HK wrote:
Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:

I have been looking at purchasing a new laptop for my son as he starts
his PhD program and another for my daughter as she enters college.
When comparing the cost of a 15" Laptop from Apple to a comparable 15"
PC, I can not justify the cost difference. I looked online to see
when was the last date Windows will be selling the XP version, and
noticed that their is a petition to request MS continue selling XP
beyond their current cut off date of June 30. So far, they have over
100,000 people to sign the petition.

If you would like the option of buying XP after June30, stop by and
sign their petition, it just might make an impact on MS decision.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/




If you buy before 30 June, what the hell difference does it make? Do you
think the information on the CDs disappears on that date? If you don't
want to pop for two new laptops, just buy two XP CDs.

If you get the right laptop, it'll run Leopard OS, XP *and* VISTA. Apple
offers a 10% educational discount to students, and some universities
have programs that beat that discount.

Buy whatever the hell you want, but don't use a cut-off date for sales
as an excuse: if you are such a big fan of XP and the laptops you buy
run VISTA, you can easily wipe the hard drives and install XP.

I would prefer to order the computers in August to get the lowest price
on a faster CPU, just before they need them, but if they don't extend
sales beyond June 30th, I will probably buy the one for my daughter
before the cut off.

My daughter definitely wants to have a PC, my son stated he wanted a
MAC, but he really needs to get in touch with the University Dept, to
find out which one is used the most in his dept. Since specialty fonts
are heavily used in his field, he needs to use the software and fonts
used by the professors.

As far as the discount offered by Universities, I have been comparing
the price, and they do offer a 12% discount, if you order they 3 yr
warranty, but if you watch for sales, you can actually do better not
buying it on the educational discount. Software on the other hand is
much better at his University. They offer Vista Ulitmate at $18.00 and
Windows XP at $14.99 and Office Ultimate at $49.00.
Apple Iwork is $39.99 and Fusion is $39.99.

I still can't figure out what is the advantage of buying a MAC if you
are going to be using Windows OS and software. Since you now own a MAC
do you see a difference between a MAC and PC, and why not just use MS
Office for Mac instead of using Windows Office?