Considering getting Mac Book Pro

[spacegeek]

So, the other day my old dell inspiron 1521 finally died. I have wanted a mac for a while now. So, my question is should I get a Mac Book Pro, or a windows 8 laptop? What can you do with Windows that Mac can't do, and what can you do with Mac that Windows can't do?

Edit: I should point out that I'd be using it for school as well, and I'm working on getting a Cisco networking degree.

 

[LotusLord]

Both are solid choices. On the Mac you could run Windows either via Bootcamp or in a VM. I haven't used a Mac in my working environment, but use Windows every day. I work in Network and Windows support at a medium sized company and can tell you I have only seen one network engineer bring in a Mac. Depending on what all you end up working with will probably be the deciding factor.

If you'll mostly be working with in a shell environment either would be fine, however in my experience some of the programs I use on a daily basis are not available for Mac. If you'll be working with ESXi there is (or wasn't last year) a vSphere client on Mac.

What does your school recommend? I was heavily pushing my wife towards a Macbook Air prior to finding that many of her assignments at least initially required the Windows version of Office.

 

[spacegeek]

@LotusLord thanks for the advice. I've done some research, and found an article listing some good programs that can do the job on a Mac. The support for Cisco networking is there, I suppose it's just a matter of figuring out what will work best. Being a windows user for the past several years, i get the feeling a lot of times that there is always that one thing missing that windows can't offer, I choose an ipad over a win 8 tablet because I liked the quality of the ipad better.

Has anyone used any of these apps listed at this techrepublic article? http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/10-essential-mac-tools-for-enterprise-network-admins/

 

[Altemose]

@LotusLord thanks for the advice. I've done some research, and found an article listing some good programs that can do the job on a Mac. The support for Cisco networking is there, I suppose it's just a matter of figuring out what will work best. Being a windows user for the past several years, i get the feeling a lot of times that there is always that one thing missing that windows can't offer, I choose an ipad over a win 8 tablet because I liked the quality of the ipad better.

Has anyone used any of these apps listed at this techrepublic article? http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/10-essential-mac-tools-for-enterprise-network-admins/

I have used iStumbler for basic site surveys and Terminal is your best friend.