Sorry one more Mac thread

[boat man]

Hi Guys,

Sorry to bring this up once more as I know there is a Mac Vs PC thread on the trot at the moment however this one is a little diffrent. I am a student at a Sixth form. I am thinking of getting a Macbook for my schooling as I do an Imedia course which is where obviously Apple made its name. Basically I need some reasons to make my dad let me get one as he thinks that it will get damaged and it is not worth the extra X amount of pounds. It is the 2.0 GHz version in aluminium I am looking at.

 

Thanks

 

Stu

[Dunc]

Apple do discounts for students. Money off = X amount of pounds difference is reduced a fair amount. That may help sweeten the deal plus with Apple Care you can guarantee if something goes wrong it will be fixed.

[cwatson]

You might not get the discount. I tried (I'm doing a-levels) and they wouldn't let me have it. I think you get like 5% if you have an NUS card. If you have an applestore near go and speak to them or ring up these guys http://www.solutions-inc.co.uk/ they should be able to tell you if your eligable

 

its normally for uni students

[Craig Sparkes]

Ive been using a Macbook for over 2 years now, the standard one & a Mac Pro. It comes down to what you make of it, the OS for me is nicer to use, more stable and far quicker for me to use an get around.

 

My Macbook is still in great condition even after lots of heavy use and compared to my windows laptop I had which was not as robust so would not say it was any more likely to get damaged than a windows one.

 

On a serious note, what do your 6th form use? Sometimes is best to look at it as a long term investment. The spec on them is very high and most OS versions work on older versions. Are you looking at the Standard or Pro?

 

Student Rate - I got this when I was at 6th form, just had to get a letter from 6th Form to say i was studying there and got discount.

[boat man]

I did visit the MK store and tey said that I need some card of some description and a proff of ID to get the discount but I have never been given a card to get a student discount so I may have to enquire at school about it. Also they said it is only 7/8% discount which is still more expensive than Dixons have at full price. I must admit one point that my dad was inpressed was the apple care. Is teh applecare cost your own damage say something happened like it go knocked around at school. Im not sure where my dad is coming from seen as the Acer I am using at the moment has survived virtually unscathed for the last 3 years at school and those were the days of running around with it in my backpack and using the bag as a goal post.

[boat man]

thanks Craig It was the standard 13.3" version I am looking at. The school is quite varied as the Imedia corse has just got its hands on 22 of the Imac desktops and there are rumours from the other group that there are 2 macbooks somewhere else in the school. We also use windows occasionally but the guy in the apple store said that they run windows in boot camp so that wouldnt be to much of a problem.

[PieGuy]

I dont like to say it as i've always been a pc buff.. but if its specifically for media i'd bite the bullet and buy a mac. The added stability is a godsend, especially when your running programs with lots of plugins / compatability issues..

 

You'd get more power and capacity for your money if you went with a pc, and its the way to go if you want to be constantly upgrading, tweaking and changing your system.. But if you just want performance and reliability with the minimum of fuss.. I'd *sigh* go with a mac

[iant84]

Try to wangle the student discount mate, not only do you get money off but you also get applecare for free

[cwatson]

I don't know where this thing about macs ONLY being good at media comes from (well I do its comparing the macs to the pcs of the day about 10 years ago). They are a lot more stable and generally do everything better not just media (apart from gaming and when compatibility issues make themselves known).

If you can afford it its so worth it. I can understand why people shun macs for the price and branding. People say about getting more performance for your money out of a pc but with vista particularly thats like letting your gran drive an F1 car where as mac is like I dunno jason plato in a touring car the pc may have the better performance but at least the touring car would get out of the pits

[boat man]

Thanks for the advice guys. My dad now seems to have gone off on a bender and says no because of the compatability with our exisiting Microsoft network at home. So the new question is how compatible is a Mac with and exisiting home windows network. Or if not directly out of the box how easily it is solved.

 

Thanks

[cwatson]

Fully compatible out of the box. easier set up than windows (It does it itself) turn on windows file sharing jobs a goodun

[boat man]

Thanks for the quick reply. Seen as ive started the thread. What do people think are the pros and cons of the Macbook and would you still buy one if it were your own money.

 

Thanks

[mkratty]

well i bit the bullet last week and got a macbook . (the white one not alu)

im impressed so far . ive hooked it up onto my wireless network no problems very very easy to set up ect .

 

the only thing ive found with it ,is that it doesnt come with any office software so you cant open your usual office documents out of the box .

also playing windows media files is a problem .there's plenty of free software about to solve that tho .

 

last night my old windows lappy had a catastrophic failure on start up . i got a black screen of death !!!!

i spent best part of 6 hours trying to fix it before giving up !!!

lucky enough i managed to get the files off which i needed .

 

i just hope i dont have issue like this with the mac , which by reports i wont ?

[iant84]

If you do have any failures, apple are damn good at fixing them extremely quickly for you. As with any computer hardware, failures happen no matter who you buy it from.

 

For Office files, try iWork, you should have a trial in your applications folder, if not download the trial from Apple, it's about 90% compatible with Office and if you need any more advanced features then try openoffice. Microsoft Office for Mac is a pile of ******** and well worth avoiding.

[lazarus]

as much as i hate the debate i'll chirp up for this question.

 

no wouldn't spend my own money on a mac, these days they are exactly the same as all the other machines out there that would usually run windows or linux just in a pretty box. since they moved to the x86 architecture and released a version of mac OS that runs on it. its been installed on plenty of non apple hardware. even saw an acer net book running it. so no id buy some thing else much cheaper and run the OS on that if it was just the OS i was after. if i was spending the same kind of cash as you would for a decent spec mac then i'd look into the ruggedized laptops and put the OS on that, at least then i know i'd have a machine that could take a beating day in day out.

[boat man]

Thanks Guys your opinions are greatly appreciated. One other question on compatability, Can I print using a another computers printer like on windows for printer sharing??

 

Thanks

[Craig Sparkes]

Microsoft Office for Mac is a pile of ******** and well worth avoiding.

100% Disagree.

 

Word is much easier to use, Entourage can not be touched for email client, Excel is excel same as numbers etc.. no real difference so can really see where you get that view from

[iant84]

Microsoft Office for Mac is a pile of ******** and well worth avoiding.

100% Disagree.

 

Word is much easier to use, Entourage can not be touched for email client, Excel is excel same as numbers etc.. no real difference so can really see where you get that view from

 

Buggiest software I have ever used. If all your doing is basic word processing then I can see how you could get on with it, however, try it for some serious writing including figures, references etc... and you will soon learn to hate it, it runs far worse than 2004 running using Rosetta emulation. Excel is awful, runs slower than 2004 with the same dataset, it's just generally pish and was a total waste of my money. If all your doing is basic business type tasks then I doubt you'll have any of the problems I've encountered, but I guarantee you that for heavy duty stuff it works less well than Office 2004, and even then for basic tasks iWork is more stable and cheaper. Microsoft seriously dropped the ball with Office 2008 for mac. Also, Entourage is good!? What are you smoking!?

 

In Word, you can't see equations created in Word 2007 for Windows and if you use (or are trying to use) AppleScript and Automator in Office 2008, one known issue will affect you: "Running Automator workflows and AppleScripts from the Office script menu is not currently supported under Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard).

 

I now run Office in an XP virtual machine if I need to do any collaboration with office people as Office for Mac is honestly awful and running the Windows version is far nicer, otherwise I use Latex for writing + various open source packages for data analysis.

 

[edit to add] Excel 2008 has gotten rid of the options for custom error bars, you can only plot basic ones making it completely useless for any scientific graphing. Then there's the whole lack of VB support meaning my Endnote database is useless, luckily I moved it to Bibtex and am now Office free.

 

I even managed to forget my most hated 'feature' of Word 2008, the bloody keystroke lag, if you touch type it is really annoying, it's a word processor running on a Core 2 Duo, there should not be any lag between hitting a key and it appearing on screen. It's an inexcusable bug.