| Although I am firmly in the PC world, both my kids use Macs. One is in a conservatory and the other is headed to business school. From what I have seen, there are solutions on both platforms that are fine for just about any task that either might have. I think the decision comes down to two main considerations: personal preference and the amount of institutional support for that particular platform that will be available at the school. I would not advise someone to take a Mac to a school that was almost entirely PC users or vice versa unless they are able to provide their own technical support for network and hardware issues.
I have never used Rain Computers in particular, but have done a lot of computer-based recording. Most computers sold these days are more than adequate for stereo recording as long as you do not load them down with a lot of background tasks. very low-end notebooks are a possible exception to this because they often use the slowest processors and disk drives available. Unfortunately, a lot of computers come pre-configured with a bunch of software that you do not need or want running when you are recording. The main reason to buy a computer specifically configured for music recording is to do multi-track recording with a lot of tracks at once, or if you are not comfortable either uninstalling or temporarily turning off the stuff that will slow you down. If you do buy a specially-configured music computer, you have to have the discipline not to load a lot of new stuff on it or to radically change the configuration. |