<p>So i'm gonna be a freshmen at UW this year, and i'm doing the customary laptop shopping right now. For those of you who are attending already, is it better to have a mac or a pc at the UW?</p>
<p>What do you like?</p>
<p>If you don't know the difference, then you don't know computers, and you'd damned well better get a Mac, for your own sanity's sake.</p>
<p>.................................</p>
<p>^sorry about that.
To be honest, I have found that mac is more widely used by retards or by people who want merely to edit videos/pictures and all that fun stuff. If you want to program or do more complex things, choose a pc.</p>
<p>To BandTenHut; I do know the difference between a pc and mac, and i lean towards a mac. What I meant to ask was has anyone come across any significant problems using either one at UW. To mark; i don't need it for programming or gaming, i need it for the basic stuff.</p>
<p>Then you better off with a mac, at least you don't have to deal with all the viruses and worms that make the experience so stressful. Also, there is a new software that allows you to run windows on a mac. This way you can have both the functionality of the pc and the convinience/simplicity of the mac in one machine.</p>
<p>mark19,</p>
<p>I'm by no means a "retard," and I use a Mac.</p>
<p>If you are looking at either Apple or actual IBM (not any-ole-PC), check out the pricing at the University Bookstore's Technology Center. Great discount for enrolled students! <a href="http://www.bookstore.washington.edu/techshp.taf?dept=attribute&category=techhome&par=tech&ttl=teccenter%5B/url%5D">http://www.bookstore.washington.edu/techshp.taf?dept=attribute&category=techhome&par=tech&ttl=teccenter</a> Also, lots of good academic software at steep discount prices as well.</p>
<p>To mark19: It may be the case that Macs are widely used by people who only need to edit basic multimedia, but it's definitely arguable that a student in the sciences should choose a Mac over a PC. Mathematica (and Maple, I think) works on either operating system, and it runs much smoother on my Mac than on my PC (it's easier to stop the kernel on a mac). The LaTeX back-end is largely the same between Macs and PCs, though the Mac back-end (TeTeX) bundles LaTeX along with BibTex, plain TeX, and a few more nice bundles. The LaTeX front-end for Macs, TeXShop, is incredibly clean and much more intuitive than the various PC front-ends. These reasons might only affect a narrow sector of the population, but I definitely appreciate them. By the way, at an applied math conference I was just at, nearly every laptop I saw was a Mac....</p>
<p>One more thing --- there's no reason to choose one OS over the other just because you want to program. Any OS can run nearly every language, with the help of a text editor.</p>
<p>That may be so, but aren't PCs overall more powerful than macs when it comes to memory and performance? Also, there is a greater variety of sotwares out there for pc than there are for macs. One thing that I noticed is that macs are getting larger and less functional when it comes to physical aspects: latest macs have only 3 usb ports, no card reader, and no shortcut keys on the keyboard and you cannot find a mac out there with screen size less than 13in.</p>
<p>ANyways, drbott, can you mention a few layman advantages of owning a mac rather than a pc?</p>
<p>Macs and PCs have very similar performance in most things that concern the consumer. And variety of software doesn't necessarily mean a greater amount of quality software.</p>
<p>And you don't really need that many shortcut keys on Macs. The OS works beautifully without them. </p>
<p>Layman advantages to a Mac? Mac OS is a bit more intuitive in many ways, greater integration between the OS and the hardware, some great consumer-end software, arguable added stability, and lots of marginal value in the overall package.</p>
<p>Yes, I mostly agree with UCLAri. I think that the only differences that would be noticeable to a layman would be that the Mac OS is more intuitive, in some sense. Really, nearly everyone will be happy on either type of system.</p>
<p>I've had mixed feelings about which system is more stable. My old Windows laptop had no system crashes, though every so often the Mathematica kernel would stall, and I wouldn't be able to quit from it. On my new Mac laptop, there have been two or three system crashes, and Firefox has quit a few times.</p>
<p>Also, software compatability isn't as much a problem anymore with Apple's release of "Boot Camp." If I remember correctly, it allows you to have a choice between running Windows XP or Mac OS X. </p>
<p>Personally though, I can't stand my Mac. It had a logic board failure the first week I got it ($500+ repair, luckily covered by warranty!), freezes and sometimes quits programs daily, and the battery died less than a year after I bought it. My HP Desktop running Windows XP is a whole lot more stable. I really can't see myself ever buying another Mac. I'm a Windows type of girl (Although Linux ain't too shabby either ;))!</p>
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the battery died less than a year after I bought it
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<p>C'mon, this isn't fair. All laptops are plagued by LiIon problems, and this isn't really an "Apple" issue. </p>
<p>It sounds to me like you were one of the outliers who had a bad Mac experience. That's too bad, really.</p>