Question for buying

[Jesse305]

Ok.. so I've been looking at a few laptops for college.
I found a mac iBook. which has 60 GB and 13 1/2 inch screen blah blah blah.... It is fairly small but im sure it will get the job done. this comp costed 1,099$ at a store..
Then i had this Acer i found at the same store. Obviously Windows operated. Has two 60GB hard drives and a 17 inch screen.
Of course i do like huge space and screen and so on.. but my main thing here is i want to get a laptop and try to have it last almost the whole time im in college.. which of those two laptops do you think that that's more possible or if you were in my situation which laptop would you get and why?
thanks for the help..
every bit helps me out.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Can you give a little bit more detail about the USE for the computer? Is it going to be primarly email / web surfing / chat / Office document use, or is it also going to be for something like graphic design, 3D modeling... etc. etc. etc.? What is the intended overall purpose for the laptop?

 

[Jesse305]

it is going to be primarly email / web surfing / chat / Office document use. It is gonna be for college. Im not going to pursue a career of any sort in computer technology.. so this is just for internet and school work mostly i guess.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

In that case, I would look into a laptop with a less powerful CPU. A less powerful CPU will generally have a longer battery life. Obviously, if you will bring it to class, you will want something with a fairly decent battery life, and possibly also look into getting a secondary 'emergency' battery, should your primary battery fail in the middle of Professor Ziodberg's lecture.

Also, along the lines of battery life, I would recommend a laptop with 1 hard drive, maybe get one in which you can add a secondary HDD in the future if you want to. If space becomes an option, you can get a USB external hard drive to keep at your dorm.

In your case, I would say it should be all about the battery life, what you like (obviously not a tiny screen if you hate it, or a screen that you find to be too large), and what your budget will allow.

 

[Jesse305]

well that's the thing.. my budget isn't huge.. and i would like to not go over a 1,200$ limit if possible.. of course i'd like to be able to dl music and have a decently fast cpu.. any suggestions?

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Considering the limited budget, and the uses you described for the laptop, there really isn't any need at all for a 'fast' CPU. Any CPU in a new laptop today will be more than fast enough to accomplish what you need. Just know that a more powerful CPU will reduce the battery life, and also cost more (generally speaking). The less powerful CPU models will also cost less, and you could pick up an external HDD to store your music somewhere other than the laptop (depending on the size of your library).

 

[Jesse305]

cool thanks for the info... i'll keep all that in mind.. i was planning on buying an external HDD anyways and im also prolly gonna buy an external DVD burner.. does Mac laptops even carry any applications like Window Word, Powerpoint, etc... Obviously not the same ones but do they actually have any applications what so ever?

 

[edmn61]

Yea, there are plenty of apps that do the same thing as Office for a Mac. In fact, there's Microsoft Office for Mac.
But instead, I would reccommend Open Office; it's great, as good as MS Office and free.
Get it for Mac at:http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/index.html.

 

[Jesse305]

so would you say go mac or a windows based computer?

 

[Jesse305]

and even if i want to play some computer games on it, such as the elder scrolls or something.. i could just dl it on my external if i get one.. correct?