Printable View
My university had a pilot program last year where certain students got macbooks with a copy of windows on them so all the programs they needed during the year would be available for them to use regardless of OS. That's currently one advantage to macs. Apples are great for some, but it's not for me. I'll stick with Vista.
Macs really do seem to be the computer choice of college students. I go to a high school that's on a uni campus and I have a hard time finding one dell, gateway, hp or anything (that isn't owned by one of my classmates at HS) at that college.
Personally, I spent $400 to get a mostly-working (audio's broken but I bought it knowing this) dell laptop from a few years back that handles well more than it's intended use. I saved $600 compared to the mac users and I have an OS that's more supported in terms of free, open-source software (i know, i know, linux is better still for this. Before you mention it, I'm running an XP Pro / Kubuntu dual boot on this rig) and easier to troubleshoot.
Those Mac commercials, while sometimes comical, are grossly misleading. But then again, they're trying to turn the limelight to themselves to get people to buy their products and apparently it's working. I partially blame Microsoft (what with Vista's release and XP's not for sale on shelves anymore or you can't buy a prebuilt computer with XP anymore), I partially blame Mac (For making those damned commercials), and I partially blame the consumers (for not doing the research by themselves to find out which of the options is actually better for them).
I'm not saying all macs are bad. My school recently ordered 20 MacBooks and I can tell you that the battery life is outstanding (what, four hours or so?), and the OS has some nifty things. Would I buy one? Probably. At a $1000 pricetag? Like hell.
tl;dr:
I think macs are good, however they're overpriced and painfully proprietary, so for now anyways, I'm sticking to good ol' WinXP, at least until Windows 7 releases or macs get a looooot cheaper.
-Omega
Wow, there's the best solution to Microsoft's problem... don't improve their new operating systems, or continue selling a decently stable OS that'll run on everything from the past 8 years... we'll RUN A NEW AD CAMPAIGN! We'll gotta get those Mac heathens then!
And for the record, I don't remember when Microsoft was cool. I do remember MS-DOS 4.0 turning me into a 10 year old with the mouth of a drunken sailor, though ;)
They can never get stability and complete compatibility in a single package. Luckily, there's apps like VMware.Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc
I don't know what to think about that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc
I LOVE that banner!
I'll stick with XP and Ubuntu for now; mainly XP since my old dell laptop bit it a few weeks ago and it was what I ran Ubuntu on :(
I never really liked mac when I used one and I found their ad campaign repugnant.
Final Cut Pro is really the only thing that apple has really done better than anyone else.
I go to a rather large school and see all kinds of computers there. Most of the Apple computers I see are owned by the art or film students at my school. I do know two kids with Apples that are engineers but most non-art students I know use windows based machines. I personally try to run Linux based OSs on most of my machines, and am a member of the school's Linux User Group. I would say it's a stretch to claim most college students use Apple computers. To be honest OSX is useless to me, I do like Final Cut Pro, but I have no need for it. What I need is the high level CAD software which I haven't seen used on an OSX machine.
By the way I really wish people would stop calling non-apple computers, specifically Windows, as PCs. I hate to break it to you but well ALL use Personal Computers.