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I am currently a high school student in 10th grade in Canada. I am interested in purchasing a laptop due to the fact that in my family of 6 we are currently sharing a computer with a 30GB Hard Drive and a grand total of 731 MHz and 384 MB of RAM. Its seven years old as of the new year.

What I am wondering is (since I will be using this computer for College and University) should I stick with windows or go with one of the new Intel Macbooks? As I understand it Macs have a much better OS virus-wise, and the macbooks all come with an iSight camera, and iLife, which is a great bundle of software.

I would be purchasing the cheapest of the macbook line, with 1.83 GHz, 60GB 5400 RPM hard drive and 512 MB of RAM, however I would most likely upgrade to 2 GB within a few months. These specifications are more than enough for what I require, however I could easily purchase a much cheaper Windows Laptop with better hardware.

Please give me your honest opinion as to which you think I should buy. For full specifications of the Macbook in question visit http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/prodde ... 598&catid= This includes the price in CAD and all specs.

Please keep the actual price of the laptop in mind, not the sale price

Thank You

P.S. Will a new MacBook be released in 2007? I plan on buying my laptop by September (start of next school year)

Depends on what your major will be, as some colleges will require you to write a paper that can only be written on a program built solely for windows. If you're going to take any computer class, it's definitely a good idea to simply go with windows, as with a computer class that explores programs, Microsoft Works or Microsoft Office is definitely not the same thing on a MAC.

If I planned to go into a non-computer science related course, such as Media Arts or Liberal arts (these are both CEGEP/College courses) would it make more sense for me to get a Mac? (Liberal Arts focuses on Literature, History and Philosophy), and Media Arts is fairly self-explanatory.

Well, Macs seem to be better for Media Design and the like, but because I'm a Mac hater, this will be biased and I'll just say that Windows is better. The only reasons Macs don't viruses as often as PCs is because there aren't as many viruses for them. They're not that secure and tend to overreact. In my eyes, the OS just doesn't grant you that much freedom. Hell, I'd choose Linux over whatever the hell OS Apple is making.

If you're going for media arts, then probably would be better for a Mac. Although, you might want to look into the combination ones where you can have a Mac OS and a Windows OS on the same hard drive.

I think you mean the "Bootcamp" application.

Thanks for your time, I'll keep looking at this thread in case somebody else wants to share something.

I second the others: it depends on the software you need to use. It might be that that software runs only or better on Windows or Mac (I don't know exactly what their latest OS is called, I think OS X). You should get to know that.
About the model: I think it's best to decide that on the moment itself. Btw, when you are looking at processors, don't look at the clock speed, but at the type. In this case the laptop has a Core 2 Duo E6300 (I think), which is way better than say a Pentium 4 1.8GHz. There are way more factors that decide the power of a CPU besides the clock speed, and you must be careful not to buy a rip-off.

Crenshinibon wrote:Well, Macs seem to be better for Media Design and the like, but because I'm a Mac hater, this will be biased and I'll just say that Windows is better. The only reasons Macs don't viruses as often as PCs is because there aren't as many viruses for them. They're not that secure and tend to overreact. In my eyes, the OS just doesn't grant you that much freedom. Hell, I'd choose Linux over whatever the hell OS Apple is making.

Not true. Mac OSs are more secure than Windows. I don't recall the exact details, but I know that their permissions system is way better. IIRC it's like in Unix, in which every program or component has its own user group with specific permissions, so it can't mess with other things. And users don't have/need Administrator user rights by default. This is also what makes Linux so secure. IIRC Microsoft (finally) implemented it in Vista.