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laptop for university?

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Allybee:
I'm getting a laptop for university next year. I've had a PC desktop for a long time, but I'm wondering if I should get a mac for school. I like to play games but I don't think I will very often next year (I'm expecting to be busy). basically, I just need something to handle wordprocessing and photoshopping. I don't really know much about computers at all - can you guys help me? I've been doing research but some input would be awesome.

(ps: please don't turn this into a mac vs. pc debate, that was not my intention. I really just need help picking a small, powerful laptop - apple gives a big education discount and this is a graduation gift so for the moment, money isn't the biggest factor.)

Melodic:
If money isn't a primary concern, I'd give my vote to the Macbook or Macbook Pro: both are expensive but are also fairly powerful in terms of laptop design. They'll handle word processing easily and Photoshop works great on MacOS. The Pro is more gamer-friendly in conjunction with Bootcamp, but it's also bigger, heavier, and hotter. A Macbook also has the added advantage of iSuite '09, which is a great bonus for university.

The alternative would be a good Windows-based laptop. There are plenty of horror stories with almost every laptop manufacturer, but staying away from Dell is the biggest tip I can offer. Aside from that, expect to be stuck with Windows Vista on an underpowered platform loaded with crap you don't need. I'm not particularly smitten with mobile computing at the moment, so I might be biased, but I've never met a Windows-based laptop I liked since XP was discontinued.

I'd vote for a Macbook. It's powerful enough without being bulky, and is capable of everything you require. The only downside is that it is definitely more expensive than a similarly-powerful Windows machine (blame the Apple tax), but if money isn't an issue it's definitely what I'd set my eye on.

Reed:
Personally, I'm really happy with my HP running Vista. You really can get a lot more diversity from a windows based laptop, but there is definitely nothing wrong with a macbook. They are well built machines.

Really, I think it comes down to personal preference.

bicostp:
I've got an old-ish HP Pavilion (dv5000). It's a full-size, 15" model. Good for videos, great for typing (keyboard's full-size), but not great for portability (it's BIG) or bettery life (3 hours max on a brand-new battery). If portability is a primary concern for you, stay away from desktop replacements, and look in the 12-14" range.

If you want battery life, I don't recommend a Turion based laptop. That thing runs hot and guzzles power.

Forget about netbooks if you're going to be doing serious typing, unless it's one of the few with a really good keyboard.

If you can, wait until you can say you're a student (and back that up with something like a student ID), then buy a laptop. A lot of manufacturers give discounts to students.

Lenovo's ThinkPad SL400 looks pretty good. If you have the cash, get a MacBook and a retail copy of XP. You'll get the best of both worlds, and they do give you pretty good graphics and CPU performance for the price. (Even the cheap model gives you a 2 ghz C2D P7350, Geforce 9400m, 120 gig HD, 1066MHz FSB,and 2 GB of RAM.)

jmrz:
Ally, I've been a windows person pretty much all my life, but when it came to buying a new computer, I went and got an iMac and a macbook. It does everything I need it to do for uni (the macbook), and with my graphic design degree, I am using photoshop/illustrator etc a fair amount, it can handle it really well. They are also a pretty good size, so they are still definitely easy to work on, but not too heavy to carry around. The newer models are really nice too.

It only takes a couple of hours to sit down and figure out where everything is on a mac too - I picked it up straight away and my parents didn't take long to pick it up either when they bought an iMac to replace their PC. So incredibly easy to use and you don't have to worry about the antivirus stuff either.

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