======= Date Modified 10 Jul 2011 16:28:05 =======
======= Date Modified 10 Jul 2011 16:26:51 =======




I'm ready to buy a laptop but at the moment I'm stuck between a PC windows based laptop and the lovely lovely Apple Mac currently with a nice education package at a reduced rate. Any thoughts please. The main purpose will be to use this machine for my PhD.

Criteria info for decision making

At Uni I have a desk with a desktop beast running a windows operating system.
At home I mainly use an iPad because I'm addicted to it
At home I have access to OH's Toshiba
I ride my bike to Uni everyday
My PhD will not contain maths or equations it's mainly words and pictures. 

Would you be taking your laptop to uni on the bike? If so a large laptop is a definite no-no. A 13" MacBook Pro (or similar size) would be fine, but a MacBook Air might be better, if you want to go with the Mac.

On the downside the Mac won't run some software that you can run on your Windows machine. What software do you need for your PhD? That should be a factor. Word processing is easy on the Macs, either with Microsoft Word, or things like Apple's own software Pages. Ditto for spreadsheets. But if you are using for example statistics software that wouldn't run on the Mac, except under Windows emulation. Oh and you can get EndNote for the Mac.

I used a Mac throughout my part-time PhD. Near the end I got a 15" MacBook Pro which I wrote all my thesis on, very happily. I now have a 13" MacBook Pro which I'm very very happy with.

Mac. Wouldn't work on anything else. Fast, reliable, and just lovely-looking and easily navigated, but cost too much. I have a Macbook and a desktop imac which my wonderful son bought me. PCs are pants.