I was wondering if there are any med students here using the MBA for med school. I am planning on getting a laptop soon but I also intend to bring my PC to school as well (AMD 4000 2 gigs ram 250 gig hard drive). Although I was set on getting a blackbook, I am definitely enticed by how portable the MBA is plus I have a decent desktop that can do anything I need it to. For the laptop, I would probably just use it for office, surfing, music and thats pretty much it.
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MBA for med school?
- Thread starter yien
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It'll work great. You have the mba for school, and easy tasks, but the desktop for heavy tasks, or gaming.
Thats exactly what I've done. I'll be taking my desktop with my when I start university in a couple of months, and the MBA is my everyday machine, with the desktop fired up for intensive or long tasks. I regularly keep the laptop hooked up to the external monitor too. Loving the set-up thus far, however although my family owns a few laptops, this is the first I've personally owned, and the problem is I can't look at other laptops without immediately noticing the thickness.
In the same boat..
i am just about to start med school in a month. I have wanted the air since it came out...but I am waiting to see if there is any kind of update to the macbook (hate the plastic) or the mbp...which seems like more computer for the price...let me know what you decide.
i am just about to start med school in a month. I have wanted the air since it came out...but I am waiting to see if there is any kind of update to the macbook (hate the plastic) or the mbp...which seems like more computer for the price...let me know what you decide.
Im actually also holding out as long as possible. If they make the macbook just a tad thinner and lighter i am probably going to go for that. Plus I want the best machine i can get before school so that I know it will last the 4 years. I also happen to like alumminum a lot better than the plastic. My school starts 8/25 so i figure i would wait until a week or two before then.
That is my thought exactly...if they make the macbook a solid (literally) computer then it will be very tempting...since it will be much faster...but the ease of carrying the air with books makes it very appealing. I guess we will see. I am guessing a lot of med schools must be starting Aug 25, because that is the same day that I start. Good luck!
If you are taking out loans to pay for med school get the cheapest refurb macbook you can. That will be way cheaper, have as much gusto as the MBA , and you can upgrade it in 3 years when you have 4th year of med school to relax.
I'm graduated in 2000 and still have $85K of my ~$100K loan debt left.
If you have lots of money disregard what I said and get whatever turns you on.
I'm graduated in 2000 and still have $85K of my ~$100K loan debt left.
If you have lots of money disregard what I said and get whatever turns you on.
Lets just say I am lucky...and that I want at MBA...are you a practicing physician or are you still in residency? If you dont mind, what is your specialty?
...lol, obviously not a med student. you will not have time for gaming!! ;-)
by the way, textbooksrus.com has cheap international copies of netter and grays.
as for the mba, biggest problems have been using my mba in my pc med school environment. calendar problems when trying to convert calendars over from microsoft exchange proved tricky. biggest issue is that streaming media lectures are NOT offered at quicktime videos at my school but rather .wmv's only. now, not sure how much homework you have done on this lappie, but mba does not play nice with .wmv's.
all that being said, i bought one anyway. the ultra-light weight form factor is a huge plus, and who cares if you need to invest in a new li-ion battery 2 years from now.
something else to consider though - most med schools require pda's these days. if you are looking at an ultra-light laptop, will it see much use if you are also carrying a wifi capable pda?
im pretty sure my school doesnt require a pda. but i was going to take advantage of the ipod touch offer to file the pda role. Did you ever try using bootcamp to run xp and watch wmv videos? I know there are plugins avaliable for quicktime that support wmv
The MacBook Air is like any other Mac. All Macs play WMV files with ease. Just download flip4mac (plugin). Takes 2 minutes. No need to install bootcamp for something that simple.
If compatibility issues are a reason not to get a Mac - then come up with another reason - let it be price, value, etc.
I've been using Macs for 2 years now almost and have been able to find Mac equivalents for all the PC software I used to use. And, if there is something that you absolutely can't find on Mac, Parallels takes 10 minutes to install.
In my opinion, for MOST people, compatibility on the Mac will never be a real issue.
Get the air bro. You see, it will take kilos of your load. Imagine bringing yr thick notes or textbooks for that matter. I just love the multitouch function where you can easily zoom into scans, JPG-ed microscopic pics etc. It will indeed come in handy.
depends on your specific needs
Depends on your needs, at USC I use VPN to access ebooks ( internal medicine, pharm, histopath, etc) so I like my 14.5 MBP to read but if you need just a notetaker, then the MBA is perfect. Btw you may be interested in looking up a program called Vital Source, on it are ebook versions of many texts you will need, BRS books, etc.
Depends on your needs, at USC I use VPN to access ebooks ( internal medicine, pharm, histopath, etc) so I like my 14.5 MBP to read but if you need just a notetaker, then the MBA is perfect. Btw you may be interested in looking up a program called Vital Source, on it are ebook versions of many texts you will need, BRS books, etc.
fyi - my point about the mba and .wmv's was in reference to the core shutdown problems many users have seen during wmv video playback.
as for pda's being required in medical school, mine requires one for 3rd and 4th year, though i know many dont. check with your school.
as for pda's being required in medical school, mine requires one for 3rd and 4th year, though i know many dont. check with your school.
Hmm interesting point. I've been using Quicktime w/ flip4mac all year. the videos run great even on my MacBook Air. these are heavy videos too (400 mb lectures). It takes about 15 seconds to open these videos on both my iMac and my Air, but once it's open it's pretty fast when rewinding/fastforwarding. Many of my classes post lectures in .mp4 or .mov format which open almost instantly on any of my Macs, but there are those wmv's that need to be accomodated for. I just tried them with VLC player and although it loads instantly, when you want to skip to a later part in the video it takes a few seconds to refresh the screen.
Point is, for the OP, there are tons of ways to open wmv files on a Mac. Nothing to worry about.
Was in your shoes... I have a Quadcore, 8800GTx (2 of them), 8GB Ram, blah blah you name it and I purchased a MBA... The MBA is awesome but just not probable for school because I want everything in one place (Music ESPECIALLY) so i exchange the MBA for a MBP and I seriously COULDNT be happier! The MBA will be awesome in like 2 years... then I Plan on having a iMac at home and a MBA for everything day stuff (oh and my iPhone duh..)
Doesn't it make more sense to sell them both and buy a macbook pro? Then you have the power of a desktop and the portability of a notebook computer. 
Technically, any laptop can "last" for 4 years. But most that are made with form-factor as the utmost priority will be outdated within a year, or perhaps two if it's engineered particularly well. I have no doubt that you'll be getting a replacement within the next 3 years.