1st part is completely incorrect. Has nothing to do with market share. Before OS X the installed base of Macs was smaller and there were hundreds of Apple Viruses. OS X is not immune and a virus can be written for any OS. The challenge of infecting a machine without direct access to it and creating a virus that can actually replicate and spread is what's so difficult.

And they do crash, just not very often and an application crashing does not take out the whole system. Kill the process and start it again.

As far as the Norton stuff, the biggest virus threats for OS X have come from the Anti Virus guys.

Article is a couple of years old but you'll get the point

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20060511065134478

Have one of each, 13 is a good travel box, 17 in screen is awesome and my main workhorse but the space in front of the keyboard is a bit too large. 15 is IMHO the perfect balance, great ergonomics, good screen, plenty of power and is transportable.

i managed to crash THE FINDER yesterday while running after effects and maya. i had the project backed up. so didn't have to kill myself.



limited choices. if you go for the bigger screen, consider the high res option. i really notice the difference.

after a point the stop being easy to carry. i liked the way my old 13 inch G4 just fit in the saddle bags. carried it everywhere. the new one is a pain to lug around.

Hmm - what will they offer that BestBuy doesn't?

I am checking the Apple Store to see if there is an educational discount available. And I found an Apple store in my town's mall. Will check there first.

-Z

Price wise nothing but the staff is more knowledgeable re their product.

Apple always has an educational discount available.

Go to the retail store.

Take it home.

You have a year from date of purchase to decide about extending the warranty.

Apple Store it is. The educational discount is pretty good. Prices are about the same.

And another question: iWork vs. MS Office - what is better? I'm leaning towards the iWork suite. While it would be nice to be able to transfer files between my work laptop (PC) and the Mac, it isn't necessary. Having said that, is iWork documents transferrable / readable on MS Office applications?

Thanks all for the help!
-Zoltan.

iWork is able to read and save MS Office formats, and its certainly easier to use.

Z- I've been using NeoOffice. Office Suite compatible. And Free.

For the best discount, join fatwallet.com and go through their links to MacMall. You will get a nice referral discount and pay no sales tax. Unless you want to do Apple's One to One training program, then you have to buy the laptop directly from Apple.

Enjoy,
Neil

Get the box, try iWork, if it does not float your boat try Neo Office or any of the other Open Source alternatives like OpenOSX, Star Office or Open Office.

If they don't do it for you then spend the money on MSFT's product.

Costs you nothing to try them first.

+1 I've been using NeoOffice for several years.

My only complaint is my Garmin software is only for PCs. I'm to cheep to buy Parallels, plus I don't want Windows on my Mac. To me it seems wrong, like having a sword fight with Ron Jeremy. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/puke.gif

iWork isn't free - its $41.00 -- but I'm leaning towards that suite.

-Z

It's included on the system disc that come with your machine as a 30-day trial.

or

http://www.apple.com/iwork/download-trial/

OpenOffice 3.1 is another excellent free alternative for MS Office.

I have both. I got the cheap 13" Macbook for traveling, but use the 17" Pro as my main machine. I like both machines a lot. The 13" Macbook is so small and portable, and such a nice package, that I am using it a lot more than I thought I ever would. You can't go wrong with these machines.

Make sure the machine is loaded with IWork—or get this separately. It is hands down the best word processing/spreadsheet/presentation software I have ever used, and is fully compatible with Microsoft Office.

Z-man, see your PM.

Microsoft Office 2008 for mac has to be the single worst piece of office software I HAVE EVER USED. If you ever set up "spaces" don't even bother installing that garbage.

Use IWork, it is wonderful.

I would buy from the Apple store and go through the education store: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa?routing=eduind&cid=AOS-US-Edu-EdMkting-01162009

I would also buy the new 13 inch Macbook Pro, with 4 gbs of ram and a decent hard drive. The new OS, Snow leopard, is being released in September for $30. It will be lightning fast with the 4GBs of RAM (A New Utility in Snow Leopard called "Grand Central Station" really uses the most amount of RAM possible to make things fast).

I don't like Office for Mac either. It is different enough from Office for Windows to drive you nuts if you're used to the latter.

You can always try OpenOffice for Mac. The price is right.

Got it - MacBook Pro 15.4 inch monitor, 2.8Ghz processor, 4GB Ram, 500GB SATA hard drive.
Applestore - with the Educational discount $200 off. Plus iWork. Returnable it as long as the box isn't opened.

Will find out Saturday if she likes it... I hope she does....

-Z-man.

She'll love it.