Mac OS and college

The macbook pro is one of my top choices for my new notebook.Personally I have no problem using the OS, my only worry is that it will create difficulties in college.How compatible is the OS with the whole college network etc. I just want to hear reccomendations or first hand experience with them at a college campus

 

College network as in WiFi network? No problem. Your Mac will connect to any WiFi network seamlessly.

It won't create difficulties in college, but it does depend what tasks you'll be doing in college. Word processing, PowerPoint presentations are easily done on the Mac, but if you're going to be doing lots of architectural work (most are only available on Windows right now), then you'll have to boot into Windows via Boot Camp or Parallels/VMWare Fusion.

 

some engineering software is windows only. easily resolved with vmware or boot camp. you can probably find a lot of software for osx though. matlab and the like.

 

Just install Windows and if a problem ever arises, no problem.

 

Installing Windows takes up precious hard drive space and can be costly. Not everyone has a copy of Windows in their shoe box. Unless the entire OS is needed you can install Codeweavers (Crossover Mac). It runs most recent software and even 3D games extremely well. There are some incompatibilities with certain software but even Auto CAD and Half Life are fully supported and run perfectly. Installing Windows is not always needed.

 

As a former IT worker at college, MAC's will not always be a "walk in the park" because they do not play nice with network printers or filesharing or mobile profiles. You need to ask your system administrators at your school how Mac proficient they have made their network. At our school, we still do not let Mac computers print, as the drivers and protocol keep changing and are expensive to keep up with. Mobile profiles are non-existant, and filesharing is sometimes provided.

But again, this depends on how hard your IT department works to make mac compatible networking. Wireless/Internet should be just fine, but don't take for granted that "it'll just work" when you are in a PC environment.

 

If the school offers apples via their school store and eudcational discount, does that mean the support the OS?

 

i just got a mbp and im leaving for college as well. a ton of college campuses actually offer/recommend macbooks through their computer buying program, so they should be aware of macs integration with their networks, ect.

 

No, that is completely unrelated and utterly specious logic... they offer them because APPLE offers them, not because the school completely supports them. You should be alright, but there might be some issues, its worth calling the IT department (they all have student help desks) and asking them if all network systems support apple protocols.

 

Well no, he said they "offer/recommend", which implies a definite level of compatibility. It's one thing to toss out a list of possible retailers that offer educational discounts on a college website with the disclaimer that the college does not endorse or support any of them. It's another for a college to "recommend" a system. I've found that schools tend to err on the side of caution in what they list for laptops - they "recommend" a very few systems with almost prohibitively limiting specs more often than not (for a number of reasons not necessarily related to actual technical specs).

In short, if the school is actively "recommending" an Apple, then it's a fair conclusion that the school has pretty good support for it - the school would have all sorts of problems otherwise. On the other hand, if it's just an option that the school provides among others without any specific recommendation or worse, a disclaimer, then do some more research beforehand.

In any case, checking with the student help desks usually is a good idea, although take what they say with a grain of salt. If possible, get to the IT director directly and make sure he doesn't forward your question to the help desk. Sure he's a busy person, but he's more likely to actually listen to your question instead of simply assuming what it is.

 

I am a human resource managment major, do you think Mac Os will create any problems with it

 

I had little problem. In fact, it was more of a blessing. My college used Cisco's Clean Access Agent. Which is a NIGHTMARE in windows. Basically, the software checks your windows install and makes sure you're updated and have virus scan, etc, ect. If not, you can't use the network for anything but updating the software. But it's buggy, and just does not work right (and as I understand doesn't work on Vista at all right now).
*nix systems don't have that problem, so that was a bonus :-D

However, OS X has subpar Samba connectivity. It seems that when we map our personal folder form the server, it actually maps EVERYONES drive, but links you to the subfolder (your user folder). So if you go up in the tree, to the /usr (or /home) then you get a list of EVERYONEs folders. And this will basically crash Finder and prevent you from getting back into your personal directory.

Luckily we found another way of mapping the drives (believe they setup another samba server that let mac users map specifically to our drives).

Otherwise, it's fun. Except of course, you'll have to do deal with the mac haters. Which is funny, when they ***** about no right click, and you show them how you right click without using the keyboard. That really gets them mad

I would recommend using Office under Bootcamp or Parallels (avoid VMWare) as they operate much better than the version for OS X. There are some nice open source programming software choices on OS X too... My recent personal favorite is Eclipse. It's free, has a ton of support and plugins, works with databases and SVNs. .Net you would have to use parallels or bootcamp, or hit up the mono project.

All in all 5/5. Remote desktop client is nice too :-D