7 replies to this topic

[Altimit]

I used to hate the entire Apple brand about a week ago, no joke. Last weekend I decided to try and install OSx86 on my old Dell for kicks and fell in love with it. It's amazing how nice it is (even with the ATI cursor bug) when it hasn't been set up by my school's incompatent sysadmin

Anyway, I'll be graduating from Highschool in a few months and my parents will be getting me a graduation presant (aka laptop for college) and I'm going to try to talk them into buying me a Macbook Pro (after all, the recomended Dell laptops for the school I'm going to are only a few hundred bucks cheaper). I'd basicly like some general opinions on how good these things are as well as a few specific questions.

The main problem I'm facing with this idea (other than the cost) is that the CS probram at the college I'll most likley be attending "highly reccomends" a laptop with Windows XP. I read on slashdot somone's come up with a way to get XP to dual boot on a macbook. Has anyone here done it? How well does it work (eg does it recognize the wifi module, etc?)

Also, has anyone tried playing World of Warcraft on one? How well does it run? (not a big deal if it doesn't, I still love my PC)

Thanks!

[drewX2]

You should have no problem doing CS stuff. As far as WoW goes, I use to play it on my powerbook...WoW runs natively on the new MBPs...so I am assuming they will be fast. If not better then most.

[cyrana]

Also at some point you'll have vmware and other options, in addition to an eventual dual-boot with Vista and/or Linux.

[ozzie123]

Sheez, lucky you . Just go with PowerBook Pro (What? MacBook? What's that?)

[defylogik]

ozzie123, on Feb 16 2006, 01:16 PM, said:

Sheez, lucky you . Just go with PowerBook Pro (What? MacBook? What's that?)

a powerbook for cs work.  your gonna run into all heaps of trouble.  i would hope they can get windows emulated and up to speed.  remember a lot of the world runs on microsoft, as well as about 40-50% of servers  run windows ITS, or a variation.  

You will have an advantage because of the linux back end and the terminal, etc.

also think about programming languages, the first couple y ears of cs are mostly windows and visual basic (or even worse, cobal, etc)  you may get shaftedthere too.

[Ouch]

Theres seems to be a lot of assumption here based on some pretty limited facts. Basically what you should do is contact the college and get the complete syllabus. I am in the process of doing my final year of a CS course in the UK and I can tell you that I haven't covered a single subject that has required a windows based computer.

Although my university is Windows based, my school is predominantly linux based and tends to steer clear of teaching platform specific courses - as any good computer science course should do!

The languages taught are all cross platform - java, c, haskell, sml as is all the web stuff, java/c cgi, java servlets, php, mysql/oracle etc

I have owned both macs and pc's throughout the four years i have been studying and have never come accross a situation where i couldn't work from home because i didn't have a compatible operating system.

For some reason the last year or so new entrants are being taugh programming concepts using visual basic - i don't know why because Java is a perfectly good programming language for beginners. Even if your college does run a few windows only courses you can always make do with the college systems for those.

(Owning a mac is also great cause you can whip it out a look cool when all your mate's bargain bin dell's keep crashing!)

[TheoCryst]

I'm in a low-level CS course right now for my Computer Engineering major, and I've got a Mac (iBook G4). Every time I go to class, about half the class whips out laptops, and well over half of said laptops are either Powerbooks or iBooks. So I don't think it should be a bad idea to pick up a Mac if that's what you're leaning toward. And with the rapid progress of Darwine/x86, you may be running Windows apps natively and at full-speed very soon.

Just be warned: the Mac version of Eclipse is a little slower than the Windows version. But not so much that it will cause issues.

Plus, the chicks dig Macs. ;-)

[kday]

I never really wanted a PowerBook.  Why?  Because I am a power user and a "PowerBook" is slow as hell.

Anyways, the MacBook Pro looks like a sweet machine.  There are a couple drawbacks such as no s-video and no firewire 800.  I do some multimedia work, so this could be a downfall if I needed to edit HD footage.  What I absolutely love about this machine is that it doesn't come with a dial-up modem.  It's such a wasted port at this day and age.

I am getting my MacBook for free on a referral based site and advertising my referral link with Google Adwords.  Once I get enough referrals, I will get my MacBook Pro .  2/11 so far and 4 people pending.  I can't wait!