College Laptop?

[iomatic]

I work in the design and imaging field, on Macs and PCs for about 12 years now (10 years profesionally), currently at my job my Dell is the worst-- bar none-- with the most horrid operating system ever: Windows.

You'll have more reliability, color accuracy, and some better future-proofing as well as far more power (instant mail server? bam! Apache? PHP? Built-in.) and just plain better usability with Macs.

my opinion.

[e60.deluxe]

Originally Posted by iomatic

You'll have more reliability,

actually, Lenovo/IBms are probably the most reliable.

color accuracy,

this is 100% dependent on the monitor. and guess what and while the Apple Cinema displays are good, (and use the same panels as the Dell Ultrasharps), the iMacs use horrid TN panels which are known for 20-30% color gamut.

and some better future-proofing

macs are terrible for futureproofing.

there are still a large number of programs that will work on windows 98. MS stated that they will continue to support XP through 2014. where as once apple moves on to a new OS, its like nothing works with the old one anymore. hell often times things will work in 10.3 but not in 10.2 not to mention anything except the mac pro cannot be upgraded properly.

as well as far more power (instant mail server? bam! Apache? PHP? Built-in.) and just plain better usability with Macs.
.

lol. mroe power, and you know that apache works on like every OS out there right?

[iomatic]

Macs are very reliable. I see every day the fall of PCs failing at a Fortune 500 company. As an aside at NASA, all the engineers preferred Macs and Unix-only (Sun/SGI) boxes. This is a point of contention, so I believe we'll just leave it square. I have seen Macs fail, but at less of a rate than PCs.

Monitors, yes; I use the same Dell/Apple panels, and the Dell light source tubes for LCDs are cheap and inaccurate. Profiling is much more reliable and easy on Mac hardware. Some PC hardware can't even calibrate if you have more than one monitor. Which leads to:

Hardware future-proofing. Only marginally, yes; all computers are outdated, indeed. But Apple generally makes good decisions about discarding useless technology (VGA, floppies, et al).

Apache? SQL server? PHP/Perl? Postfix? Here's the key: out of the box? No.

My years of experience tells me Macs are better in the long run. You can believe me or not, I am just putting my experience and knowledge in.

[Firestrife]

when you buy a laptop dont upgrade the ram unless for free, to upgrade it doesnt void warranty and its much much cheaper to buy it and install it yourself plus its really easy.

[firmhonda]

XP was geared towards having massive networking capabilities, as well as being open to just about any program that you would ever need to use at most businesses.

Also SQL Server? Microsoft SQL server? Apache is a moot point to me, because most people that run apache do so on a more secure operating system like Linux/Unix, not Mac or Windows. Although, I can't even think of the last time that I heard of a server running on a Mac OS.

Networking goes to Windows hands down, there shouldn't even be an argument about that. I have to say that I would dualboot fedora or ubuntu & XP on a nice Dell XPS if I had the option.

[iomatic]

Mac is Unix, FYI.

Mac OS is pretty damned network capable:
Apple - Mac OS X Server - Technology - Xgrid


Whatever, no one has to listen to me...

[Yodums]

Which PCs though - laptop, desktop, make and manufacturerer? I think that is a very broad and general observation to point out you see a lot of PCs fail within Fortune 500 companies because I do believe the number of PC users in most of those companies greatly out number Mac users.

[BlaqkAudio]

I'm pretty sure Macs are network capable: AppleInsider | Virginia Tech's Mac Pro supercomputer to crack 29 teraflops

[firmhonda]

Originally Posted by iomatic

Mac is Unix, FYI.

Mac OS is pretty damned network capable:
Apple - Mac OS X Server - Technology - Xgrid


Whatever, no one has to listen to me...

I'm not meaning to be rude in any way, I apologize if it seems that way. I'm not saying in any way that Mac's aren't capable of being networked, I'm just saying that windows is much more efficient and capable in general. Also, a well constructed Windows network will run faster than a Mac network, although a Mac network will be a lot less likely to lose information throughout the network.

And these are from my girlfriend:

[iomatic]

Yodums; you are right, in the corporate world, PCs are prevalent so the frequency is sure to be higher.

However, I have worked in agencies where there were nothing but Macs, and they ran smoothly, without issues, or dedicated support staff. I've been in agencies where there were a few PCs sprinkled around, and they were the bulk of IT support budgets, requiring a full-time tech; sometimes even two. And finally, I've worked in agencies and dotcom startups with nothing but PCs, and there was always an overworked IT staff supporting those PCs, They insisted on never purchasing Macs, because they were "non-standard" and "would require full-time staff". Needless to say, the agencies running purely on PCs are gone.

Just my observations in the industry.

[FunkPnut]

Originally Posted by JohnnyRules

So I have decided to go with the black macbook. I am going to hold off a bit before buying it because there seem to be rumors that a macbook refresh is going to be released soon. I am also going to get VMware Fusion and windows xp to solve any compatibility issues I may come across. I am also buying a incase neoprene sleeve and a lock for my macbook. Is there anything else I need or I am forgetting? Also, I was thinking about bumping the ram up to 4gb because I will be using fusion. I know I will get better performance, but is it really worth it to upgrade to 4gb?

If you can get 4 Gb of RAM, do it. It does help a lot with VMWare, so does a 7200 RPM hard drive.

Apple RAM is ridiculously expensive, so aftermarket might be the way to go.

[JohnnyRules]

Yeah, I found some ram on newegg for around $95 for 4 gigs which isn't bad.