<p>Im a rising HS senior and my mom is thinking of getting me a laptop for my 17th bday. I think the interface of Macs are just so darn beautiful, and it looks good on a desk, too. I have a snow leopard transformation on a laptop I'm borrowing right now, and when the screen is on, it just makes my room look amazing, haha. I don't want to waste money on another laptop for college, so what's my bet bet for senior year and for college? The famous question: Mac or PC? Oh yeah, and this thread is in this forum because most likely I will be entering as some sort of comp sci/comp engineering major (with no experience, of course). Btw, I'm a girl.</p>
<p>I just hate Macs with a passion. It’s all about the individual though. Some people really do love macs for legitimate reasons and people like me hate them for what I consider to be legitimate reason. What’s the legitimate reason? Really just personal taste; I don’t like the interaction with it and I much prefer PCs and Windows. It’s like a miracle whip vs. mayo thing. There’s no right answer, it just depends on what you personally like.</p>
<p>Are you sure we can find a girl in another galaxy!!!??</p>
<p>The question is: why Mac?
Do whatever you want because you are a pirate.
da da da da~~~~~</p>
<p>You can use Mac. Many people use Mac. If you go to MIT OCW, you will see many of the lecturers use Mac. It is common. If you are comfortable with Mac, use Mac. If not, stick with PC. You just can’t install Mac OS X on your PC (yes yes yes there are ways and yes yes yes virtualmachine may do it, yes ye yes tricks…)</p>
<p>You may see many CS guys running with Mac. That’s their preferences. You can have your own preference.</p>
<p>Mac overcharges for their hardware and their OS is UNIX based, but it’s locked down. If you like the OS, another option is to get a PC (where similar specs to a Mac will cost you far less) and run some form of Linux on it. You could get the interface nearly identical to Mac OS & since you’re a CS/CE major, you’d have fun tweaking and customizing it. I don’t have anything against Mac, I just see them as overpriced & marketed in such a way as to make the user dish out large amounts of money every couple years. I like Windows will all of its bugs and I just dual boot to Linux when I want a different OS. It’s all subjective, so get whichever you feel most comfortable with.</p>
<p>Apple is a marketing company, they sell you an overpriced piece of hardware, akin to how Starbucks sells you overpriced coffee and Abercrombie overpriced clothes. Comp Sci major? Get a Windows-based laptop, install some Linux distros, dualboot Windows 7 Ultimate, teak it out, overclock it, and don’t become an Mac sheep.</p>
<p>Or don’t become a mac hater sheep! I have yet to see one concrete argument or comparison in this thread :</p>
<p>Also: If grey gradients cheer your room up, you have one sad bedroom. XD I’m writing this at a Mac, and can’t possibly see how OS X’s GUI is a piece of beauty compared to that of Windows 7? W7 is prettier, although it could use thinner window borders ;)</p>
<p>OTOH I like using my bash shell, and wish I could get a nice setup on my vaio without being stuck with a crappy linux trackpad driver or very little hackintosh support. Ah well.</p>
<p>I guess I’ll go with Windows, since PCs are much cheaper in general than Macs and the majority here are more pro-pc. And I’ll avoid the seductive aesthetics of OSX and go with the moreso compscimajor-friendly choice. I was never a hipster anyway (no stereotypes here) But…I still want to apply at Apple after college definitely want to work on creating the next versions of apple products (and since blackberry just layed off thousands because of iOS 5, I think Apple has a very bright future)</p>
<p>===
Linux is cool. Dual boot XP and Linux !! But I only use Linux when I need to. I still stick to my XP. Simple and does works. The only problem I have with XP is it doesn’t have the “quick search” on the Start menu like Windows 7 does. </p>
<p>I think the “majority” is low for college students. hahaha.</p>
<p>Hey! None of my friends or family members would describe me as a going with the flow-type person. I said ‘majority’ simply because I trust all your opinions </p>
<p>that ui is pretty nice, definitely better than the normal w7 ui, but still doesn’t beat that of a Mac! :P</p>
<p>“mac hater sheep”, eh? Thank you for not rebutting my earlier statement that Macs are overpriced or that Apple, Inc. is a marketing company. Notice that I did not endorse one particular operating system or even a particular laptop or desktop manufacturer. Thank God I am the sheep!</p>
<p>Anyways, get whatever you want, but don’t become tied to one company for all your software and hardware needs.</p>
<p>Seriously consider getting a cheap PC and dual-booting Linux (Ubuntu is pretty good). If you use Linux in primarily graphical mode, it’s almost identical to Windows/Mac (very easy to use), and you will find that it has nice support for programming.</p>
<p>As a plus, you’ll also have a real Windows machine, to run those commercial programs that don’t work on Mac (natively) or *nix.</p>
<p>I’m a rising freshman in engineering, and I’m wondering whether or not I need to buy a laptop. Do you need anything special from laptops you bring to college? It’s my impression that all you need is to be able to go online and have Microsoft office. Do engineering majors need more than that?</p>
<p>^As an engineering student, I have yet to need to use my computer for anything more than that, really. And I absolutely love my mac At my school, at least, any of the kind of engineering work you really need a PC for is done on the school’s computers, not one’s personal laptop, at least from what I’ve seen.</p>
<p>I’ve had mine for over 2 years now, and ZERO problems with it whatsoever. It never once shut down randomly, or even froze. Note that I don’t have any virus protection installed on it either. It’s a top quality machine and worth every penny for me. Don’t listen to these haters saying not to get a mac. If you can afford it, then I would definitely get a mac.</p>
<p>Personally i prefer Macs over PC. Sure Macs are a bit more expensive but theyre well worth it. I am not very bias because i have and use both a PC and a Mac. I have a Vaio PC and i was very satisfied with it for the first few months. However the battery life became really crappy really fast. Currently my PC can go about 45 seconds without being plugged in. Ive had my mac for the same amount of time and it goes for a t least 4 hours during normal operation.</p>
<p>I also like the OS much better than windows. I really hated the automatic updates and patches and all that crap on my windows.</p>
<p>Im a senior engineering student and i definitely prefer to use my Macbook for schoolwork involving C programming, Matlab, Mathematica, Minitab, etc. They just run faster than on my pc. </p>
<p>Also macs are extremely easy to use and i love all the things you can do with the mousepad, which makes multitasking much easier than on a PC.</p>
<p>In the end its really a matter of personal opinion.</p>
definitely want to work on creating the next versions of apple products (and since blackberry just layed off thousands because of iOS 5, I think Apple has a very bright future)</p>
</p>
At my school, at least, any of the kind of engineering work you really need a PC for is done on the school’s computers, not one’s personal laptop, at least from what I’ve seen.</p>![http://news.mydrivers.com/Img/20110228/09235523.png[/url]](http://news.mydrivers.com/Img/20110228/09235523.png%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
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