We have all seen the infamous MAC vs. PC commercials put on by the wonderful people of Apple’s marketing department, but is there any truth to them? Is the Apple Macbook really the best choice for young and hip college students, or does the PC reign champ in this category due to its compatibility and years of experience in the Intel chip set market?
Cost
Of all the factors that college students should consider when picking up their new laptop, cost is probably one of the biggest. Apple has created a lot of hype around their products, making their MacBook Pro the BMW M5 of the portable computing world. The MBP is a beautiful machine designed with elegant and classy lines, but is it really worth it? According to Apple’s website, the base MBP rings in at about 2 grand for a 250GB hard drive, 2GB of memory, a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and of course an illuminated keyboard. Those are some pretty sweet specs, but worth 2 grand? Probably not. You could pick up an HP or Sony with 4GB of memory, same hard drive, and a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor for around 1100.00 bucks, which means you could use the other 900 and hit up the Ralph Lauren outlet stores to stock up on preppy Polo’s.
Reliability
It’s 8:30 am and you just realized you forgot to type up your thesis for your 9 o’ clock class. You quickly hop to your desk, open your computer and type some straight up BS. Your almost home free, but as you go to click print, your screen goes blank; CRASH. This is a common scenario for everybody, but the key is to reduce or even eliminate the chances of this sort of thing happening. Let’s face it; PCs crash quite more often than Macs. This is not because Apple has some magical spell cast on their machines that prevent crashes, no the answer is there are millions more PCs than Macs, therefore low-lives that live in their mom’s basement and dream about having their first real kiss create viruses to target a PC more commonly because they know it will crash many more machines; this sort of thing gets them off. Viruses that target Macs do exist, but they are not very effective because the operating system is just not as well known. Either way, crashes can be prevented with the correct matience and updates.
Ease Of Use
I love my Mac. To me its very easy to use, and it’s extremely versatile. But switching from PC to Mac my freshman year of college involved a gradual learning curve. Everyone raves about how simple and easy to use Mac’s are, but the truth is that if you have grown up using PCs and Windows, then you are not going to agree with that statement until you can comfortably use a Mac and all of its “ground-breaking” features, which is going to take time. All of my friends with PCs hate when their battery dies and they have to use my laptop, not because they hate mac, but because they don’t know things like the keyboard shortcut for copying and pasting is Apple+C/Apple+V instead of ctrl+c/ctrl+v. Switching from PC to Mac will involve a learning curve, but once you have mastered the function, I doubt you will ever look back.
Compatibility
I really do wish Macs were more compatible with the rest of the world. I mean you can use almost any program on a mac now days, but there are still some features that just aren’t up and running completely for mac. Have you ever tried to write a lab report for a chemistry class using Word for mac? One word; hell. The equation editor sucks, a lot. Also, the newest college savvy tech tool, the live scribe smart pen, isn’t as compatible with macs as it is PC’s…which blows. There are programs out there that allow the mac OS to run the windows OS at the same time, but still features get left behind. You just cannot have the best of both worlds. PC’s win this category until the rest of the world catches up with the mob of a following Apple has created.
In the end, if I had to choose again with my own money, I would have bought a top of the line PC and some amazing virus protection software. I would have saved a ton and been able to buy a new north face! On the other hand, if my parents or relatives were paying, I would have defiantly kept with my decision and got the Apple. It all what your situation is; if you have the extra money or not, if you need a media powerhouse or not, if you can get by without the extra compatibility or not. The best advice I can give you is to think about everything your going to need out of a laptop before you buy, compare specs, and most importantly; keep your system updated and protected.
