Notebooks are the most popular segment of the PC market; it has also become a popular choice among students, in part because the freedom of mobility they offer. But before you spring for that Dell, you might want to reconsider your options; the computer market is as interesting as it has ever been.
There are a couple of factors that have drastically changed the PC landscape. The first one is the ongoing price war between AMD and Intel, which has led to a significant drop in chip prices, thus lowering the manufacturing cost of computers. Then there is the switch from PowerPc to Intel chips by Apple Inc, which in a way revolutionized the computer market by the same token.
Some people want to own a Mac merely for aesthetic reasons or because they like their Ipods so much, i’ll try to give objective reasons why considering a mac given the opportunity makes sense on a purely functional level.
Superior Operating system and hardware: OS X tiger was light-years ahead of Windows XP and still is ahead of Vista when it comes to usability, stability and performance on comparable hardware. OS X is more stable, crashes less and the user interface is geared towards simplicity and productivity. Everything works well from the beginning, thus allowing you to just get on with your work. The driver issues experienced in windows are non-existent in OS X. the hardware is built from the best selection of computer parts. While most other manufacturers try to built machine as cheaply as possible often sacrificing quality (pointing finger at compaq), apple on the hand is very consistent when is comes to build quality.
Quality software selection: Macs offer higher quality software packages compared to their windows counterparts. They also have pro level applications such as final cut, motion, logic pro that only available on the apple platform. So that can come in handy for students who intend to major in video production or advanced video editing for example. Because the kernel branched for BSD (Berkely Software Distribution) which itself is based on unix. That gives you a powerful shell with all the basic unix tools, unlike the windows command line. OS X also comes by default with Personal web sharing (Apache). It is also very easy to set a web development environment by installing MAMP (Mac Apache MySQL PHP) and running a local server to test website designs locally. The Mac also has some of the best web development applications at very affordable prices.
Interoperability: Because of the switch to dual core intel processors, beside the tremendous processing performance of the mactels, they also have the ability to virtualize windows with a high acceleration using the Intel VT technology built onto the chip, allowing it to run windows with an unprecedented speed. On top of the virtualization capability, the virtualization software such as Parallels and Vmware Fusion do an excellent job at integrating XP into OS X. So there is no such things as I can’t get a mac because the software I use for class runs only in windows. Emulate it. Even better is the ability for mac to run windows natively using apple’s own bootcamp software. The new macs are also some of the best windows machines around when it come to raw native performance. They also make very decent gaming machines depending on the model
Security: This is the main reason why I jumped ship about a year and a half ago. Running windows is a constant headache that never subsides. You have to have and excellent anti virus program such as Kaspersky or NOD32 ( Norton is not that good ). On top of that you have to scan for spyware,malware and rootkits all the time and lord have mercy on you soul if you run internet explorer as you main browser. You get pop up all the times, toolbars install on their own, programs that add themselves to the startup menu thus lengthening your boot up times. Some of those programs could even be malware, some people can’t tell the difference. They think that they are getting today’s weather while the very same program is monitoring you browsing habit and serving pop up advertising every chance it gets. You also should use something other than the default windows firewall. That thing does not do anything else other than notify you when it is turned off. It does not filter network traffic at all. Programs go past it like it was never there. A good alternative is Comodo Firewall Pro. Then comes the maintenance; the obsolete registry keys left from uninstalled programs, it is a good idea to clean these so that they do not get parsed all the time. Then comes defragmenting your hard drive. When the latter is highly fragmented, the computer incurs a significant performance hit. And then, and then and then… Ultimately you do not enjoy using your computer because there are too many variables to worry about. Using windows is a security liability. On a mac on the other hand, the unix subsystem makes it very difficult for a virus to propagate because of the file permissions. A mac virus is very rare and as far as I know imaginary. You do not need to degragment a mac’s hard drive because the filesystem system handles fragmentation dynamically. Sometimes vulnerabilities are discovered, an application’s weakness, which are usually patched by apple in a timely manner. On a Mac you just use your computer you do not have to worry about of the Microsoft Windows afflictions.
Macs cost more, but if you can afford it, they clearly have an edge any machine running windows. Plus with the next iteration of the OS codenamed Leopard coming out at the end of October, they will be even better then ever. Instead of getting a Dell, dude get a Macbook, it just might be the best decision of collegiate life, plus it comes with a natural coolness factor.
