He is actually going to a technical college for an associates degree in animation, I am hoping he will go further, but am pleased he is going at all! School is not his thing, but I think he will do well.
I am checking with the school and so on, but appreciate the vast knowledge here on FR.
As indicated above, find out the specific software applications the class will be using, and then we can make informed recommendations.
He is actually going to a technical college for an associates degree in animation, I am hoping he will go further, but am pleased he is going at all! School is not his thing, but I think he will do well.
That puts a little different face on the issue. It means that you need not consider the likelihood of the obsolescence of his computer in 3 or 4 years. You need a computer which is up to snuff right now, and will be up to snuff when his second year begins. That would make a refurb more of a lively possibility for you. But IMHO you will want to have OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" on it if in fact the school's requirements are high enough that there is no particular cost advantage to buying a PC. And I would try to wait 'til I saw the whites of their eyes before buying graphics software, in hopes that by then that computation-intensive software will have been written/rewritten to take advantage of Snow Leopard's features (taking it as a given that you will not get an old PowerPC Mac but a newer Intel Mac).I associate myself with the point that it apparently is difficult to write viruses and junk for the Unix operating system, of which Mac OS X is a variant. That doesn't make it impossible to get malware, it just means that malware has to trick the user into agreeing to allow the malware to run. This is called a "trojan," i.e., a "Trojan horse," program. The thing is, tho, that before I got my Mac I fell for a trojan precisely because I was paranoid about viruses on my PC. So the fact that your son won't be so worried about viruses on a Mac (Swordmaker does an excellent job of steadying peoples' nerves in that regard) actually helps defeat the trojan threat as well.
In my experience the Apple Store is an enjoyable experience - but if in fact you buy a refurb it will be via the Apple web site rather than the store. So there would be something to be said for shopping online first, before shopping at the Apple Store itself. So as to not be inspired to buy new before even knowing if refurb is a better option. Even tho Apple Store sales people are not on commission and don't tend, in my experience, to try to press you for a choice.