<p>Double post. Two Vistas = death to wifi.</p>
<p>My home and office setups involve a Windows PC tied to one or more laptops (MacBook Pro running Windows or Mac OS X, Dell XPS M1330 laptop, old Compaq laptop to display real-time financial charts). These machines are all tied together with a program called synergy which allows me to control them all with one keyboard and mouse.</p>
<p>Mac desktops haven’t been attractive to me as I didn’t like the idea of an all-in-one in the past and the Mac Pro is overkill for most users so I usually just went with Dell for desktops. The iMac 27 inch is different as it can be used as a monitor so that’s interesting to me. They’ve had a lot of manufacturing issues so I’m waiting for those to get resolved before taking a closer look. I’m always in favor of using the appropriate tool. It may be HP-UX, VAX/VMS, Alpha VMS, Itanium VMS, a Fujitsu system or an SGI supercomputer. It’s all just another hardware/software platform to me.</p>
<p>The 27-inch one is a real beauty, however, I had to laugh at the puny keyboard supplied with our demo (we demoed an imaging instrument run by one of such Macs)! The sales guy did say there were many, many troubles with that Mac and recommended waiting a little bit if we wanted to get one for personal use.</p>
<p>I personally prefer Microsoft mice and keyboards. Apple has tried some revolutionary stuff but I think that they try too hard to be different. Of course their trackpad design on their laptops is the best that I’ve seen.</p>
<p>I have only ever used the trackpad on our mac laptops, never had a mouse for it. When i got the HP laptop, I had to get a wireless mouse right away cause the trackpad was annoying.</p>
<p>I just got a EEE 10.5 inch notebook with an Intel Atom inside it. I LOVE IT. It’s replacing my desktop Dell which was about eight years old. I can fit the thing in my purse. My kids both looked at it and said “wow”. Santa listened!!</p>
<p>Got a MacBook to replace an old Compaq. What a relief! Mainly used for document creation, browsing and some programming (Python). 12 year old brother also got a used MacBook. You get 1 yr. warranty and I think it can be extended to 3 yrs any time during the first year.</p>
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<p>My son’s professor gave all of his students a Windows version of Minitab, a popular Statistics software at many schools. He did not give students a Mac version. Some assignments need to be done on that software. Also, I heard many gamers still can not live without Windows PCs.</p>
<p>Reed uses mostly Macs- for stat they use SAS & Stata.
My D was bio, she used biostat , as a freshman anyway.
I think minitab is less expensive than SAS or Stata however.
[Software</a> : Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College](<a href=“http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/current-students/computing-services/services/software/index.aspx]Software”>http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/current-students/computing-services/services/software/index.aspx)</p>
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<p>Why can’t you run it using Parallels or Boot Camp? All of our MacBook Pros have Windows XP running on them via Boot Camp (dual boot). Others that I work with with Macs use either VMWare, Parallels or Boot Camp to run Windows or Mac OS X and Windows at the same time.</p>
<p>To get system specs, right-click on the Apple in the upper-left-hand
corner of the screen and select About This Mac. A window pops up in
the middle of the screen with the Processor and Memory details. There
is a button for More Info… Clicking that will get you a Window with
detailed hardware, network and software information.</p>
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<p>Operating systems are typically composed of a lot of programs that are
the operating system and the human interfaces to that operating system.
Application software and tools come from the operating system provider
along with third-party software organizations. The organization that
produces the operating system has a fair amount of control over the look
and feel of the operating system programs and can exert pressure on
software producers to adhere to what they want for the look and feel.</p>
<p>Operating systems organizations also have to deal with legacy issues.
They come out with new releases of their software and have to deal with
compatibility issues.</p>
<p>Apple more tightly controls their hardware ecosystem so they tend to
have fewer issues with drivers compared to Microsoft. Apple also layers
on OS X so that they have a good chunk of the operating system that they
get for free from the open source community.</p>
<p>I do think that it takes some time to get used to the Apple environment
but that it does seem to be more consistent from application to application.
Help is particularly easy to get on using the Mac OS if you are near an
Apple Store. If not, then you can always go to MacForums.com for help.</p>
<p>I used to work for a company that produced hardware, operating systems
and application software. I worked on a middleware product. We had a
command-line interface committee that consisted of all of the project
leaders from software projects. When you wanted to add a command line
interface to your application or change an existing command line
interface, you went through a process by which all of the other
project leaders would review your proposed interface or interface
changes. If your proposal didn’t meet with the expected look-and-feel,
then you had to make changes and try again.</p>
<p>This couldn’t be enforced on third-parties of course. Providing guidelines
to third-party developers could improve consistency.</p>
<p>Apple has been a major innovator in operating systems human factors. We
can see that Microsoft has copied many of Apple’s innovations during the
current decade.</p>
<p>I am unfamiliar with xoticpc. Do they have stores that you can go to to
get personalized service? Is their power adapter consistent with all of
their models going back many years? Can you boot off the hard drive of
another computer?</p>
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<p>Yes, you can swap hard drives. Albeit, it is a pain because you have to download drivers, reinstall Windows (possibly). That’s how the process worked with my Dell, but I am not sure about the ASUS I am going to receive soon. :)</p>
<p>I’ve used a lot of operating systems over the years and VMS was one of
my favorites. I started using it in the early 1980s as a developer and
I still have an account on a cluster of VMS systems running on the VAX,
Alpha and iTanium architectures. I also use Sun, Hewlett-Packard and
IBM servers from time to time; they typically run some flavor of Unix.</p>
<p>I do feel that there is a quantitative difference between Macs and
Windows PCs and that’s a function of the history of operating system
development, the application software environment and the cohesion
between the hardware platform and operating system. I think that Apple
had a definite edge in human factors innovation - perhaps that has
something to do with their software development culture and history.</p>
<p>I bought a PowerMac for our son many years ago for his first Computing
Course. I also wanted to play around with software development on the
platform. I bought a MacBook Pro for him when he started his CS program
as there was a very strong Unix bias in the early computing courses and
it would mean that he could do his programming assignments on his laptop
instead of needing to go to the computer lab. Most Mac users aren’t
developers though so we are certainly in the minority for priorities.</p>
<p>A coworker with two daughters complained to me about how much time he
was spending cleaning up his daughters’ machines. He had had it with
reinstalling windows due to viruses, spyware and other Microsoft OS
issues (this was several years ago). He switched his family over to
Mac OS X to reduce the vulnerabilities of his systems and his system
management time. I do believe that there are a moderate number of
people that switch to Mac OS X for these reasons.</p>
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<p>Coolness is either an external attribute (what others think of you) or
what you think that others will feel about you. There’s nothing wrong
with a purchase based on the coolness factor if there are functional
reasons that justify it.</p>
<p>Our daughter loves her North Face jacket. It is functional and
fashionable and has the coolness factor that a lot of college students
want.</p>
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<p>There are those that buy Apple products for the level of service. John
Mauldin (financial commentator and analyst) wrote one of his weekly
letters about a year ago on his experiences with getting a cell phone
repaired. He sent his daughter to get his repaired or replaced. She had
to stand in line for a very long time to get any kind of service and
wasn’t treated well when he tried to get it repaired under warranty. His
daughter suggested an iPhone. Apple provided a high level of presales
consulting and post-sales training in a professional way. He was shocked
at the level of customer service as it is lacking in so many ways today.
I think that he said that he spends several hundred a month on mobile
phone service so the price of the device and the plans wasn’t an issue.
He was looking for good customer service.</p>
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<p>I think that Vista drove many customers to Apple. Just poor execution
on Microsoft’s part. Microsoft has been around for a long time and many
of their executives and software engineers have grown wealthy with less
of an incentive to innovate and compete. They had a lot of turnover in
their management ranks lately. Perhaps they’ve turned the corner with
Windows 7. </p>
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<p>I do have high hopes for Microsoft 7 as I have heard a lot of good things about it. Dare I say I’m excited? </p>
<p>This is the bare bones model to my laptop, if anyone is interested. I did make some changes though. Such as upgrading the hard drive to 500GB 7200RPM and put in a Blu Ray Player (unnecessary, I know), 6GB RAM, and Arctic Silver 5 on the CPU and GPU for when I’m playing games.
[ASUS</a> N81VP-D2](<a href=“http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-n81vpd2-p-2696.html?wconfigure=yes]ASUS”>http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-n81vpd2-p-2696.html?wconfigure=yes)</p>
<p>Warranty information:
[Custom</a> Laptops, Gaming Notebooks, Custom Gaming Laptops | XOTIC PC](<a href=“http://www.xoticpc.com/warranty-service-return-policies-ip-6.html]Custom”>http://www.xoticpc.com/warranty-service-return-policies-ip-6.html)</p>
<p>Someone mentioned programs that cannot be run on Macs. I can’t think of specifics programs but I do know that trying to play a game on a Mac really grinds my gears. It just doesn’t run well. I experience a lot of lag and the graphics are aweful. Examples of this would be the Sims 3 and it’s older companion the Sims 2, COD: Mondern Warfare 2, any of the Crysis games. In fact, Crysis is and COD:MW2 are practically unplayable due to lag.
I understand that these laptops are not designed for gaming but I require a well-rounded laptop to fit my academic as well as entertainment needs. :)</p>