<p>
</p>
<p>I can’t think of people who are more able to fix computers themselves than college students. Taking apart a computer is like playing with legos, albeit expensive legos.</p>
<p>No I disagree with the statement about “if you have problem with Mac, fix it at Apple Store”. First, as a person who is very familiar with computer and programming, and have been a user of Mac for about 7 years (since I was like 14 with G4), I can tell you that most of the time I ended up fixing the isses myself. </p>
<p>Certainly, for hardware problem one must take it to Apple Store for inspection. But they are so busy that most of the time you will end up with waiting. As a college student, you can’t waste your time at AS. The new Mac laptops are built uniformly - one single alumnim. You HAVE to take it to AS, or you can damage it (if you don’t know how to do it yourself).</p>
<p>Coming back to software: Google is the great resource to find answers. So most of the software problem can be solve with your patient and effort of searching.</p>
<p>PC vs Macs. I like PC, and I will never use Macs again. I had a terrible experience during NYC Hackathon this year with MacBook, while writing Python and HTML code. I could do it like piece of cake in Windows XP.</p>
<p>If you are new to Mac, you also need a period of adjustments. This can be quite annoying too.</p>
<p>Finally, virus. I hate people saying PC has more virus. Linux does not get virus. If you look at the statistics, both Linux and Mac cyber attack had gone up a lot. The only reason why Linux seems good is because most of the distro are open source and they are maintained by hundreds, if not thousands of users together (and most of them are actually software engineers themselves).</p>
<p>PC gets a lot of viruses for two reasons: (1) Most PC users are not very strong in computer usage, and (2) PC was and is still is the most popular choice of computer, in this case, Microsoft operating systems. So a lot of torjans and viruses are written for PC system.</p>
<p>Two ways to prevent that are (1) always install good anti-virus software, like Avira, and (2) has some common sense, be alarm!</p>
<p>IMO, get whichever you like. I was just glad that I listened to my parents and didn’t buy another Macbook. I will buy Lenovo Thinkpad x201 this summer (Oh yeah stop saying that Lenovo thinkpad sucks because it is no longer IBM lol… read the history and you will know that back IBM years, the quality was pretty much the same :))</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>One of the problems that Mac users will face is that there is a lot of hubris among them in regards to virus attacks. Many Mac users do not know how to protect themselves from viruses due to the feeling of invincibility.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You know it is so rare that any Mac users would have AV installed on their Macs. But the fact is that sometime these torjans or viruses are identity thief programs: they keep track of things you entered on any website, so you might not even know it.</p>
<p>Same problem goes along with linux. I think it is extremely rare anyone Linux user would ever get an antivirus on a linx distro. There are good AV versions for Linux and Mac. This is just one thing I dislike about Mac fan, because they don’t claim facts.</p>
<p>But again OP, pick the one you really like. My preference is just as simple as that.</p>
<p>@gadad-
“if Harvard frosh can generate an extra $2,500 in outside scholarships beyond what it takes to cover the student contribution in the aid package, Harvard allows them to put up to $2500 toward a computer, printer and supplies.”</p>
<p>How did you get your D’s computer cost reimbursed by outside scholarships? thanks.</p>