What do you use your MacBook for? (students)

[jdmlight]

I am going to be going off to college soon and am curious what students use their laptops for: do you mostly use your laptop for "the basics" (aka web browsing, MS Office, email, etc) or do you use your laptop for more advanced tasks, such as the Adobe Creative Suite, AutoCAD (if you have Windows installed), or other applications (or gaming)?

I know that I would get a different answer if I posted this in the MacBook or MacBook Pro forum, but I feel that the MacBook is a student/consumer laptop while the MacBook Pro is a professional laptop (hence the Pro).

I am going into engineering. What you use your laptop for may vary widely based on your major, so it would help if you could state your major in your reply.

 

[72930]

I use "the basics" mainly, but Photoshop runs fine.

 

[Eraserhead]

Personally, basics and programming.

It'll be fine though for engineering, especially with Windows installed.

 

[jdmlight]

for engineering, especially with Windows installed.

Should I consider a Windows laptop? Or is the MacBook a better choice?

 

[Silver-Fox]

I have the white macbook core 2 duo 2.ghz, 2 gig ram

mainly CAD software for my graphics course, i had to install windows as some of the software only runs on windows, i use bootcamp for this.

I also use it for iwork and neo office for some light word processing and heavy

Then i use it for internet, adium, some games

Generally it works really well for most of the stuff i need

 

[Eraserhead]

Should I consider a Windows laptop? Or is the MacBook a better choice?

I believe many heavy duty professional Engineering applications are Windows only.

 

[CrzyCanuck72]

psychology:

Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDFs, Mail.app, MSN, iTunes, movies, photos, web browsing

 

[Daveoc64]

I do Computer Science and I use my MB (specs in sig) mostly for Web Browsing and Word (I use Word in Lectures).

I also have Windows installed, which I use to do programming tasks and a few games.

 

[heatmiser]

Everything. In particular, my most-used applications are Minefield, iTunes, and Azureus.

 

[AppleNinja]

im a power user so i use it for everything.... the macbook runs games very well if they arn't brand new like CoD 4

 

[benjaminbr]

torrent, internet browse, chat, email, wp, media (movies, TV, music)... procrastination.app

 

[basesloaded190]

mail, safari, powerpoint, word, itunes, iphoto, handbrake, ichat, lightroom, excel, ect. so the basics

 

[scotty56]

psychology:

Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDFs, Mail.app, MSN, iTunes, movies, photos, web browsing

Business/advertising: I use these quite often as well.

 

[Beric]

Fairly heavy internet use, word processing, and music.

And some fairly heavy gaming that presses the limits of what my machine can do. My fans get humming, to say the least, and the graphics are on low on Age of Empires III.

Sometimes I think I should have got a Windows gaming laptop instead, then I use my Macbook for things other than gaming, and say NO WAY.

 

[iChrisG]

I use mine for mostly School, My Media Work (iChris Productions) iTunes, Internet, Email.

 

[arrjaytea]

Ableton Live 7 w/ loads of VSTi's and GIMP are what I use on the new BlacBook - I use my old iBook G4 for internetting and audio recording on top of the other "basics" (calender, office applications, etc.)

 

[Macintosh Sauce]

I have had to borrow my wife's black MacBook for quite some time. Since I received my new one on Friday, I plan on doing everything I do at home when away from my Mac Pro.

• Write essays and do other stuff for my university education - studying to become a secondary Social Science teacher.
• Programming - learning Cocoa right now
• Web Browsing - with Flock
• E-Mail
• Web messaging with Adium/iChat
• Gaming in Windows Vista Ultimate - mostly Steam games (Day of Defeat: Source, etc.)

 

[DarthTreydor]

porn. that is all.

 

[onebloodonelife]

Political Science and Cultural Studies:

I'm a heavy internet user, at least 10 tabs open at all times in Firefox, torrenting, Mail, Adium, Photoshop, Shakespeer, iTunes is always open, iCal is always open, VoodooPad Lite for note taking, Pages for papers, Keynote, and Numbers for the occasional spreadsheet, and watching a lot of movies/TV shows with VLC.

 

[youradhere4222]

Political Science and Cultural Studies:

I'm a heavy internet user, at least 10 tabs open at all times in Firefox, torrenting, Mail, Adium, Photoshop, Shakespeer, iTunes is always open, iCal is always open, VoodooPad Lite for note taking, Pages for papers, Keynote, and Numbers for the occasional spreadsheet, and watching a lot of movies/TV shows with VLC.

Why is VoodooPad better than Macs default text editor or Microsoft Word? I need to be sold on it.

 

[ashjamben]

music technology student:

logic express, safari very often, itunes, mail, MS word for some essays and sometimes photoshop.

there the main ones, maybe sometimes use iphoto, garageband and MSN messenger

 

[juanster]

microsoft word, firefox(lots), Learning to edit on PS, Photomatix(soon), itunes (music music music music) some very smalltime video editing in iMovie (for my stop motions)and IM

 

[w.t.f]

My writing, notes, music, the net. Just the basics.. more then equipped for that. The only gaming I ever really do is with emulators so it's not a problem really.

 

[Sage Harupyuia]

i use my Macbook for

1)Keynote (very important ^^)
2)Pages
3)Final Cut Express
4)Adobe CS 2 (mainly InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop)
5)iTunes
6)Macromedia Suite (mainly Flash)
7)Web surfing
8)Showing off Boot Camp and Mac OS X to the PeeCee laptop users.
9)ProTools for audio editing, soon to be trashed, cause i hate Radio Comm.

 

[skins0304]

I use mine for the usual (internet, itunes, word processing, etc.) but also for some basic music production (Messing around in Garageband and recording with Logic) but will be getting pro tools and an mbox soon.