Mac

MariaBabii

Is the macbook really worth it for its price? Would it be a good college laptop?

jpl888

MariaBabii wrote: »

Is the macbook really worth it for its price? Would it be a good college laptop?

No it isn't in my opinion but it is well designed and shiny. For the folks who like form over function.

It depends what you need to do in college. Unless you have special requirements any bog standard laptop with Ubuntu on should do the trick.

conical

In my opinion yes. It's not a case of form over function, but of form and function. They are exceptionally well designed (both physically as well as the operating system) imo. I find a mac much more pleasurable to work on compared to a pc - multitouch gestures, great battery life, webcam (I know PCs can have all those functions too, but in the mac they really work in effortless harmony) plus everything looks better on-screen (as well as off!).

Get the student discount (there's usually a few percent extra off if you use your particular college page) and get the free ipod touch (you could always sell that on here to make back some of the difference)

http://store.apple.com/ie/browse/home/education_routing?mco=MTY1NjA5NTE

cozzie55

jpl888 wrote: »

No it isn't in my opinion but it is well designed and shiny. For the folks who like form over function.

It depends what you need to do in college. Unless you have special requirements any bog standard laptop with Ubuntu on should do the trick.

I definitely wouldn't buy a bog standard laptop what ever you do. In first year dell did offers on bog standard laptops for students and by the end of the year a load of the laptops had broken in some way or another. A bog standard laptop won't last you 4 years while your doing your degree you may as well get one good laptop instead of having to buy a new one every year or two.

It is definitely worth shelling out the extra few bob for a mac.

Anyone who I let use mine says they are a far better laptop than a normal PC. Ok you have to get used to a different system but once you do you will see they are better.

The major advantage to me is that it is fairly hard to get a virus on one. Most virus's are created to attack normal PC's and won't do anything to a Mac. There is only something like 10% of viruses which will affect a Mac. Think i've had one virus in 3 years and it was my own fault for using limewire.

Another advantage is there are far more easy to use quick functions which can all be performed from different combinations of key strokes. And speed up every application.

The battery life is amazing, at the start I got about 4 hours from mine now down to about 3 hours.

Don't think looks should have much to do when it comes buying a laptop but size is important. The Mac is one of the smallest laptops which packs in the most hardware. You don't want one of them mini laptops for college cause they are impossible to type essays on

I've had mine 3 years and not a problem, my brother has one for 6 six years and its still going strong.

One word of advice is that if you do buy a Mac don't get the apple word processing package. Get Microsoft Office for Mac instead. There is nothing wrong with the apple package its just that most lecturers will be using Microsoft word and when you download any of their documents the format can get screwed up. And if you try to send anyone a document from an apple package they can't open it unless you convert it before you send it(thats if their using MS word). It just gets rid of a lot of hassle getting MS word instead.

Also some colleges offer free antivirus if you want it. I know UCD does anyway so you may not need to get that as an added extra

jpl888

conical wrote: »

In my opinion yes. It's not a case of form over function, but of form and function.

When you can tell me OSX will do as much as Linux I will believe you on the function part.

The major advantage to me is that it is fairly hard to get a virus on one. Most virus's are created to attack normal PC's and won't do anything to a Mac. There is only something like 10% of viruses which will affect a Mac. Think i've had one virus in 3 years and it was my own fault for using limewire.

Guess how many viruses I have had in 10 years of using Linux? It's not that there aren't any it's just that the ones that do exist are more of proof of concept than anything successful in the wild.

Did I mention that multi-touch is coming in the next release of Ubuntu?

Don't get me wrong I'm not knocking OSX it does what it does well and is very polished. Ubuntu isn't as polished but it will do an awful lot more, and it is catching up in the polish stakes.

Oh and there is a 2 year EU warranty on electronics, so if a bog standard laptop did happen to go in that time (maybe as likely if you buy Dell or Apple since the components are made in the same Foxcon factory in China) then they should fix it.

If the software you are running isn't running the hardware to within an inch of it's life the only thing that will effect breakage is the quality of the components.

conical

All possibly true, but I'd wager that the OP would prefer to stick to one of the big 2 (Windows or OSX)

I think why the mac works so well is that the case, components and software are all carefully selected by apple to work together, whereas with a pc you can have infinite combinations of components/case/os that may not be as cohesive.

For someone more expert, there is probably the option of fine-tuning a linux setup with whatever you could wish for, but for an average straight-out-of-the-box user I would (and have) pay the premium for a mac.

jpl888

conical wrote: »

All possibly true, but I'd wager that the OP would prefer to stick to one of the big 2 (Windows or OSX)

I think why the mac works so well is that the case, components and software are all carefully selected by apple to work together, whereas with a pc you can have infinite combinations of components/case/os that may not be as cohesive.

For someone more expert, there is probably the option of fine-tuning a linux setup with whatever you could wish for, but for an average straight-out-of-the-box user I would (and have) pay the premium for a mac.

Not possibly true it IS true. Unless you can link to something that says otherwise? Or would you like me to provide links on all my assertions?

The "Linux is for experts" line is getting a bit long in the tooth. Before you say things like that perhaps you should try Ubuntu you might be surprised at how usable it is out of the box, even for the "average" user.

The only reason it isn't more popular yet is because all the OEM's are sown up by Microsoft and you have to be pretty peed off with Windows to want to install another OS when you have paid for a license. Apple has it's own way around that problem.

And before you say the big 2 current stats are:- Windows 90ish% MAC best part of 6% and Linux 1%. Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

There isn't a big 2 only a big one at the moment. Tis like saying the shinners are the main opposition. Scuse the analogy