I've been a Mac user exclusively since about 1991-ish. In fact, I've never personally owned a PC, and I've never had to use one at work either. I am 100% all-Mac, all-the-time.
Now then, having said that, here are some *FACTS* you need to know:
#1 -
So far, this thread has been filled with a bunch of misinformaed hearsay. It's not even worth going through how much FUD has been spread in thsi thread; just suffice it to say that if you want an opinion on how using a Mac will affect your day-to-day computer use, TALK TO A MAC USER. In fact, your BEST BET is to talk to a fellow student who is already a Mac user and does the same type of things that you'll be doing with one.
#2 -
Apple makes 3 lines of laptops: the standard "MacBook", the ultralight "MacBook Air", and the beefy "MacBook Pro". I haven't used an Air yet, but I have extensively used both the standard MacBook and the MacBook Pro. Obviously, the Pro is a much better machine, with larger screen options (15" and 17", as opposed to the 13"), a significantly better video card, more expansion/ports, and a nicer keyboard...but to be perfectly honest, the standard base-model MacBook is still a damn-fine computer that is about 80% as good for half-the-cost. Unless you want to do really serious professional photography/graphic design/video-television work, the video quality in the standard MacBook is just fine.
The MacBook ranges from $1099 to $1499
The MacBook Air costs $1799
The MacBook Pro ranges from $1999 to $2799
There is probably no reason for you to get anything other than the base-model $1099 MacBook; it's a very powerful machine that offers the best bang-for-the-buck in their entire product line.
If you compare apples-to-apples (or rather, comparably equipped big-brand PC laptops to comparably equipped Mac laptops) you will find that there isn't much difference in price, if any at all.
HOWEVER, you can very easily find less equipped, less powerful PC laptops from smaller brands for much less money than the cheapest Mac laptop.
That's
not saying that PCs are cheaper than Macs; again, compared apples-to-apples, they're typically the same.
It's just saying that you've got a much wider range of choices in the PC world, and if you need less laptop power than a MacBook, or need to buy a stripped-down $500 laptop, you'll need to buy a PC.
#3 -
Microsoft is the largest software publisher on the Mac platform, and Office is the biggest selling piece of Mac software. Unfortunately, Office on the Mac isn't quite the same as Office on Windows. Most of that has to do with the fact that Office uses a bunch of direct tie-ins to Windows that obviously aren't possible on a Mac because we don't run Windows (not counting in virtualization; more on that later). Mac Office is generally very good at working with general Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, but occasionally the formatting can get a bit wonky or out-of-wack. Will that matter to you? It might, especially in a collaborative term paper environment. You'll have to talk to a fellow Mac-using student to know for sure. I can say that the general consensus seems to be that Office 2008 for Mac is a great product.
Unfortunatley, Office for Mac lacks some of the critical things for business users (like Access, or VB support in Excel...wtf?!?) but that might not matter to you as a student.
Fortunately, Office for Mac comes in a great Student editon that only costs $149. It's got Word/Excel/PowerPoint plus "Entourage", which is kinda like Outlook Express with some bonus features. The only real downside to the Student version is that it doesn't have the ability to work with an Exchange server if that's how you get your mail (like I do at work with the full-blown Office). As a student, that probably doesn't matter since you likely don't get mail via a MS Exchange server....but you'll need to check before-hand, just to be safe.
#4 -
The Internet is usually platform agnostic, but occasionally you'll run into a page that REQUIRES the use of Internet Explorer. Unfortuntely, there is no Internet Explorer on the Mac anymore. Microsoft decided to stop developing it several years ago (5.5 was the last version we got). Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera, Omniweb, and a multitude of other fine browsers exist on the Mac platform, but none of them can do the ONE TRICK that makes certain pages IE-specific: direct tie-ins to Windows itself. Oh, and since we don't run Windows, naturallly those pages won't work! LOL
#5 -
Sure, Macs can run Windows in either dual-boot mode *or* side-by-side via virtualization. Fortunately, there's usually not much reason to do so (in fact, I personally only need Windows virtualization for testing web pages in Windows). My wife, however, uses it quite a bit on her MacBook Pro because of one particular Relator website that requires IE (see item 4 above). The cool thing is that the newest version of both Parallels and VMware (the two leading virtualization environments) allow you to run Windows transparently--that is, you can run Windows inside of Mac OS, then TOTALLY HIDE WINDOWS ITSELF, and just run the PC-only software (like Internet Explorer) inside of Mac OS, totally transparently, side-by-side:
MAC and WINDOWS applications running side-by-side within Mac OS:
Ain't that cool? Now you don't have to dual-boot, choosing either Mac or Windows; now you can run Mac OS exclusively and just run Windows applications inside of Mac OS.
(NOTE: it doesn't work worth a damn for 3D video games because of the way they draw directly to the screen. For that kind of stuff, you would have to dual-boot into Windows exclusively)
#6 -
If you've always been a Windows/PC user, things will freak you out for a while when you transition to Mac OS. That's because some things will be in different places, and other things just won't make any sense to you because it operates completely differently. That's not to say either environement is superior to the other; it's just the TRANSITION that is so damn difficult. It's be the same if you were transitioning to Linux or Solaris or any other computer OS. It's the same when a Mac user transitions to Windows.
You need to understand that it's a significant change, and that you will need time to get accustomed to the differences between the OSes.
#7 -
People think Macs have fewer viruses because they have a smaller installed userbase; that's partially true, but it's not the REALLY BIG reason. You see, Windows lets software (good and bad software) install itself and modify the operating system. Mac OS X doesn't allow that--unless you want to do so and give it your administrator password. On a Mac, *YOU* are the decider. On Windows, *SOFTWARE* is the decider...and that software can be a virus.
In the real world, I've been using Macs connected to the Internet for 10+ years now, and I have never used ANY virus protection software, EVER...and I've never gotten a virus.
That has a lot more to do with the underpinnings of the OS than it does the marketshare.
Okay, that's all I've got for now.
Now I just need to pay for it...Oh well, that's what income tax rebates are for 
