maryannette
Wise One
I'm curious because I just got a new computer.
I'm like a mullet (you know, business up front, party in the back). PC at work, Mac at home.
Perhaps if you need to run AutoCAD or some other PC specific program, but I know a number of engineers who have Macs at home and a few that run them at work as well. My wife's entire lab is on Macs. Which makes sense as they are known for better graphics and she does imaging work.PC, definitely. Isn't that in the engineer's license agreement?
They're expensive compared to the stripped down, bare bones $499 PC. But when I was researching computers before I got mine, I found its pretty comparable to what you would pay to get a PC that's halfway decent.Sure, Mac hardware is fine, but the prices are still asinine for what you get.
I bought my wife an ASUS "Eee PC" for about $375 a couple of months ago. That thing is awesome! I put an old copy of Office 2000 on it, and I've been borrowing it to run Powerpoints for a class I am teaching. I am convinced that it will do everything I need a computer for, except of course for AutoCAD, but I don't use AutoCAD in my job....The netbook craze is also taking a HUGE chunk out of the Mac laptop market.
I might suggest one could use openoffice instead of the microsoft office suite. I use it on my laptop in partial resistance to not giving more money to the company that made vista. Sure, it doesn't run as well but for most things its fine.I have had some distribution of linux on a home computer for maybe 7 years, I usually install linux on a second hard drive partition or on a separate hard drive and "dual-boot" with windows. I started out with Debian, which is the basis for many distributions that have emerged over the years, Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, to name a few. As was pointed out, you can run "live" versions like Knoppix directly from CD without altering the hard drive to give it a test drive. And, best of all, it's a much more stable operating system than Windows and it's FREE!If I didn't need windows for AutoCAD, I'd have ditched it years ago. There is something wrong with:
Hardware: $200
Operating system: $400 (cheaper if you only rent it, i.e., no CD copy)
Office applications: $400 (cheaper if you get a stripped down version)
The $800 cut for Micro$oft if you purchase full versions is just wrong.
Roadwreck, you might want to try Kubuntu, it's Ubuntu with the KDE user interface which looks and works much like Windows.
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