Mac Vs PC

maxtiny

My son is starting college in Sept. he is going into Marketing and IT, including web development. He needs a new laptop but I am wondering if he would be better off saving for a mac rather than buying a PC now and having to get a mac later on.

Any advice?

Thanks

php-fox

I would advice a mac most certainly.
Web development under windows is somewhat painful

Alanstrainor

php-fox wrote: »

I would advice a mac most certainly.
Web development under windows is somewhat painful

What applications do you use?

maxtiny wrote: »

My son is starting college in Sept. he is going into Marketing and IT, including web development. He needs a new laptop but I am wondering if he would be better off saving for a mac rather than buying a PC now and having to get a mac later on.

Any advice?

Thanks

The college will usually suggest a preferred platform to use. I'd look into this first.
What kind of budget do you have? I really do find it hard to justify the expense of a Mac over a good brand pc tbh.

maxtiny

Thanks for your advice, regarding the applications, I don't know is the simple answer but it is a very good idea to check with the college, I hadn't thought of that.

I agree with you regarding the price of Mac, I have been googling since I first posted and they are pricey things to buy especially for a first year student....but I just don't want to make the mistake of buying the PC and then a year later find out that he can go no further without having a Mac

Alanstrainor

maxtiny wrote: »

Thanks for your advice, regarding the applications, I don't know is the simple answer but it is a very good idea to check with the college, I hadn't thought of that.

I agree with you regarding the price of Mac, I have been googling since I first posted and they are pricey things to buy especially for a first year student....but I just don't want to make the mistake of buying the PC and then a year later find out that he can go no further without having a Mac

Unless the college requires a Mac, I can't see you getting to the stage where they can't go further without a Mac tbh.

hearny

As advised the best plan would be to contact the college to make sure, it is unlikely that they are using any mac only software and expect the students to buy a mac.

I'd say get the windows laptop with a decent spec, he is only learning his trade now anyway so by the time he is getting work out of it he will be more than likely using a desktop anyway.

I was using my Macbook pro for web development but ended up getting a desktop as I needed something a bit faster.

desaparecidos

php-fox wrote: »

Web development under windows is somewhat painful

What a stupid statement. Exactly what basis does that have?

maxtiny wrote: »

My son is starting college in Sept. he is going into Marketing and IT, including web development. He needs a new laptop but I am wondering if he would be better off saving for a mac rather than buying a PC now and having to get a mac later on.

Any advice?

Thanks

The vast majority of colleges will run Windows on lab / classroom machines, and course material would be distributed in Microsoft Office formats.

There's no reason at all to pay the premium for a Mac, in any scenario.

NUTZZ

desaparecidos wrote: »

What a stupid statement. Exactly what basis does that have?

The vast majority of colleges will run Windows on lab / classroom machines, and course material would be distributed in Microsoft Office formats.

There's no reason at all to pay the premium for a Mac, in any scenario.

I have to agree with everything in this post.

dent

desaparecidos wrote: »

php-fox wrote: »

Web development under windows is somewhat painful

What a stupid statement. Exactly what basis does that have?

maxtiny wrote: »

My son is starting college in Sept. he is going into Marketing and IT, including web development. He needs a new laptop but I am wondering if he would be better off saving for a mac rather than buying a PC now and having to get a mac later on.

Any advice?

Thanks

The vast majority of colleges will run Windows on lab / classroom machines, and course material would be distributed in Microsoft Office formats.

There's no reason at all to pay the premium for a Mac, in any scenario.

Unless you want to do some iOs development.

5uspect

I'm a long time mac hater turned convert.
They're very nice solid machines compared to your typical plastic Dell Craptop.
Make sure you get a well build machine regardless. Anandtech is a great source for reviews.

Ultimately as pointed out you should go with what is recommended for the course though you can just run Windows on a mac. There are also Educational discounts to avail of. OS X is a very nice OS and is a great choice for many applications especially if you want a solid POSIX experience. Newer Linux distros are a lot less flaky on laptops nowadays so you can just put Ubuntu on any laptop if you need anything like that.

Also there are some major differences in battery life between OS X and Windows which may be of importance.

Aodan83

What desaparecidos said. I'm in my final year of an IT degree and have been using Windows all through college. While Apple do make great stuff, you really do pay premium prices for it. There's no reason to have to spend that much for a college laptop.

Overheal

For a college laptop maybe not. Where the macs do excel though is in build quality. There really is something to be said for the unibody, and what must be a disgusting patent on the magsafe power port. Don't get me wrong I'm just as happy with a PC laptop but I can see how the macs manage to woo people.

Serephucus

Get a decent laptop of about (budget - €150), and stick a 120GB SSD in it. You can always put the mechanical drive in a USB enclosure, and hey presto! You have a laptop with the speed of a Mac (I hate that comparison for so many reasons), for less money, with none of the compatibility problems.

Having gone through three years of an IT degree myself, he won't need a Mac. Web development is the same under Windows as it is under Linux: a completely standardless f**king nightmare. (though HTML5 has helped a bit, if only it would be adopter quicker)

maxtiny

Thanks everybody for all your advice, very much appreciated. I think a good pc is the way to go for now judging on all your comments.

On a separate note, Serephucus, you mentioned to "stick in a 120GB SSD" I am so not a techie but am totally dependent on my pc for work (I am self employed), is this something that I should look at to speed up my own system.

Thanks

Serephucus

I'm not sure how much you know, so I'll start from zero. (If you know what an SSD is you can skip this). An SSD is a different type of hard drive. Traditionally, hard drives - internally - are something like a vinyl gramophone. It contains a stack of spinning disks, that are read from a read head on the end of an arm. Solid state drives (SSDs) are basically big USB sticks - without the USB port. They're drives composed of flash memory.

The advantage of an SSD is that you don't have to wait for those few milliseconds every time you want a piece of data; it can be access instantly from the memory instead. SSDs are particularly suited to laptops, because:

They use less power.
They run cooler.
They are very durable.

This is all on top of being blindingly fast. That last point though is of particular importance. Usually, if you so much as shake or knock your laptop too hard, you can loose some or all of you data. If there was an SSD in your laptop, you could probably throw it down the stairs, and still be able to take the drive out of the shattered wreck of a machine, and have it be perfectly useable.

The problem then: Money. SSDs are still quite expensive, though they're less than half the price of what they were two years ago. A 120GB 6Gb/s drive is about €170. A 120GB 3Gb/s drive is about €130.


Long story short: Odds are it would definitely be a worthy investment, though I'll need the specs of the machine, and a budget in order to be of any real help.

maxtiny

This does sound like something I should invest in but more so for my PC than my laptop, 90% of my work is on the PC. Leave it with me until I free up some extra cash and I will definitely be back in touch.

Thanks again

Alanstrainor

maxtiny wrote: »

This does sound like something I should invest in but more so for my PC than my laptop, 90% of my work is on the PC. Leave it with me until I free up some extra cash and I will definitely be back in touch.

Thanks again

Tbh...i probably wouldn't bother. I have an SSD and it's great. But, if all your doing is basic stuff the only noticeable difference you'll see is that the machine will start up faster, and applications will load faster.

If your machine is slow, the solution isn't an SSD to be honest, there's something else wrong.

maxtiny

My work is in the publishing area, I publish one magazine and am almost at the launch stage of setting up of a new web site, later in the year I will have another site on the go as well.

While my pc is not painfully slow, it has its moments! At times I could have a lot of different pages open as well as word, photoshop etc. and it does tend to slow down to an annoying rate.... do you think I should get it or is it unnecessary for me.

Thanks

5uspect

Sounds like you need more RAM rather than an SSD. How much RAM do you have?

Alanstrainor

5uspect wrote: »

Sounds like you need more RAM rather than an SSD. How much RAM do you have?

Yup, the issue is a system memory issue, nothing to do with the speed of the hard drive.