.O.Kiki

Spotlight?
Hah! Quicksilver!!

Oh yeah, and battery life always did seem to be better

Creamy Goodness

considering my course is about 50% unix based, having a mac gives me the ability to learn at home and give me the fuller experience of unix rather than ssh'ing into a server.

Talisman

If ever there was a copy and paste job from a Press Release it's in that article.

silvine

Spotlight?
Hah! Quicksilver!!

It's great for opening up webpages and applications but I find a lot of the add-ons don't work well with Leopard and it crashes a lot.

unklerosco

From reading the thread it seems the UNIX end of things seems to be a big deal with macs for college... Would it not make more sense to get a windows based laptop and instal linux on it... Tis much cheaper and the software is free... Students with macs... Where ya'll getting the money from?? Poor students indeed ;-)

Red Alert

I did that for a year or two, but dual-boot is never ideal for a laptop. There's just something so cool about having iTunes, UNIX and still have all the hardware 'just work' on one laptop.