<p>hate to bring back an old thread...but I have a question, would it be absolutely foolish to buy a laptop off of ebay?</p>
<p>Well....depends on the price you pay and he features guaranteed...</p>
<p>I was going to do a Duke Dell package but now I'm wondering. It seems like all the kids I know at home here are getting Macs to bring with them to schools. Some of them are math majors and one is even a computer guy who used to have an I hate Mac bumper sticker on his car. Any thoughts for a future Duke math major? I thought of e mailing the department.</p>
<p>Really, I think anything would be fine for a math major. Most of the advanced courses require a level of knowledge up to compsci 6, which I believe is basically like, the first level of program design, so I can't see a mac being more ideal for a math major. </p>
<p>I'd suggest getting what YOU are comfortable with. I maybe might still be/was a math major, and I personally got an IBM and love it. I was not a fan of the mac price tag, and really just couldn't see myself ever getting used to it so I stuck with a PC. If you want a PC get it, but if you want a mac that works too. Duke is very Mac and PC friendly, so it doesn't really matter.</p>
<p>Yeah-- I wouldn't know what is best for the math major, but I'd assume both could be fine... I personally use a Mac both at home and at school and I absolutely love mine-- making the switch is much easier than people think (esp. w/ the new Macs this summer)</p>
<p>Looks like the Math Department has a mainly-Linux system with some public Macs and XP boxes as well: <a href="http://www.math.duke.edu/computing/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.math.duke.edu/computing/index.html</a></p>
<p>can a dell warranty match the TAP service???
i'm really wondering right now whether it's more worthwhile to buy a latitude 620 from dell.com, using some cupon and with some nice service pack to wrap it up OR just go with what duke offers (an older lat 610 for a little more $$ but a seemingly good warranty coverage)?</p>
<p>That was what I did last year... took advantage of one of Dell's deals rather than pay extra money for a computer with Duke. I haven't had any problems... plus I have friends who actually work for OIT, so if I have problems, I can ask one of them to help me. I'm sure you'll find yourself living with or making friends with people who know computers well.</p>
<p>sure but broken hardware's not repairable. i mean even the savvyest computer geek can't fix a faulty lcd screen for example. so if anything major happens (and it will, for 4 years...) i'll miss out on shorter repair times that tap gets you. though i've heard dell have good customer care. have you had your laptop taken in for service?</p>
<p>i think for macs it might be better to go with duke, at least for the macbooks because duke's bundle is 100 dollars more but it includes microsoft office and the warranty, so that might be a pretty good deal. now what i want to know is, if we buy it through duke, do we still get the ipod nano deal thing from apple?</p>
<p>anyone getting a tablet PC?</p>