My mom has been on me about getting a laptop to take to college, because she doesn't want me to lug my whole computer up there because, 1. it's big (duh), and 2. my roommate might bring one. If I have my own personal one I can do whatever and we won't have to share/make room for two computers. Sounds good to me.
Meanwhile, I love making movies, editing pictures, making music and silly songs, writing stories, so I want a computer that can do all that very well. My first thought was, "Oh, I've heard Macs can do all that." I know they can edit software very well, the videos to Marketland and Bad Idea, two songs by my favorite group, Lemon Demon, showed me that. (BTW, Bad Idea's music video isn't as good as the animated video by TMST, found here, but it's still very good, and shows quite a bit of what a Mac can do. Oh and Marketland's video is fantastic!)
Besides those two videos, I found out that Holly Lisle, my favorite author, uses a Mac. My aunt told me she's had a Mac for 12 years and it's never crashed once. This convinced me to look into a Mac. Surely they must have laptops like PC's. They do.
I went to the Apple website and clicked on "Buy a Mac." I found the link to MacBooks ("Oh, that must be like the PC's 'notebook'.") And the starting price for MacBooks? *drumroll*
$1099
I almost passed out. So now I'm faced with the daunting task of raising $1100 before I go off to college in August. Sounds simple? It's not. I have bill to pay--teenage car insurance, car payment, house bill, water bill, gas bill, because I have to help my family with the bills since we lost our jobs a few months ago. We're lucky to have the that we have now (I use lucky sparingly, those of you who some of my previous posts know how I feel about my job). I'm hoping that my graduation announcements we just mailed out will get me enough (with the addition of my tax money) to get a MacBook that comes with everything I like and everything I need.
Fingers crossed. Here's hoping.
4 comments:
If you are wanting a PC replacement for your desktop that can do everything you can on your desktop, including playing PC games and what not, then you'll want to go with a non-mac based laptop. Mac, while being given a lot more hype than it deserves, is still way behind in the market, which is why it isn't as popular as people would have us all believe. MacBooks and Mac PC's actually have had a steady drop in sales for the last decade and only had a spurt when the iPod came out.
You can do everything you can do on a Mac on a PC. The PC's crash more, sure, but you can fix a PC with a simple click of a button. When a Mac fries, it's dead. You can't fix it yourself, you have to have Apple fix it.
Also, MacBooks--last I checked which was a year ago, so this might change--have a tendency like the early iPods to break. This might have more to do with how someone takes care of it than anything else, though.
Personally, if you're going to get a Laptop, making it a desktop replacement is a bad idea anyway. It'll be expensive, fragile, and heavy. Get a dinky laptop with a good reliability record that might let you play some games, watch videos, etc., but is lightweight, long battery life, etc.
But that's my opinion and I'm rather biased from seeing macs my friend have owned crash and break consistently. Not that Microsoft is a saint--it's not, Vista is evil--but I personally won't switch over.
Apr 8, 2007, 04:52 PM
I use a Mac mini and love it. OS X runs quickly and simply, and Apple offers great warranties at no extra charge. However, considering your cash situation, I recommend getting a non-Apple laptop and running OS X on it. You can get a copy OS X free online, or pay for it if you really want to. OS X86 (http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_ Page) will tell you how to do get OS X running on a PC laptop, and they. It's a bit complicated, and illegal, but ought to end up saving you several hundred dollars.
I use Windows on a regular basis, and there's no comparison between it and the Mac. Macs have better (if less) software, far superior security, a great user interface, and Apple is a less loathesome company than Microsoft.
Apr 12, 2007, 01:54 PM
Thanks for all the tips you guys. I was at my wit's end about what to do.
Apr 12, 2007, 10:45 PM
I'm sorry to hear about the jobs! I can only imagine how stressful that must be!
Good luck with the money. I've heard Macs are good, but I stayed with my Dell laptop because it's cheaper and I was afraid to switch to something that doesn't use stuff like Windows, which I've grown up with. I hope it works out for you, though!
Apr 22, 2007, 02:18 PM
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