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Buying a laptop...

RyRob813

RyRob813

Jun 7, 2007
414
1
36
St. Paul, MN
#1
Buy a laptop for college in a few months...

I was thinking about going with a MacBook, I think they're the best?

All I really need it to have is Word, an Internet Explorer, and enough room for itunes.

I was thinking of getting just the standard MacBook, (the cheapest one). Would you recommend that computer, and can it house the programs I listed? (I figured itunes is a given as they're both apple)

Thanks!
 
#2
Any laptop made in the last 8 years or so will probably be able to run those three programs.

If that's really all you're running then I would probably go with the cheapest laptop I could get. You could probably even find a smartphone that runs those three.

brad
 
#5
RyRob813 said:
I was thinking of getting just the standard MacBook, (the cheapest one). Would you recommend that computer, and can it house the programs I listed? (I figured itunes is a given as they're both apple)

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Yes, if those are the things you want to do, MacBook will be a good choice - they are pretty much build to do exactly those things and some more. The only bad thing I can think of a MacBook is the somewhat slow graphics card, but this only affects gaming performance, MacBooks do well with anything else.

I wouldn't trade it to a PC laptop, and I'm on my second Apple laptop right now.
 
#6
It is worth checking to see if your college sells and supports certain brands and models of laptops. The warranty and on site support can be worth it, as well as getting group discounts.

You may or may not need to buy / obtain Word. There are plenty of alternatives these days to expensive MS Office products. That said, my son's college bookstore (through which I bought his his Dell laptop with Vista, which he and I love, thank you) sells MS Office Education version for $85.00.
 
#11
I think his punctuation was ambiguous:

No IE.
Safari or Firefox.

If you are wedded to IE, and Word then PC may be the way to go, but you assuming you meant web browsing, and word processing then a MacBook is ideal.

Safari is much nicer than IE. Firefox is more powerfull. Opera is nice to occasionally.

You can get MSOffice, but might also like to look at iWork. Pages (the Word bit) is not as powerfull as Word, but the package is way cheaper, and with really nice integration into the rest of the Mac. The Keynote (the PowerPoint equivalent) is awesome.

I'm writing this on my old PowerBook, and just got a new McBook Pro. The new machine is lighting fast, but a bit bulky. The consumer MacBooks are a nice size (but not as nice as the old 12" powerbook).

Ian
 
#15
I am a Mac user. I have always been a PC user until last year. I won't go back!!

If you get a Mac and you want to use Microsoft Office, you can buy MS Office for Mac (the student edition is only ~$150 USD). It works flawlessly. I can open any Word, Excel and PowerPoint files that my PC-using friends send me without any trouble.

I have an iMac and a Macbook and have no complaints about either.

If you buy an Macbook now, you get the latest operating system (Leopard), which is also awesome.
 

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