Corster

Hi,
So I'm going to be a Political Science major who plans on dual majoring or minoring in Information Technology or/and PR. I was wondering if Mac or a PC would be better for this? I currently use and love my MacBook (its about 5 years old).

But I'm considering Windows 7 (HP ProBook, Dell Latitude, or Lenevo ThinkPad T430) or Mac OSX (MacBook Pro 13). The largest screen I'll go with is 14 and the smallest is 13.

I don't mind paying the price for a base MacBook Pro with a student discount ($1099, w/ $100 gift card so its more like $999), but thats the highest I will go.

Thanks for any help .

cobrat

Out of curiosity, is there any reason why you can't continue using the 5 year old macbook assuming it is in reasonably good condition?

Mom and many folks I've known have used their 2006 era intel-based macs...or PPC based macs for longer than 5 years...or in most cases...far longer without too many issues.

You may want to dual-boot Windows through boot-camp or run it within OSX through virtualization software like parallels.

Also, if the IT program is run along the same lines as a respectable CS program, you should be getting some exposure to programming/computing in the unix command-line interface. OSX already has that accessible through the terminal application...which you can access under applications/utilities or typing terminal in spotlight.

If you must get a PC notebook, I'd stay away from HPs or Dells. Both of those brands tend to have serious issues with build quality/reliability....even on their corporate models.

Got two Dell Latitudes from a friend's company and one HP corporate notebook from a client free because they were all so fed up they didn't want to deal with the heat or other crippling issues they encountered with them.

Have no problems using them myself and it wouldn't be a problem provided you have no problems stripping laptops down for maintenance/repairs....especially in a college dorm environment.