The MacBook is $999 at academic pricing -- not to be confused with the MB Air (or the MB Pro). I think ND was just getting into "Mmmm... Donuts" mode with his Air lust.
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DH is suggesting a Dell Inspiron 1525. Not great everyday portability, but fine for going to conferences and vacations, and it's more the price I had in mind, especially given that Dell also gives a UW employee discount.
My lust for the MacBook air is massive. Like mass of Jupiter massive.
Yeah, right there with you. I was *just* looking at the MacBook Air on the Apple site. Good lord, that's a pretty machine.
The MacBook is $999 at academic pricing -- not to be confused with the MB Air
Yeah, it was the Air I was looking at and going, "OMG, not paying $2000+ for my web-and-Word machine!"
Susan, the regular Macbook starts at $1099 brand new, and there's a refurb on the site for $949 right now.
I'm more than a little biased myself, granted, but I just don't think you can beat Mac for reliability and ease of use. It weighs about 5 lbs., so no MacBook Air, but it's pretty great.
Hmm...is there much of a learning curve for someone who hasn't used a Mac since 1995?
I've had miserable luck with Dells and Gateways. Good luck Toshiba and Apple, moderate luck with eMachines.
A very quick one. When I switched back from PC to Mac three years ago, it took me about a week to get used to the new OS. I haven't looked back since.
And if you need/want all current Macs can now run windows. I have both OSes installed on all of my machines. I need to upgrade at least one of them to Vista.
I think if you find yourself wedded to a mac, the refurbs are a deal when available. This 15 inch macbook pro came in at $1500. They currently have the 13 inch macbooks under $1K.
That said, were I not, I'd probably could have gotten a comparable pc new for less. (Just guessing, because I didn't even look because I'm really not as comfortable on that platform.)