<p>i know this has been asked but....what kind of laptop are you thinking of getting/already have, that you're planning to use at wharton?</p>
<p>I use a Thinkpad and it's worked great for just about everything.</p>
<p>I'd get a MacBook. A lot of whartonites use them now, and the Wharton IT staff is reducing their longstanding opposition to non-windows platforms. The heads of the Wharton IT department are actually flying out to Apple HQ for more evaluation/integration talks.</p>
<p>Thinkpad is solid and lenovo just came out with their Ideapad that might be worth looking into.</p>
<p>i just bought an hp with windows vista... that should be ok? i really wanted a mac but they're so expensive!</p>
<p>HPs are good (anything non-Mac is good for Wharton). The biggest thing I would recommend is getting all your computer stuff together and getting used to it before moving in to school because you don't want to have to deal with that at school.</p>
<p>You get what you pay for ;)</p>
<p>I'd always recommend a Mac, especially since you can put Windows on it for all that Windows junk</p>
<p>oh my goodness, i didn't realize this was about laptops for wharton lol. my bad. :)
but yeah, i got an hp for the college. mac's seem really cool though!</p>
<p>i'm reallllllly leaning towards apple. i've had way too many bad experiences with windows. it seriously drives me INSANE. will it be too complicated if i get a mac? are there apple techies on campus? about what percentage of whartonites use apple?</p>
<p>apples are extremely popular on college campuses - it's one of those areas where apple has had a lot of success. Many penn people have one.</p>
<p>For wharton, you're going to need access to a windows computer. This may mean loading windows with boot camp, with virtualization software (parallels or fusion) or spending a lot of time in the lab. The people I've known in wharton with macs are those who know enough that they can still get to windows. (For example, running linux on your mac and then emulating windows with WINE). There are still a number of classes that have windows-only software, and I anticipate it being at least 3-5 more years until they're fully compatible.</p>
<p>It is NOT too complicated, Apple techies (and at least 2 Penn students serving the position of "Apple Campus Rep") are available to deal with any problems you may have.</p>
<p>Installing Windows on your Mac does not require anything close to super computer programer hacker skills, and from your point of view is simply a few buttons</p>
<p>If you're feeling hardcore, try Ubuntu :P</p>
<p>for wharton, can most PC/windows integration issues be solved thru bootcamp? how helpful are the penn apple techies?</p>
<p>If you can make bootcamp work, then you've got Windows. XP or Vista should be fine on bootcamp; I've heard better results with XP. Just make sure you buy a mouse :-)</p>
<p>Wharton doesn't support Apple, but your ITA might be able to help you. That level of help varies wildly.</p>
<p>You can get in touch with the Apple Campus Rep(s). The folks at the Computer Connection can tell you who they are.</p>