apple for a management student

hey guys,

m in the my 1st yr. of business management in london. m curious bout apple as i have never used it in my life. my budget is of 800-850 pounds. i used windows till now so i wanna know if i can get an apple in my budget n also windows loaded in it.

i am a bit of gaming fan too, so i also wanna know if i can play games comfortably on apple or not.

n my last query is can i download music and movies online wid any software frm net.

so in short can i use both mac n windows jus like a normal laptop? or is it tough to get used to it?

waiting for ur reply

 

Seeing as you are a student, the most basic Macbook under the Higher Education scheme would cost around £650, well within your budget. You will, however, need an additional Windows licence if you want to boot camp/parallels Windows on your Mac. Some London universities will supply you with FREE!! Windows licences if theyre under the MSDN Academic Alliance sceme (Imperial College is).

Gaming on your Mac will be an issue, unless you only play older games like Warcraft 3. The standard Macbook, which is within your budget, comes with a GMA950, and the only option for a better GPU is the Macbook Pro which costs around £1200 under the Higher Education Sceme.

Downloading music on a Mac is in my opinion easier than under Windows because of iTunes. iTunes works much better under Mac OS than it does under Windows (performance wise at least), and QuickTime Player is compatible with most media formats, so watching movies should be no problem. You could always download the free VLC Media Player for Mac, which supports even more movie formats. There is also a Real Player for Mac, so streaming Real media is not an issue.

I would recommend getting Parallels (around £50 with H/E discount) for fast Windows access. Although Parallels would not allow you to play 3D accelerated games under Windows, it is ideal for getting used to Macs from Windows.

 

thanks alot for the info. well ill try out the macbook in the apple's showroom, then decide if ill buy it or not. so do u suggest for a macbook or should i go for any other normal laptop? i mean ill b using it for another 2-3 yrs.

 

That would depend on your needs. If you only play old games dating back to 2003ish, then a MacBook with Windows XP on Boot Camp and Parallels would be great, as you sort of get the best of both worlds. If you are someone who plays or is planning on playing newer games, don't go Mac.
Gaming aside, I can guarantee that you will love your Mac once you know how to use it properly.

 

Great information Budding, however I would like to expand on the fact that you can even increase more of Quicktimes abilities by getting plugins, there are two great ones. Flip4Mac, which you can get from microsofts website, this will add WMV and WMA playing capabilities.

The other is Perian, which is brand new, it adds massive amount of support such as ms-mpeg support, divx, XviD, FLV, etc etc etc etc. It also adds h.264 support as long as the h.264 is within an AVI container. However, just to let you know that Quicktime in order to be viewed in Full screen mode, you need to purchase a Pro license for it. However, from my knowledge you can use AppleScript to get quicktime to display in Full Screen anyways.

Basically just adding in more information for you.

I would also let you know that there are two colors of the MacBook, seeing how as your going into management, you would probably most likely like Black because its a bit more professional looking in a business environment than the white macbook is. There are tons of great software out there to help those in management as well. So I highly recommend it. However, the Mac OS X does faulter a little in the accounting aspect of it. Anyways thats where boot camp can come in.

cheers

 

hey guys, m typing this reply frm an apple macbook. i thnk u r rite, once i get used to it, its fun working on it. anyways the price is 749£ which i thnk is favourable. but i would b happy if they provide finance on it, coz i cant jus go n pay 749 in cash, my dad will kill me when i return to india. anyways thanks alot for the info. PEACE

 

Apple provide 6 month 0% finance on all their macs for Higher Education students. So, if you are studying in the UK and am thinking of getting a mac, make sure you get it on finance.