And additionally, does your school have any specific software stidents are required to have and are they compatible with Mac.
I've never heard of a school requiring students have specific software; It's more "classes" of software, like word processors and so forth. For the most part essays and so forth are printed out. I doubt you'd lose marks if they found out you used OpenOffice or AppleWorks (say, socrates, is that still current?). Now, Information technology courses, at least from my experience, often employ expensive applications that are really only intended to be used at school. For example my high school taught 3d-animation with 3ds max; obviously, this application was not something you'd find at an affordable price for a single license. The same, very nearly, applies to Macromedia Flash (Now adobe Flash, I think).
Also, any application they DO require would most likely be cross-platform. People seem to have this concept ingrained in their mind that all good programs are written for Windows; but this simply is no longer the case; ever since Apple told Motorola to smeg off and started using intel chips the barriers to porting between the two platforms crashed faster then Oprah Winfrey on a diet. Since Mac Software and Windows Software no longer differs on the concept of numeric arrangement (little-endian versus big-endian) ports are far easier and it's really just a matter of translating the API calls between them, and while this isn't an easy task, once it's done, it's quite easy to maintain for later versions. Consider for a moment that even Microsoft has written software for Apple PCs; would they do this if they didn't feel the platform offered something?
All this being said; people who say one platform offers something better then another is pure poppycock. Certainly, back in the days of windows 98, Mac OS 8.6 (or whatever was current at the time, I believe that was the one installed on the original iMac, which I also believe was released 1998-ish) was a far more "chique" operating system; sure, windows 98 had the 3d-look, but, if you think about it, with the... (*censored*, what was it called now... appearance manager? was that it?) the appearance looked a heck of a lot like what XP looks like; and I believe the same tool could even be installed on OS 7 systems, which is pretty dang cool, if you ask me. Anyway- nowadays, I consider it really more a matter of preference. Personally, I'm used to working with the Command-line; while OS X now has a terminal, the issue for me is it's a UNIX based terminal; I mean, sure, I can ls and ct and cat and find . \( -name a.out -o -name '*.o' -o -name 'core' \) -exec rm {} \; like any other everyday Joe; you know, the basics. But I just feel more at home at a DOS prompt... or more precisely, a DOS lookalike prompt.
. That's a matter of preference. Users from both sides obsess over appearance; mac had this first; mac had that first, but windows can do this, blah blah blah, it's all irrelevant. Sure, the mac had one button for quite some time; but guess what? It worked. It was simple. One button was easy to grasp for people just learning the PC. what advanced users forget, is that while the mac may have a lot of seemingly redundant features, and they complain of similar features in Windows, is that these seemingly "redundant" defaults are intended for people who are just learning to use PCs; a state that many of us who are more experienced forget; when the mac was introduced, the entire idea of the mouse was really pretty new; people weren't used to it; it had to be made simple; nowadays, the mouse is nearly ubiquitous; wether you thank Apple or you thank Xerox is really irrelevant; either way, somebody would have thought of it eventually, what we have to realize is that even though we've had it for this many years; it's still a
first-time experience for a LOT of people. a mouse with two buttons and a wheel may seem pretty ordinary to you and me, but it's a confusing command center to a new computer user, and I think the entire idea behind the one-button mouse was to introduce the concept, and allow for it to grow. It's not something to be made fun of; it's something to be thankful for.
Now, turning to the other side of the table, Windows... or more precisely, Microsoft, is accused often of "stealing" apples ideas. Now, this really is an interesting debate, because really, Apple just made the next logical step; just because MS made the same next-logical step a little later, doesn't necessaarily mean they "copied" them. Not to mention that even if the idea was the same, the implementation is where all the work is. an idea forms in a single person's mind; perhaps in the bathtub or shower; it's not the idea that takes a lot of work, it's cultivating the idea into something that works; the same amount of effort has to go into both parties efforts, even if the idea was stolen... the idea is, the tip of the iceberg, really.
Now then, if I'm firmly shut down yet another forming Apple Versus PC debate, as if, you know, this would be THE debate to end the millions or so other Apple Versus PC debates that have occured countless times for no reason other then the possessive vanity of the posters in question who have a near religion for one platform or another, perhaps I should try to address the original topic.
And really, all I come up with is the same as everybody else; without more specific information about what exactly it will be used for at school, it's hard to come to a good conclusion. However, the HD and Processor speed would likely be more then enough for things like reports and perhaps even some graphics work. This is probably a Dual Core Processor, right?
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