<p>Does MIT have a thing where you can buy macbooks there for cheaper?</p>
<p>Google MIT IST, its their computing department. Once you get your Kerbos ID, you can access the MIT educational discounts</p>
<p>Yeah you can wait for the educational discount. I didn’t actually buy it with the discount so I don’t know how much you can save. Although I’ve heard that you save a ton with Bose headphones and stuff cuz Bose is a huge sponsor (?) of MIT or something like that.</p>
<p>And YES get a Mac. Macs are awesome - I never used one till college and I don’t think I’m going to ever switch back to Windows. =p</p>
<p>Amar Bose is an MIT alum :D</p>
<p>Mac <3 <3 I got a Mac last May (whoa, it’s been a year…) and love it.</p>
<p>Macs are so bad. I’m suprised anyone uses those at MIT!</p>
<p>Evidently they are not as approx 50-60% of computers on MIT campus seem to be macs.</p>
<p>Just saying macs are bad with no argument makes your statement seem weak at best. Try again to articulate the reason you don’t like them.</p>
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Why do people keep saying this? Where are you getting this data? Almost all campus-owned computers run Linux, there’s a windows cluster in W20 and in 37 that I know of, visual arts dept has a couple of macs, and that’s about it.</p>
<p>I will admit that my information is hearsay from Snively’s blog, and I got the exact % wrong but he states “Never have I met somebody who owns a Mac that didn’t love it. A little less than half the computers I see on campus are Macs. Which Mac though?” I meant to say, and should have been more clear, that I meant student owned computers, not official MIT IST computers.</p>
<p>I personally will be buying my first Mac for MIT, but I have no huge problem with windows, I just prefer to run mac from now on since I can get the entire windows experience + more with the mac. I just dislike people who bash any system to an extreme. Every system is different and has their own advantages, certain people want certain things. Macs are not inherently better than PCs and PCs aren’t inherently better than Macs. They serve different sectors of the market and different purposes. Get whatever you want, but don’t say one sucks, because neither actually sucks.</p>
<p>Yeah, I had a sneaking suspicion. I would be very surprised if that were true. Although my information is no less “casual observation” than snively’s. I’d be curious to hear any actual figures.</p>
<p>My general impression: Macs for editing, windows for engineering, linux for computing… YMMV</p>
<p>Windows for engineering? How flexible of a guideline is this? I was really excited about getting a MacBook for graduation, but I’m thinking about doing Course VI. How big of a problem with this be? I know dual-booting can get to be a hassle - what if I got Parallels?</p>
<p>Parallels are a no go for engineering software as it does exactly that, it parallels XP/Vista with OSX, meaning the CPU is split into half. For basic tasks thats fine, but for heavy modeling you won’t get the power you need.</p>
<p>Dual-booting is simple imho. My aunt has a iMac with Bootcamp and it takes her all of about 2 minutes to reboot into XP. All the files stay where they are iirc so if you know that you will be doing some modeling, boot up into xp and stay there for a while. </p>
<p>I am sure I will be running XP a good amount, but for the more basic stuff like text editing, photoshop, email/web I prefer the OSX layout and “niceness.” I just like how things work in a mac.</p>
<p>Plus for course VI, depending on how CS you go, Macs have eclipse and development environment compatibility so it really shouldn’t be an issue. To each his own of course!</p>
<p>Yay! That was reassuring - thanks!</p>
<p>No problem. But of course, explore every option thoroughly before you pick. The last thing we’ll want to deal with once we get to MIT is a bad choice about our computers lol.</p>
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<p>And gaming…that’s the only use for Windows on my Mac, lol.</p>
<p>Unrelated: pebbles, I just figured out who you were like, 2 days ago. My advance apologies if this sounds entirely stalkerish. =/</p>
<p>Also, conveniently Bootcamp comes with the Mac. Parallels is an extra cost (although a similar software, VMWare, is available free for MIT students.) Everything AKiss20 said also applies.</p>
<p>that’s funny, i’m so obvious, too</p>
<p>I think of mac’s as good for artistic stuff (basic photo/video/music editing) and fashion rather than for the work and play (gaming and computing and business) becasue of the power/price ratio</p>
<p>OSX on its own gives you access to 95% of UNIX capabilities, but nothing will keep you from installing a clean Linux build for greater compatibility, and of course a Windows boot for games… I hear that Macbook Pro’s run nearly all Windows games very well.</p>
<p>Windows for engineering? I dunno…</p>