<p>First off I want to ask which one is she most comfortable with. I know many people want macs for college (like me), however, there is the biggest issue becomes when PC users switch to Macs and still try to do things the PC way. It takes a while for many PC users to understand how to use the function and the controls of Macs. So biggest thing first is that she has to be comfortable with a Mac, and I mean like know how to install and uninstall, how to save and move things, and all the other basics first. Basically what I mean is that I don’t want her to get a mac, but then spend her time trying to understand how to configure something on a Mac while doing her work or don’t know how to recover something if the computer suddenly shuts down. However, if she is a mac user, then there is no problem.
The good part is most of the programs that Rice uses are both Mac and PC friendly. There are always going to be issues with transferring files between Macs and PCs and vice versa so you have to know that. Majority of students uses PCs (and this goes for nearly every school) mainly because of the price.
Boot camp is totally fine, trust me. My high school requires personal laptops and I have friends that uses boot camp with no trouble. Now parallel desktop becomes tricky. First you have to make sure you know how much space (RAM) you are allowing the parallel desktop program to use, the bigger the faster parallel desktop is going to work. She should have little trouble, however, it also depends on what software she uses. The most troublesome part of parallel desktop is making sure you save the windows before you close out. What I mean is that in certain parallel desktop software, you have to “save” the “Windows OS and all the work you have done on it”. This can cause huge trouble if your Mac suddenly crashes or shut down, or if your computer has trouble because some programs won’t save. I suggest using boot camp because you can “roll back” your Windows if your computer crashes.</p>