If you just got into grad school, (or undergrad,) you probably need a laptop. I'm writing this on my laptop as I sit and wait for statistics to start.
Anyway, my advice is to get a Mac. The college of nursing wants you to get a PC, and they don't officially support Macs, but I've never had a problem. (Moreover, I haven't owned office in about eight years.) If you buy iWork, it's much cheaper, ($71 vs. $150,) and it does everything you need from Office.
Regarding price, the Mac has a reputation for being very expensive. It's actually not. Here's a 2.4 GHz MacBook. It costs $1,099. Here's a 2.2 GHz Sony Vaio. It costs $1,999. I know Macs have options for student discounts. Sony's might too, but I'm too lazy to look around their site. (Lots of studying to do tonight.) Also, the Sony is a little slower, but it has a .3" bigger monitor. They're not the same computer, but they're close. Either way, you should see the general cost for a Mac is cheaper.
Also, the Mac can give you a ton of free software. I'll have a post about that in the future. (P.S. Nobody should buy Office.)
Finally, one last thing, if you get the black MacBook, you're paying $50 more for it. You can add stuff to the white one to make it just as fast, as much memory, etc., but the dark one just costs more.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
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1 comments:
I know you're pro Mac (and I think it's probably a great machine), but for people who want a good PC laptop, Sony should not be used as the standard. I'd like to present an alternative for PC folks...
As a PC person myself (after several agonizing years of trying to decide what is the best value) I recommend PC people look into what HP has to offer. I just bought a HP Pavillion in January (and another desktop HP in August) and they are reliable, fast, and affordable. The one I bought has a 2 GHz AMD Turion 64x, 2 gig of RAM, a Dual Layer Lightscribe DVD burner, integrated web cam and microphone, and a 250 GB hard drive. I caught it on special at CircuitCity for $799 (originally $999 before $200 in mail-in rebates). The only down side is that it runs Vista (which is getting better thanks to MS updates). The desktop was about $399 (runs XP) and has decent specs too. We have three HPs total in our house now (2 of them laptops) and they are the best PCs I've ever used.
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