PC vs Apple

Agreed. Vista screams on a 4GB, 2.4GHz MacBook running VMWare Fusion with 1GB dedicated.


For the love of god, nobody should be using OS X hacked on a PC for anything critical. I'm an avid contributor in the OSx86 community and have run OS X on dozens of PCs. You're asking for trouble if you want to do it on a machine that you must rely on 100% of the time.

As for Windows on a Mac, there are many ways to do it and they're all foolproof; Boot Camp makes a Mac a PC in every important way and VMWare is enterprise-quality and damn near bullet-proof.

Personally, I think netbooks are the way to go. The Intel Atom processor is good enough to handle Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, and is very energy efficient. The netbooks are light (~2 lb) and cheap (~$350), if you are willing to forgo a media drive and live with small screen real estate. Bonus, they don't even save you the effort of reformatting to XP. Personally, I think they are the perfect choice for b-school, where you have to carry the laptop around all the time.

If you need processing power to churn through a video presentation, you can always get a quad core with latest graphics cards desktop or use the school's computer lab.

The X300 or macair is attractive, but at the $2K price tag, you can buy netbook and a beast of a desktop.

I considered netbooks until I did a thorough review.

Many netbooks are indeed satisfactory option for the usage mentioned above. However, they tend to freeze a lot. Also, because the processor and the memory configuration isn't adequate, it tends to slow down in performance significantly when many applications are open at the same time (i.e. - internet explorer, MS Word, MS Excel, Adobe Reader etc)

I think when it comes to laptops (unless you are willing to shell out $2500+ for top of the line Ultramobile laptops...) - it comes down to whether you want to purchase a light, mobile laptop vs. a more durable laptop with better battery life (hence heavier due to higher count in battery cells).

Kry, when am I finally gonna convince you to come over from the dark side and get on the Mac?

I'm not sure of the exact percentages at Stanford, but I think ~30-40% of students use Macs. Both platforms (Mac and PC) are supported by the GSB's IT program, and Entourage automatically syncs with my GSB account and goes to my iPhone. So no problems there. The only potential issues arise with heavy-duty macro-dependent spreadsheet work. As I'm not hardcore into finance, these issues don't come up too frequently.

Dell is about to release their counter to Apple's MacBook Air.

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/2 ... d-by-dell/

Dell is already struggling against HP and losing overall market share. Is this a smart investment or another poor one?

Personally, even if Dell launches a successful counter version - Apple will probably launch a 2nd generation MacBook Air soon with many improvements....

terry12 could you talk me into buying a Mac? I love how slick it is but I'm very concerned about compatibility issues.
If I install Windows on it (not in VMWare, but in a separate partition), would it become a fully compatible Windows platform or will there be issues? Also, would the trackpad fully work with all its functionalities?

MacBook AIR.....it's awesome:

+:
Real light, real fast

-:
Battery life sucks and you can't purchase an additional battery since the battery is internal.

hi, on the topic of windows on a mac...what is preferable, boot camp or vmware? is there a useful website that could guide me through the process of installing/running windows on a mac?
thanks in advance.

Multi-tasking is definitely an issue with netbooks that are on limited RAM. However, if you use leaner programs: Google Chrome vs. IE, Open Office vs MS Office, Foxit PDF Reader vs Adobe Reader, it will alleviate some of the problems. If my current dinosaur of a laptop (1.6 GHz P4 from 2002) can handle those apps with ease, the Intel Atom should breeze through them.

If you wait until next year (when you matriculate), netbooks with Intel Atom dual core should be ready. It would be a bit more pricey, but much more delicious. Since XP uses less memory, 1 GB of RAM should be sufficient for the average multi-tasker, especially with some of Atom's unique memory/power saving techniques.

As far as the PC v Mac debate. I prefer PC because Mac's user friendliness makes it too dumbed down for me. I like being able to configure things to my exact taste, and I love my right-click.

Businessm, I run VMWare Fusion and haven't had any compatibility problems whatsoever. I'm not a heavy-duty computer user by any means, though. I haven't tried Boot Camp or Parallels, but friends who've tried those programs seem to like them. Based on his comments above, toploader might have some additional insights.

Somehow I think that's as likely as you switching to a PC.