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View Full Version : Welcome to the Dark Side



Franko
Sep 12, 2003, 07:33 PM
My daughter is planning to go to optometry school and most schools are demanding that she have a PC laptop 'only'! The schools claim they don't support Apple computors and their 3D imaging software will not run on a mac. This has thrown her into a deep funk as she has been a mac-head forever. She has an iBook 600 which could be traded in for something more powerful......or she could buy a (cough)Dell.......perish the thought. Anybody run into this before?


mactastic
Sep 12, 2003, 08:16 PM
I was cautioned not to buy a mac when I was an architecture student, because I would need to run Autocad. I decided I didn't need to give up my mac over one program, and so I got VPC. It's not the best solution, and I have ended up working on alternate CAD software as often as possible, but sometimes collaborative projects required Autocad. So I would run it on VPC. Like I said, not wonderful, but workable. VPC won't support dual monitors, and it won't print via my airport, but those are minor details, since 95%+ of what I do I can use the mac or pc equally. So I put up with a little inconvience with windows software to be able to be dual-platform. And believe me, my powerbook ended up saving many of my pc-using friends behinds when they would run into trouble connecting to a projector, or some other strange malfunction that always seemed to occur when it was presentation time.

So, long story short, if she will be using that specific peice of software a whole lot, or if there is absolutely no other possible alternative, maybe she does need a pc. But she will be in college, and all her friends will have them, so if she has VPC she might be ok. Kind of a judgement call, but any 'book from apple will play nice on the network, and will be less susceptible to any virus floating around as bonuses.
FuzzyBallz
Sep 13, 2003, 01:43 AM
Take caution when using VirtualPC. It will not run all the PC software you throw at it.

It's time to cough up the money and get your daughter a present. Consider buying her an IBM ThinkPad notebook, although a Dell's not bad either. Just make sure you stay away from Sony models. They might look nice, but the battery on their notebooks are not reliable at all.