Maybe ask the PC list to offer their opinion on which might be the most reliable PC for use by a college student for business school - reliability, sturdiness, and most of all, help us with which anti-virus programs are best to use, and anything else us spoiled Mac users might not know.
I agree with the “don’t skimp” advice ,, if the kid needs a laptop buy new ... if a desktop I’d buy a lightly used “workstation” type computer... There is a big difference between the pro and consumer pc’s ,,, touchscreens drive me crazy but win10 is the easier and more secure solution for the OS. Buying used will get you high quality for 20% of the new price.
The bottom line is this:
Your grandson needs to use a computer without failure at 2:00 am without any problems.
The environment is pc based and he should be using that tool for his production.
If his school is as tough as mine was he will be writing 90 page business analyses with charts. Go with what they tell you. It is possible that if you don’t you will be buying a second computer because of normal updates to Windows that are incorporated into the Windows environment.
Businesses don’t normally use Apple computers and he needs to train on the computers that they will use.
My experience, for what its worth...
Son #1 goes to University that “suggests” a Windows machine. He ignores their suggestion, uses his Macbook Pro, and never had an issue. He used Pages to write his papers and saved them as Word docs to send them to his professors.
Son #2 goes to University that “requires” a Windows machine. We had already bought him a Macbook Pro for graduation, so we load up VMWare Fusion, so he can run Windows and Mac at the same time. The wife had a year old Lenovo laptop that she no longer used, so we sent it with him just in case.
Again, it was a problem overblown. Son #2 never has to use his cludgy Lenovo. His Macbook Pro was just fine when connecting to the University network, accessed the assignment pages just fine, and saving Pages files as Word files is simple and worked.
My suggestion, buy a CHEAP Windows laptop, just in case, but send him off with both his Macbook Pro and the cheap PC.
Off-lease Lenovo business laptop with windows 7. He will likely use Lenovo in business
Ping.
If you are used to a Mac, I would go with that for a host of reasons. But first and foremost, is the quality of customer service from Apple IF anything should happen to it while in college.
My daughter had her roommate kick her Macbook Pro off of the top bunk and across the dormroom. Screen shattered, case shattered, keyboard broke. And it was OFF of warranty. We took it to the Apple store in Indy. They charged us $300 to rebuild it all, her data all intact, and she had it the next day...DELIVERED to her dorm.
I have been working in IT since the early 1990s. I am fluent in All flavors of Windows, MAC, and Linux. My current position is a Dell only shop. After working with them now for 3 years, I would never buy a Dell. I have seen far too many new machines fail.
Ignore the University and throw VMWare on it, or even Crossover from Codewavers. Both are very easy to use. And worse case, you can always activate bootcamp and toss Windows 10 Home on it.
Now, IF you buy an Apple product, buy it from the REFURB store. Apple puts the SAME warranty on refurbs as on new, and you will save yourself some serious money.
I have a PC at work, an PC at home for gaming, but my workhorse machine is my Macbook Pro. I don’t like having to fix my own stuff.
Are you looking for a laptop or a desktop? Is he planning on playing games or simply using very basic Office/accounting programs?
Sager makes some good stuff, they actually are the underlying manufacturer for many parts in the more well known laptops (Dell doesn’t manufacture almost anything themselves). But, they do tend to be better laptops with an eye towards gaming.
https://www.sagernotebook.com/home.php
But, if you’re only looking to spend maybe $500, you can pull almost anything off of BestBuy or Microcenter. No need to really spend the $$ on improvements you don’t need. Try to get Win10 Pro, but if it’s more than $20 extra, Home is fine. You’re gonna have a hard time finding something with Win7 on it.
Also, once you have the laptop, it’s generally a good idea to delete a lot of the extra crap they come with, and there’s several programs I’d suggest installing: Malwarebytes, VLC player, ClassicShell, and several others.
I used the PC platform for 30 years and then moved to my Macbook Pro back in ‘13.
Other than a few minor items, I have never had a problem running MS Office from my Mac.
Safari is probably the biggest problem causer and there are other browsers out there which are more PC-friendly.
Advice...stay with Mac, install MS Office on it and call it done.
Run VMWare, or Parallels, or whatever or even run it native, as has been suggested.
we do not know enough about PCs to make an intelligent purchase.
Get the new Windows 3.1 : )
Why not rely on the number one PC manufacturer in the world. I have for the past 15 years and they’ve never let me down. The name is Lenovo. Desktop machines are solid and their Think Pad notebooks are super.
I volunteer at a computer learning center here in town. We have 15 Lenovo desktops being used everyday of the week for class. We installed them over Christmas break in 2008. In the eight following years the only problem we’ve had was a mouse that went bad. Lenovo overnighted a new mouse. In fact, they overnighted 2 mice. Asked us to put one on the shelf.
We just replaced those eight machines with new Lenovos because we got a community grant.
Lenovo makes super, sturdy business-rated computers. Period.
I have a Lenovo Think Station engineering machine at home and a Lenovo Think Pad for the road. A number 1 in my book.
Son who is a multi language programmer for NTT Data in Plano can do everything on his Macbook Pro - except for one security program that runs over a VPN to pull code from a customer vault.
Buy them the most expensive Mac you can, so that the hardware will last years. I spent about $3k for my daughter's system, but she is in hardcore engineering.
For a PC, I buy almost all mine at Costco, getting the top of the line, and get a 4 year warranty using their VISA card.
If you buy a PC, get a loaded system.
Speaking as a dude who makes my living off Windows.
I believe it was PC Magazine which voted the Mac running Windows under Boot Camp as the best PC bar none. You just need to buy a copy of Windows 10 or what ever flavor and follow the instructions at Apple or other websites/YouTube videos for the install procedure. When done you can boot into either operating system.
Apple does not use cheap components which many other PCs use, so it will last longer and run better.
I’m a mac-a-holic since my first mac+. But I would follow the U of M’s advise. your son will spend too much time working around, accommodating, being lecture about a mac. just roll over bite the bullet and get a nice laptop he can take anywhere.
“Use Boot Camp and install Windows on any Mac and it is Windows. “
This. I use a Macbook Pro as a Windows box.
“Use Boot Camp and install Windows on any Mac and it is Windows. “
This. I use a Macbook Pro as a Windows box.
Let him keep the Mac if you want, but get the most powerful version of Office 365 for Mac which has the full MS Office suite.
Ross is correct to want its students to know the Windows environment for the simple reason that most enterprise-level businesses use it. My wife works for a multinational and resents that she has to use a Dell laptop w/ Windows — until she calls me for help because her personal Mac can’t do something that she can do in two seconds w/ her Windows machine but didn’t know how. There’s a learning curve w/ gaining expertise in Windows but once achieved, the advantages are tremendous.
You might try looking into VMware Fusion, which will allow you to run Windows within your MAC. It actually runs as a program, under the native MacOS. It doesn’t require rebooting to switch back and forth between the Mac and PC.
VMware provides “virtualization,” which effectively simulates the hardware of a PC . VMware is best known for their server software, which allows a since physical server to host multiple other servers. For instance, at work we had 5 Windows server and 2 Linux servers, all running at the same time, on a single HP Proliant server.
Mark