Asked By: Molly - 9/6/2009

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

1. You can get an educational/student discounts on new Macs from any Apple store (online or street). They will throw in an iPod Touch for free.

2. No Mac viruses - period (after 10 years). No need to buy or subcribe to Antivirus software or pay to have your system scrubbed.
Its more secure than Windows, so you won't get hacked or have your work stolen.

3. Mac runs everything. If you can't find it on OS X, you can run Windows and Linux natively. You can even run UNIX applications (OS X is a version of UNIX). You can also run Windows applications from within OS X virtually using Parallels or VMware.

4. Your Mac will last your entire college career and then some (my current Mac is 7 years old and still chugging along with OS X leopard no less).

5. You won't need an engineering degree to use or fix it.

6. It comes with a stack of full featured software out of the box that will be invaluable to your student life. Calendar software, Address Book, Mail (works with online web based mail services too), iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband.

7. Time Machine - automatic backups, never lose any file ever again.
You won't lose that 3000 word assignment that your room mate accidently deleted.

8. Spot light search - find anything anywhere, even if the information is buried deep within the file itself (such as meta data). - and its instant.

9. Expose & spaces - do a google on these, once you use them you will find it hard work using a PC ever again.

10. Apples Keynote software has more features than MS powerpoint, will read powerpoint files and will make your tutorial presentations better than anything any PC can do. (Get Keynote with iWorks or standalone). Steve Jobs uses it in all his official presentations.

11. You get real help from Apple. You can go straight into an Apple store or call their hotline and get someone who knows what they are talking about who speaks English.

12. You won't have to buy a new computer each time you upgrade the operating system. The price of Mac OS X is half that of windows. You get ten (sometimes even more) free incremental updates between major OS releases. You won't have to wait 10 years between major upgrades. When you do upgrade you Mac will go faster - with no hardware changes.

13. OS X is the most advanced consumer operating system on the market today.

14. You will save precious study time because you won't need to waste endless hours "tweaking the system" or ripping it apart to troubleshoot hardware issues. It works and works every time.

15. The vast majority of students on college campuses (over 90?f students at Stamford) are using Mac laptops. A Mac will be better if you want to work seamlessly with your classmates.

16. MS office for Mac is better and more featured than the PC version.

17. There is more educational software available for the Mac than any other platform.

18. It won''t break down on you every few months. In the event you do have a problem, all the error messages are in plain english and easy to understand what you need to do.

19. Every device you plug into a Mac will just work. The vast majority of the time you won't need to find or install device drivers. You will find most PC equipment that is USB or firewire based will literally plug and play with nothing else for you to do even if it doesn't explicitly say it works with a Mac.

20. Macs are better value for money. You might pay what seems a bit more on the initial purchase but you will save a ton in expenses, time and effort over the life of the machine. They will likely never have to pay another cent towards your new mac after its purchase.

You just can't short change quality. If you want the best education for your kids, then equip them with the best tools for the job. The best computer for school and college is a Mac - hands down. It will be a tool that will last well beyond their college years and into their worklife too. You will never regret the decision.

Answered By: cc_of_0z - 9/6/2009