3. EE Student — Mac vs PC

EE Student — Mac vs PC

tldr; I recommend the Macbook Pro. They're light. Long Battery Life. Optimized OS. And can easily run other operating systems.

I was in college from 1998-2001. My desktop ran slackware Linux with a VM for when I needed Windows. That machine lasted me until about 2004, then I switched to an iMac G5. For work, I had a Windows laptop and that was the only time I needed "Windows-only" software. In 2006, I switched to a MacBook Pro for my personal computer. (Right after Apple switched to Intel.)

Having spent my early computing career on Linux, moving to OSX was easy. Being able to drop to the terminal and operate it like Unix has always been a huge benefit to me. The OS is very consistent and you don't waste hours changing settings in 5 places. Now that the homebrew project is mature, virtually any Linux utility is installable on OSX.

Since 2006, I have had a Virtual Machine available to run Windows-only (or Windows optimized) software. Until IT at my day job locked Outlook down, I used my MBP because it virtualized Windows faster than the machines worked provided me.

That changed earlier this year. I do a lot of video work and needed hardware that OSX doesn't support. So I decided to finally get a Windows workstation for video work. Switching my projects between Windows and OSX was difficult, so I decided to get a Microsoft Surface Book Pro 2. I needed a small laptop with a discrete GPU. I went for a Microsoft product since it should be the most integrated solution. Boy was I wrong.

On the subject of VMs, I currently use VirtualBox on Windows and I'm glad it is free. It's terrible. I very much miss Parallels on OSX.

But between the cheap corporate laptops I've used at work and now the "top of the line" Microsoft laptop, when it comes to portable computers Windows is utter garbage. Horrible battery life. Ridiculous default settings. Drivers hell. etc. (Why, WHY do windows laptops sometimes turn themselves on when you disconnect the AC adapter?) It just blows me away that people accept these shit computers as the way computers should work.

My hope is that the professional support for OSX comes back by the time my new upgrade cycle comes.

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