I'm starting university in the fall and intended on buying a macbook. A lot of the macbooks features seem geared towards arts and video editing. I'm going into social sciences (pre-law) and was wondering if i needed a macbook or if something else would serve my needs better. Also what would be the best mac for me and should I buy a refurbished mac. Thank you for your help.
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do i need a macbook
- Thread starter kazao
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Sounds more like do you need a MacBook Pro. A MacBook would be ideal, don't have to worry about viruses, etc etc etc. The MacBook I imagine is targeted more towards users like you, the MacBook Pro, towards the professionals.
I was listening to a podcast and some guy brought up that he needed a new laptop for his kid. He was going to college for business. The dad wanted to get him a mac, but the curriculum not only asked for him to use specific software, but it also mentioned that they preferred he used windows. By the time he was done pricing everything it came out to around $3,500. You might want to see if you are in the same boat. I know you can either dual boot windows, or use a VM to run windows in OS X, but that along with the price of the macbook and additional software can become costly depending on what you need for your courses.
Refurbished is always a good idea. Same computer, for less.
Excellent idea, and I'd suggest the 13" MBP, or the MB for you if you feel that the MBP would possibly be more than you needed.
Cheers and good luck
I doubt he's going to need a machine that costs $3500 if he's asking about a Macbook. Something like that would only be of use for 3D graphics, heavy movie editing etc.
I think this guy could get away with a netbook, since I think he's only going to write essays, however the small screen and keyboard could be annoying.
If you want something pretty and quiet then get a Mac, but if you just want something that will get the job done, save money and buy a PC. The Mac fans will spread all sorts of nonsense about PCs being unreliable and virus magnets, but in 15 years working with PCs I have never found this to be the case. Keep your (free) virus checker up to date, keep Windows up to date and you can keep the same PC throughout university.
I don't know if this is true in America, but in the UK, as a student you can get a full version of Office for £44 ($65 I think). The only Mac deal I can see includes only Word, Excel and Powerpoint. In fact, because my college registered with the Microsoft Academic Alliance I got Vista, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and a whole lot more for free.
Make sure you get at least 2GB of RAM and anything else should suit your needs.