Nope. She’s going to be a history professor. The majority of her work is done with basic office software like Word. She will also need Photoshop and Dreamweaver, which the university will supply for her. About the only program that i had any concern about was the Endnote bibliographic and citation software that we use, but that is also available for Mac. The Cite While You Write function of the software is currently not compatible with Word for Mac 2008, but they’re working on a fix for that, and i don’t think it will be too long before they issue a patch.
Tuckerfan, our house has been a Firefox-dominated place since Firefox 1.0.x, and the only time Internet Explorer even gets opened is when i need to test webpages for compatibility.
I don’t think she will bother running Windows on the Mac. My own desktop computer is a Windows/Linux PC, and on the very rare occasions where she might need Windows, she can use my computer.
Also, her current laptop is a hulking 7-pound Toshiba running XP. It’s an older Celeron processor, and isn’t especially powerful, but it could serve as a Windows backup if she needs to use IE or some other Windows program.
The Macs ship with a DEMO version of Office on them (saving and printing are disabled), the demo version can be activated into a full version, but it’s the expensive $400 version
Microsoft sells a version of Office called “Home and Student Edition” that has almost the same feature set as the full version of Office, minus the Outlook compatibility, and I don’t believe it qualifies for Upgrade pricing when the collective…errr, Microsoft releases the next version of Office
as a long-time hardcore Mac fanatic, it pains me to say this, but Office is actually a decent program
looking at it from a purely mercenary standpoint, and setting aside my biases, I’d still reccomend the Mac, mainly because of the versatility to run Windows as well as the Mac OS
If it doesn’t matter to her, GET WHATEVER I.T. UNDERSTANDS BEST. When you need support, you do NOT want IT struggling with a Mac because they’re all PC experts, or struggling with a PC because they’re all Macsters. What can IT support? Get that.
Full price for Home and Student version of Office 2008 for Mac is $149.95. Upgrade is $130.94 - pretty slight savings, really. It’s been three to four years between versions anyway.
Microsoft sez: You’re eligible to upgrade to either Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Version if you’re a licensed user of Office 2004, Office v. X, Office 2001, Office 98 or any of the individual applications in these product suites, including promotional bundles. (From http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/shop-now.mspx)
The Mac version of Office isn’t really compatible with Outlook at all - I had a small bear of a time washing .pst files through a conversion process into .csv format, then importing them into Entourage. The full version does offer support for Exchange - this is probably what you were thinking of. (Exchange is the email server system used in most corporations and Outlook hooks neatly and deeply with it.)
Neat use of the application. Of course, you realize that this capability is independent of having a Mac, right?
Y’know, I just might code up a cursory version of something like this up for fun, if I make the time for it. Damn good idea, but low on my priority list.
Let me guess…you’re a big Mac fan, yes? You miss my point – the fact that it’s a Mac has little to do with anything except that you have to have a Mac to obtain a (paid) subscription to “Back to my Mac” (and, independently, the tech savvy to understand that you can remotely log in, start the camera, and transmit the image). The actual capability involved is generally available on any platform and isn’t too difficult to implement. From what I can tell, it just takes a daemon listening on an accessible, remote server and a script/background process on the laptop that makes the initial contact.
ISTM, as far as the Pop. Mech. article goes, it should serve mostly as testament that Vista…ummm…isn’t so good. And I’d not comment on it – what with the OP’s explicit request for “no PC vs. Mac pissing contests” – but it raised another concern that I think mhendo (and wife) might want to take into account. Namely, battery life. According to the PM article, the Mac got 3h34m from it’s battery; according to this CNet review, the Dell D630 got 4h45m (although it’s not quite the same configuration). Now, I think those tests are running the laptop full load (well, watching a DVD, anyway), but it’s not entirely clear to me whether it’s a fair comparison.
As a further consideration, I know my wife’s iBook gets incredible life when sleeping; I don’t have enough knowledge about a Dell (or Windows hibernate) to provide any comparison. But I thought I’d bring it up as a point to ponder…
Yeah, I know, but AFAIK, no one offers a way to do it on the PC as easy as it is to do on the Mac, nor is it natively built into the OS, like “Back to My Mac” is (yes, I know you have to pay for the service, but you do get a couple of things bundled with it as well). Everything I’ve heard of with the PC involves third party applications, many of which don’t offer the features of “Back to My Mac.”
