I'm looking at getting a new laptop soon and am willing to spend about $2000. I am having a hard time deciding whether to buy a mac or a PC. I am kind of tired of Windows ans don't really want to be a guiena pig for Vista. I am mainly buying it for school, heavy internet usage, digital photo editing, possibly some gaming. Basically I'm leaning towards the Apple and can't really find any reason not to get one. Just looking for some input from those who have used both regularly. I have never owned a Mac before, but I have always really liked them.
I have an IBM laptop right now and I like it a lot, but next year, for college, I am planning on getting a Mac.
I have a mac laptop at home and an HP laptop for work. I prefer the mac. Less hassle and neater applications That being said, the mac costs more and may not be worth the expense if all you are doing is "simpler" tasks. Gaming on the mac is also hit and miss.
Mac and PC are both they same x86 hardware now. You can put Window on Mac hardware and I assume there is a way to put Mac on PC? So you are just talking about the software, buy both and make them dual boot system. Especially since you are in school you can get a PC license for under 40 dollars.
Now, why would you go to all that trouble just for the internet, word processing and some games? Geeks.
well i would say get the mac and if you wanna play games you have to get the mac with Parallel Processing so you can run windows on one processor and mac on the other processor
I think thats why many people get Macs. Yeah they look cool, but I can't really justify the higher price and compatibility issues that you'll run into just cause it looks cool.
There's no reason to spend $2000 for a laptop for those purposes in my opinion. There's also a lot of software out there that doesn't work with macs.
If you're doing some photo editing, then maybe get one of the newer Macbooks with Aperture 1.5? A lot of my friends who do a lot of photography rave about Aperture and it's one of those applications that you can't run on a PC. You're looking at $1100-$1300 for the Macbook. You can get an academic copy of Aperture for $130 (at UT, at least). Some people are content with just using iPhoto, too. As for gaming, if you have a $2k budget.. you could just get a console with the money leftover. But if you want to game on your laptop, you can either install Parallels 3.0, which virtualizes Windows and supports up to DirectX 8.1 (note that some games require DirectX 9.0), or you can run Windows on Boot Camp. I hope that helps.
why not get two laptops for $2000 bucks instead of one mac. especially if you're using it for internet, gaming, and pic editing. better yet, get one win laptop and save some of that money for school?
Photoshop/digital art/photo editing? Go with a Mac. Spreadsheets, word processing, gaming, internet surfing? Go with a PC
Why? It doesn't matter which you go with there are excellent applications for both platforms for all of these things. The only reason people are suggesting PC's for gaming is for ease of overclocking. the only reason people suggest macs for graphics these days is marketing. They both do the same thing. The only reason to choose one platform over another is if: 1) you want to look cool 2) Your favorite application is only available on one platform 3) You have no budget Cheers, Brock
I think gaming is the only real concern. IIRC, spreadsheets and word processing are not a problem - MS makes Word and Excel on the Mac - and for Internet there's even Firefox. For what the topic starter is going to be doing, there don't seem to be many compatibility issues.
Well the gaming part is a HUGE maybe. I haven't played a computer game in the last 2 years since I got booted from Battlenet playing Diablo LOD. The main things will be photo and video editing outside of school work. Going to Fry's at lunch to check them out, although, if I go with Mac I will buy online for the education discount and free ipod. Also, if I buy a PC the laptop I'm looking at is the new XPS 1330. If configured the same way as the Macs the price difference really isn't much with the Dell actually costing a little more.
Get the new MacBook or MacBook Pro. Beware of the MacBook in terms of durability. Stains, Scratches. Otherwise its an awesome laptop.
