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Convincing Parents to buy MBP and various questions

$3700?!?

Are you freaking crazy? Why do you need a 17 inch anyway? Buy a bigger display. It's way cheaper. And stay with 2 GB ram. If you need one, buy it off Crucial.
 
geoffreak said:
Don't take me for some foolish kid. ;)

As for parallels, I have researched this and found that bootcamp just won't suit my needs. I may be a windows user now, but that doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing around Mac OS X. I plan on using both OS's with very powerful applications which bootcamp can't handle.
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funniest thing i've read all month.
 
An Answer to Your Question

You should get whatever you want but you posted to ask about security so here's the answer:

One thing you can get is called LoJack - it comes as either a 1 or 3 year subscription and is a small program that runs invisibly in the background that communicates with the internet. If your laptop is stolen you report it to the company that makes LoJack and it is able to locate your computer the second it goes online by detecting where the internet signal is coming from. The company claims to have a 90% recovery rate of stolen laptops. I have never used it but it is the only product I know of for this purpose.

BTW, regardless of what other people say, if you are going to be playing games in college and for the next few years, you WILL need a MBP, also if you do any serious photography, video editing, or computer programming. If not any of those things, it can just be nice to have a 17" screen. But macbooks are great too...
 
jbg232 said:
if you are going to be playing games in college and for the next few years, you WILL need a MBP, also if you do any serious photography, video editing, or computer programming. If not any of those things, it can just be nice to have a 17" screen. But macbooks are great too...
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why would he need a MBP to do programming? I currently use a G4 powerbook and have no problems whatsoever.
 
jbg232 said:
You should get whatever you want but you posted to ask about security so here's the answer:

One thing you can get is called LoJack - it comes as either a 1 or 3 year subscription and is a small program that runs invisibly in the background that communicates with the internet. If your laptop is stolen you report it to the company that makes LoJack and it is able to locate your computer the second it goes online by detecting where the internet signal is coming from. The company claims to have a 90% recovery rate of stolen laptops. I have never used it but it is the only product I know of for this purpose.
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There is something called Undercover made by Orbicule. It essentially works just like LoJack, but when it's flagged as stolen it'll take pictures from the iSight, which obviously helps in catching the thief.

Another cool thing is that it has an auto-timeout function, if the laptop hasn't been connected to the internet for two months, it'll simulate a hardware failure, which forces the thief to bring it to the Apple Store, in which they'll identify it's stolen.

It's all on their website: http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/

As for the whole web programming deal, a Macbook is more than enough power for it. Macbook Pro just offers some more real estate :D.
 
geoffreak said:
I am new to the Mac scene and MacRumors, and I have a bit of a problem.
I am heading off to college this coming fall and I need a laptop. ... I realized that a MacBook Pro is absolutely what I want. ...
So here's the problem, price. I have more than enough money to buy the computer from Apple with a bit to spare, but $3500 (including student discount) is still a bit absurd for a laptop. ...
Now the biggest problem of all is how to convince my parents to let me purchase the laptop. ...
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As others have pointed out, these questions are worthless without information as to your actual needs. I can't ask you justify my car purchase if you don't know my financial and driving needs. So we can't justify your purchase of a high-end laptop -- or any computer -- without knowing what you plan on doing with it and how it fits your finances.

But, heck, why should that stop me from trying :)

If you want this computer and can afford (balanced against all the other college costs), then get it.

There's no way you can "justify" it. This is a top-end laptop. Most professionals don't have desktops, much less laptops, this powerful. So what's a college kid need it for? But what's that matter. My personal (for home) 15" MBP is more powerful than almost every computer in my department (at work) and we're doing Aerospace engineering.

But even if you can afford it, do you really want to? You're paying a huge premium for a large notebook. You can save around $1500 by going with a 15" MBP -- which is still overkill for most college uses. And with that $1500 you can make many friends by paying for Pizza every Friday for the next two years. :) Or you can get a MacBook, buy all your textbooks, and make friends by buying pizza for the next two years.

It's all about priorities. :)
 
MAW said:
Man, I don't own one myself but we have a 15" er at work and it seems like plenty of realestate in my mind! 4g's of RAM? Do you really need all that right away. Why not start with the 2 it comes with and upgrade later w/ 3rd party RAM?

As far as security, there's that lojack program though I have no firsthand exp. with it.

Why are you getting parallels? Dual booting with bootcamp won't do it for you?

I say get the base model mbp($1799 w/ student discount), win xp( approx $190 on amazon) and call it quits for now and upgrade your RAM and HD later!!:apple::apple::apple:
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If you goto tomshardware.com you can get windows fairly cheap. you get the install disk and a license NO BOX. hope it helps, buy what you want in the end, its your money. I bought a MBP because its aesthetically wonderful. It does everything I want and more.
 
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