Quote:
Originally Posted by Molten
If there are any other college students out there, please continue my line of thought with your experiences(both agree and disagree with mine). As a previous searcher of advice(can't find my old laptop thread), this type of advice just seems more easy to process.(not to mention a bit less biased)
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My room mate and I both came to the U of A in 2006 and got new laptops at the same time. I got an HP with XP on it, and he got a Macbook. They both do what they need to do, and I can't really say that one works better than the other. He ended up dual booting XP, because Quake 3 is important.
After three years of use, both have already broken and been repaired. My hard drive exploded, and his had a hard drive issue as well (IIRC). Mine was fixed at home, his was mailed off, but they were both repaired without too much hassle.
The only real difference is the software packages available as a college student. My roommate is the only person I know that owns a
legal copy of Photoshop, since it was cheap enough after discounts for him to buy it (still expensive though...). There are various other Mac products available at discount, too.
The software that I've put on my laptop includes Inventor, Solidworks, and MATLab. I should mention that all of these are FREE to me as a U of A student... I probably wouldn't have them if I had to pay money (I'm a cheapskate.

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If I were going into college now and needed a new laptop* I would almost certainly not buy a Mac. I can't rationalize spending so much on a computer when you can get one with similar hardware for half as much (again, I'm a cheapskate).
*I should also mention that I don't really need a laptop for college, I could get by no problem with a desktop computer to do my assignments on. The only benefit I've seen from bringing a laptop to class is that you can keep yourself entertained during boring classes.
