Is the MBP 13" right for me??

imaginethat

Hi everyone!
I have been a windows user up till now but as my current laptop is beggining to give up on life I want to make the move to mac. I've checked out the range too see what my funds will get me and i'm considering the 13" MBP. I just have a few questions before I seal the deal.
I'm in college studying nursing so i wont need any special programs or anything but will I be able to save assignments done on iwork to a usb and open them on microsoft word in college to print or will i have to use parallels??
I also do alot of downloading, movies, music etc. and occasionally play games, tho i wouldn't call my self a gamer, will the basic specs do me or should i adjust them?
Thanks a million for any replys, all appreciated!

Nemanja91

I do all my college work on iWork too, I'm not too sure wether you will be able to print documents off on windows, there might be a template to do that, I use parallels to run CAD but I haven't used it for anything else. There is free software call open office for mac and you might be able to work on that and then print the documents from college. As regards to specs I don't know much but I have a 2.66GHz iMac with 4GB ram and it works very well and I have a large library on iTunes. I run steam on my mac and the only game I have is portal which runs ok and I think my graphics card is standard. I am also thinking of getting a 13 MBP. On apple at the moment there is a back to school option were you will get a student discount and €160 euro off an iPod. Hope I helped!!

was.deevey

Hi everyone!
I have been a windows user up till now but as my current laptop is beggining to give up on life I want to make the move to mac. I've checked out the range too see what my funds will get me and i'm considering the 13" MBP. I just have a few questions before I seal the deal.

will I be able to save assignments done on iwork to a usb and open them on microsoft word in college to print or will i have to use parallels??

You can save docs as word, however its not always 100% the same when you re-open .. I generally save as PDF for printing on windows machines.

Just get Microsoft office for mac no need for parallels if its word you'd be using for editing at college. It'll simplify life.

Open office is decent, but again like iwork, sometimes has formatting issues between it and MS word.

I also do alot of downloading, movies, music etc. and occasionally play games, tho I wouldn't call my self a gamer, will the basic specs do me or should I adjust them?

Basic specs should do fine on a pro its 4gigs ram these days (isnt it?), I would go with windows partition and bootcamp though for games, i've only found one game really chuggy on the graphics, and that was metro 2066, every thing I've player has been Fine else was fine GRAW2, Rainbow 6 vegas 2, NFS etc ...

Ham'nd'egger

imaginethat wrote: »

Hi everyone!
I have been a windows user up till now but as my current laptop is beggining to give up on life I want to make the move to mac. I've checked out the range too see what my funds will get me and i'm considering the 13" MBP. I just have a few questions before I seal the deal.

For day to day work such as typing up reports, letters, e mail and www etc, there is no reason why you won't get 6 years+ out of the MBP. I have a 5 year old iMac and it's as good as new low end MS machines, better even at times.

imaginethat wrote: »

I'm in college studying nursing so i wont need any special programs or anything but will I be able to save assignments done on iwork to a usb and open them on microsoft word in college to print or will i have to use parallels??

Yes a USB will suffice you with no issues; simply click on "Save as Word Doc" on iWork and you have two copies, one as a .doc and one as a pages file and both can be edited if you so wish. Pages is actually better in some respects for doing up reports etc (Plenty of templates to hand) and it handles photos well and it tends to be zippier than Word in general; it also allows you to open Word Docs and work on them, as indeed Keynote and Numbers if you need to work on Excel and PPS.

Any formatting issues tend to be minor stuff such as margins or fonts not quite being read natively but they will still print fine with nothing problematic. Open Office and Neo Office also remain decent alternatives to MS Office though for the cost of iWorks, it's very good value and a brilliant performing software compared to MS Office.

imaginethat wrote: »

I also do alot of downloading, movies, music etc. and occasionally play games, tho i wouldn't call my self a gamer, will the basic specs do me or should i adjust them?

99% of movies and music will have no issues; don't mind anybody who says otherwise. MBP have a decent enough graphics card so films will play nicely.

Sad Professor

imaginethat wrote: »

I'm in college studying nursing so i wont need any special programs or anything but will I be able to save assignments done on iwork to a usb and open them on microsoft word in college to print or will i have to use parallels??

Sure. But as said, it's a good idea to save as PDF if you are printing off elsewhere. Even Windows users do this.

You should also consider using DropBox instead of a USB stick if possible. The amount of lost USB sticks I find in college is unreal. DropBox will sync all your documents to multiple machines and can be accessed online. It's also good backup for your assignment in case your hard drive goes belly up.