<p>The Mac versus PC debate is as old as, well, the Mac, and there are pluses and minuses to both platforms. </p>
<p>With a PC you are buying an environment that simply because of its size (it is something like 90% of the market) has a lot more product support then the Mac. Price wise you get a lot more from a pc over a comparable Mac (yeah, I have heard all the claims, that the Mac OS is more efficient, etc, but the truth is that for what you pay for a macbook for example you get a lot more of a pc laptop, more memory, larger hard drives and so forth). For what a macbook charges for a 13" screen, you can get a PC laptop with a 17" display.</p>
<p>The Mac is definitely easier to use in many cases, even with windows 7, and quite frankly is more well behaved, you don’t have the crashes and freeze ups that plague the pc world still.
And because the Mac environment is so closely controlled, there is little chance of the weird issues you still see with PC’s. </p>
<p>In terms of graphics and recording, there is no technical limitation on the PC, the kind of graphics cards they have on the PC, combined with the bus structure, means that the advantage the mac once had with unique sound and video processing in effect no longer exists, and even if you put high end graphics and audio cards in a pc it is going to be a lot cheaper still. </p>
<p>Where the mac can kill you is if something goes wrong. On a pc, if the motherboard goes (or even in a laptop for that matter), it is a generic item, and you can fix it pretty easily. On a Mac, their so called ‘logic boards’ have a lot of functions integrated on the board, and if it goes you are looking at a pretty expensive repair (for a macbook, you might as well buy a new one). When my son first got his macbook, the network port went, and to fix it required a new logic board. If it wasn’t in warranty, we would have faced a 900 buck bill. (I strongly, strongly, recommend getting the applecare package; for the piece of mind, it is really, really worth it, given the cost of repairing the unit). </p>
<p>BTW, one of the reasons that the Mac is used in schools is why Apple computers have been heavy in schools since the days of the Apple II. Apple gives huge discounts to educational users like schools, they get stuff for incredibly low prices and has always pushed their products actively in the educational sector. Schools don’t buy Macs because they are better, as some of the mac evangelists try to claim, they buy them because they get deals too good to pass up (which is fine).</p>
<p>As far as viruses and such go, I agree it is probably unwise to take it by chance. Yeah, the overwhelming bulk of the viruses and malware out there are written for the Windows platform, but to assume that means the mac is safe is playing russian roulette (surfing the web on a pc without anti virus and firewall protection is like playing russian roulette with 3 bullets in the gun, with a mac it is 1, but still russian roulette). For one thing, the Mac runs on a Unix base, and there are trojan horses and the like written for unix and its variants that could hit that. More importantly, the people writing this stuff, especially the malware designed to steal personal information, is not going to overlook something with 10% market share (or more, depends on who you talk to). There are free products out there, like the Clam products someone mentioned, that work really well, and at that price it would be kind of crazy not to protect yourself IMO.</p>
<p>Okay, but which one to buy? Besides the obvious criteria, if the school wants you to use certain products that are available only on X platform (for example, pro logic recording software, which I don’t believe is available on the pc, I may be wrong), then it comes down to cost and personal preference. Having both pc’s and mac’s and seeing how they work, I will tell you you can’t go wrong with either platform, and also that I have seen as many problems with macs as with pcs (macbooks are notoriously bad with their batteries, for example, or with issues with the plastic on the cases cracking in certain areas, the pc laptops with batteries, and also issues with their keyboards [which can be replaced]). </p>
<p>That said, if you can afford it you may want to go with the Mac, if for anything the fact that it is still the predominant platform on the music side, which means if you need help at 2am you probably can find a machead to help, among other things, and it is a nice machine. One way to save some significant money is to check when Apple runs sales on recondiitioned laptops, you can get a for all intents and purposes new macbook for a fraction of what it costs new (for example, a 1300 dollar macbook for 900). If you do get the macbook, I recommend the applecare package, which while not cheap, can end up being a lifesaver when things go wrong. </p>
<p>Just my opinion.</p>