<p>If you are in the Accounting or Marketing majors, which do you have and which do you prefer? How hard is it to put the programs that come standard on Windows on a Mac? What's better for taking notes and just college life in general (music, tumblr, fb)? Thanks! :)</p>
<p>Windows. Period. Support for Mac programs is insanely hard to find sometimes, not to mention if you post about your problems on a forum, they often get ignored because almost all their users are running Windows. Of course, you can run Bootcamp to use Windows on a Mac, but then you’re just paying twice the price for the same thing. I’ve heard of some workable arguments for a Mac for a video editing/musical major, but for accounting/marketing, there’s absolutely no reason to get a Mac. Then again, I have the same opinion of most Apple products, mainly because I’m a guy that enjoys hacking up everything he owns and Apple seems to be for exactly the opposite type of guy.</p>
<p>Sure, people would think you’re richer and “unique” for owning a Mac, but uniqueness for uniqueness’s sake is meaningless. You can play your music, go on FB/tumblr just fine on either system, but Mac’s are much more expensive, normally. Not just the up front cost, also the cost of maintenance in general.</p>
<p>Go with windows. if you need something like a Mac Air, i suggest you look into ultrabooks. They weigh less than 3 pounds, as slim as a Mac Air and runs windows for maybe half the price, sometimes 3/4 of the price.</p>
<p>Mac’s for digital media stuff. Like photoshop, video editing etc.
Windows for everything else.</p>
<p>Honestly you can’t go wrong with either a Mac or a PC. Personally I’m a Mac fan, however I do a lot of website coding/editing and photo/video editing which is really were a Mac shines IMO. But in reality either can suit your needs (even for what I do).</p>
<p>However now that more and more of everything we use is online the OS is becoming less and less important. Even the photo editing software I find myself using more and more is online. </p>
<p>Another good point at USF is they have Windows 7 Ultimate for students for $15, so you could bootcamp or Virtualbox Windows for when you need it. </p>
<p>The Mac and Windows versions of Office finally are in a similar league so that is no longer as big of a factor. But I still find Office runs nicer on Windows. They are also only a $1 difference in price from the USF bookstore (I think $15 vs $14).</p>
<p>There are a lot of other factors to look into before making your decision and I hope this helps a little :).</p>
<p>@Corster: I’m a professional webmaster and I do lots of website coding too. I normally do the backend coding. With either an IIS with ASP setup or a PHP with Apache Setup, I can easily make it work on Windows, but I doubt you could run IIS on Mac very well. And I agree, even if you buy a Mac and realize you don’t like it, you can boot Windows on it, but you’d just be paying a very high price to use Windows. </p>
<p>One of the best things about PCs is that there’s a very large selection of PCs tailored for many different uses, tastes, and budgets, but Macs are normally more expensive to begin with and the optional upgrades aren’t as diverse with them.</p>
<p>IMO, mac’s are a waste of money unless you really need them for video or other editing, as others have said.</p>
<p>one of my friends got an Asus laptop from Best Buy about two years ago for $450. it’s a full-functioning laptop (not a mini netbook or anything) with decent specs, comparable to a brand-name laptop in the $800-$900 range. it works great!! he has never had a problem with it! :)</p>
<p>One thing I wish now I’d purchased additionally when I bought my new laptop at Best Buy last December was an accidental damage policy for the laptop. I closed the lid on my laptop a few weeks ago too hard and it broke the display inside. I now have a big black spot on my display and it is getting worse. It isn’t covered under the regular 1 yr warranty. The machine cost about $400 and the extra insurance was maybe $100; I gambled not getting what I thought was too expensive extra insurance coverage and lost. Hindsight is so wonderful. Guess I’ll be getting a separate new regular monitor and turn my laptop into my new desktop!</p>
<p>@lizard: my friend banged his metal headphones into his screen and that happened too. A new screen for a laptop is around $100 ish, just about the price of insurance</p>
<p>Thanks for the help guys! I think i’ll just stay with my HP :)</p>
<p>PC running Slackware Linux.</p>