boot camp for college?

[guitarplayer360]

hey guys, I am a current windows user, and am very familiar with the os. Although I use it all the time, I have been toying around with the macs at my school. I absolutely love them, and have come familiar with leopard.

I am going to a Four year university next fall, and am looking for a computer. I am majoring in electrical engineering and minoring in computer science. Though the school i am going to is mostly made of pcs, they still have good support for macs, and there will be no compatibility problems.

I really want to buy a macbook. I love them. But I am also going to be using windows a lot, and will need it to be reliable, as to my school work and grades will depend on it. I will also be running advanced applications.

Should I spend the money, and get a mac and run xp via bootcamp? Or should I spend my money to get a really powerful windows laptop? I mean I love leopard, but I still need windows to be running like it would on a pc.

Thanks!

 

[Neil321]

, I have been toying around with the macs at my but I still need windows to be running like it would on a pc.

If you run windows under bootcamp on a Mac its no different that running it on a PC performance wise,in fact some some PC mags have been quoted as saying the best computers to run windows on are Macs

 

[King Mook Mook]

Well it really depends on how much you would use Leopard. If you only use it a bit and do not have programs for it I suggest you get a powerful Windows laptop. Also if you do gaming and as you are a computer science use could be using stuff like Auto Cad it would be good to have some power for a lesser price. You would also save quite a bit of money. But if you really like Leopard you could get a Macbook Pro referb from Apple or from eBay or something like that to have and Leopard and Windows, have more screen space and pay just a bit more. I would suggest the latter option.

King Mook Mook

 

[italiano40]

I would say go for it, boot camp on macs make the best windows PC

 

[Matek]

I agree with King Mook Mook - it all depends on the amount of time you will be spending in Windows. If that's a lot, get a ThinkPad (or some other similar laptop) instead, it's better and cheaper than a MacBook, if we, of course, ignore the fact it cannot (officially) run OS X.

 

[guitarplayer360]

I would say go for it, boot camp on macs make the best windows PC

thats what I've heard, but I've also heard of some really wierd problems like the keyboard doesnt work, and there is a whole mess of bugs.

My main question is

Is it reliable enough to run programs like auto CAD, matlab, etc...?

 

[Neil321]

thats what I've heard, but I've also heard of some really wierd problems like the keyboard doesnt work, and there is a whole mess of bugs.

My main question is

Is it reliable enough to run programs like auto CAD, matlab, etc...?

Simple answer yes its no different than running windows on a PC, don't know what you heard about the keyboard but its crap,i know at least 3 people that run AutoCad with no problems whatsoever

 

[sash]

thats what I've heard, but I've also heard of some really wierd problems like the keyboard doesnt work, and there is a whole mess of bugs.

You probably mean this freezing keyboard issue on MacBook (Pro)... It was a software bug, worked out soon after introduction of Mac OS 10.5. It's gone months ago.

Whole mess of bugs? You mean, Mac OS is more buggy than Windows?

 

[ayeying]

You probably mean this freezing keyboard issue on MacBook (Pro)... It was a software bug, worked out soon after introduction of Mac OS 10.5. It's gone months ago.

Whole mess of bugs? You mean, Mac OS is more buggy than Windows?

Driver bugs he meant. I agree with Neil321, it is NO DIFFERENT from any other system from companies such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. Windows, imo, has been extremely stable, more stable then any of my Dell laptops. Sometimes, it feels the Macs were also designed for "Windows" lol.

 

[dXTC]

Get the MacBook, and use Bootcamp. Don't dedicate too much space to the Windows partition, though. Why? Because you'll eventually find that you use Windows for only one or two essential applications. If you need more room for Windows later, get an external hard drive.

I currently have XP on my iMac, and use it only for Cakewalk SONAR, a Windows-only pro audio app (which runs quite well on Mac using Bootcamp). For everything else, I use OS X.

Sure, the Windows notebook is going to be "cheaper". But, as you've already experienced, the MacBook is a nice machine indeed.

 

[scottharwell]

Also, you will want to run Windows XP, not Vista; simply because of the performance issue. Although any Mac computer is capable of running Vista, it won't offer you anything more than a prettier interface (than XP, not Leopard) at an extreme cost in performance. If you have 2GB ram in your Mac, I would suggest getting parallels and running XP inside OS X. I use parallels for Windows only stuff at grad school (like Visual Studio) and it runs great side-by-side with Leopard.

 

[guitarplayer360]

Get the MacBook, and use Bootcamp. Don't dedicate too much space to the Windows partition, though. Why? Because you'll eventually find that you use Windows for only one or two essential applications. If you need more room for Windows later, get an external hard drive.

I currently have XP on my iMac, and use it only for Cakewalk SONAR, a Windows-only pro audio app (which runs quite well on Mac using Bootcamp). For everything else, I use OS X.

Sure, the Windows notebook is going to be "cheaper". But, as you've already experienced, the MacBook is a nice machine indeed.

Well I will prob. upgrade the hard drive to 250 gigs internal, so Im not too worried about drive space.

As you guys have stated, windows works good on Mac, so thanks alot for answering my question. I will be using advanced apps which take up tons of memory, but I'm sure the macbook will hold up fine. I will also probably use the word processing on windows, too, but that wont require much.

so thanks for all of your answers! I am sure I will purchase a macbook this summer, and cannot wait to start digging into it...

 

[callmemike20]

Well I will prob. upgrade the hard drive to 250 gigs internal, so Im not too worried about drive space.

As you guys have stated, windows works good on Mac, so thanks alot for answering my question. I will be using advanced apps which take up tons of memory, but I'm sure the macbook will hold up fine. I will also probably use the word processing on windows, too, but that wont require much.

so thanks for all of your answers! I am sure I will purchase a macbook this summer, and cannot wait to start digging into it...

If it requires a lot of memory, I would recommend getting the macbook pro and upgrading it to 4GB (Not through apple, but buy 2x2gb sticks from newegg or something). I don't know if the regular macbook is upgradable to 4gb.

 

[betomax]

MB or MBP with parallels, XP, office (maybe) and MATLAB and pSpice will do fine. Anything else you will probably be better served using workstations in the labs since they are connected to necessary hardware.

I used XP in bootcamp for a while, it was unpleasant to reboot to windows just to run MATLAB or Office apps. Parallels was worth every penny.

Bootcamp is free with Leopard, try it out, see how you like it. I was happier with XP in a virtual machine, mostly because I have a workflow that includes running lots apps with lots of windows at the same time and like using spaces and expose to get what I want. Windows' taskbar us pretty much useless to me.

Yes, there are OS X versions of Office and MATLAB. I had already built a large collection of reports and tools before I switched, so I stayed with windows-native versions to keep things simple. I wish that Open Office was better when I started school, and that I used it throughout my time at school.
Mathworks sent me a beta version of MATLAB last Spring, but it was buggy and there were no toolboxes included. Gotta have the controls and symbolic math toolboxes.