[AT] OT - computer advice

[John Slavin]

Don't know what your budget is, but Apple refurbished are pretty reasonable.  Here is a direct link if you'd like to take a look:  http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

You talk about dinos, I too started with the Commodore 64 and Apple IIc.  While computers have changed a lot since then, I really think there has been a bigger change in just the last 5, maybe even 2-3 years relating how computers are used.  For example, if you look at that apple refurb page, there is a 13.3 inch Macbook Air with 128mb flash storage.  I would not consider that for myself, because I'm thinking that 1TB is the minimum storage for a computer.  I've got lots of music, and pictures and movies and documents.  But my daughter who is a senior in college would disagree.  She doesn't keep any music on her computer any more.  All of it she listens to via Pandora, or Spotify, or iTunes radio.  She doesn't keep any documents on her computer.  All her documents are either drafted on the apple word processor, Pages and saved online to iWork.com, or created and saved on Google docs.  Movies she watches are streamed.  She hasn't used in CD or DVD in years so the absence of a DVD drive is inconsequential.  If she needs external storage, she uses a thumb drive, but mostly stores documents in Apple's icloud, or google drive or Dropbox.  And screen size is not that big of an issue either (she has those young eyes).  In fact, right now she does most of her computing on an iPad.  She has an external keyboard case with it.  Again, it does everything she needs and she loves it.  I also got her a 15 inch MacBook Pro, which sits in her room idle 99% of the time  Moreover, when she hops in her car, the ipad (or iphone) will connect to her aftermarket bluetooth and she listens to stuff on her radio.

So if I were going to school now, weight would be my biggest issue, speed of startup would be my second issue, and battery life would be the third.   So that comes down to an iPad or a MacBook Air.  I wouldn't consider a full size laptop.  The biggest downside with an ipad is that you don't have a mouse, so it's a bit more cumbersome to create documents, but I think if you asked my daughter, she would tell you that the portability (which comes down to weight, size and batter life) is vastly more important to her and she wouldn't trade her iPad for anything.

Just my 2cents

John Slavin


> Hi guys, our youngest is heading off to college this fall, and my wife 
> and I are getting her a new laptop to get her started. From everything I 
> read Windows 8 is a real clunker, and most like Windows 7 better. 
> Although I'm still running two XP machines, the laptop that we use daily 
> has Windows 7, and we have no problems with it. Should I look for a 
> machine that comes with Windows 7, or is 8 not as bad as people are 
> making it out to be. Thanks for any advice. And no Dave, Apple isn't in 
> our budget :)