A New College Computer Recommendation

One of my first postings when I created this blog back in 2009 was my recommendation for a laptop to take to college. I have pretty much stood by that original decision until this year. Both of my daughters took Apple laptops to school. Now it is time to buy my oldest son his. As he is a computer science major, I am breaking away from Apple and suggesting a different computer.

What is the reason for this change? Well there are actually a few reasons. When Steve Jobs was at the helm of Apple, they put out a better product than they do now. At first the slip in quality was hardly noticeable. Now it is becoming more pronounced and so you can find an equally well-built laptop from a number of other vendors. Furthermore Apple continues to charge a premium for their hardware and so you can now get higher-performing laptops for the same price. When I first made my comparison, there wasn't much of a difference, if any.

So what did I decide for my son? I actually let my son pick out his own computer. There are a number of manufacturers that give college discounts and Sony is one of them (look for the Education Store link at the bottom of the page). I then told him he had $1000 to spend, as that is what the least expensive Mac would cost with Apple's education discount. He opted for their S-line of computers as he felt that represented the best deal and performance. That $1000 gave him 8 GB of RAM instead of only 4 and a 750 GB hard disk instead of 500.

I am still a fan of Mac OS X and despise any operating system made by Microsoft. My son's new computer comes with Windows 8 but he has a plan to fix that. He will keep Windows and install an Ubuntu virtual machine (VM). This is how he has his work computer set up right now, only with Windows 7 instead of 8. It has worked out very well and will be much more flexible as he works on his programming assignments in school. While this setup may not be as polished as OS X, I think it will better for him as Linux seems to be ubiquitous at universities these days.

It took a few years for other computer manufacturers to catch up with Apple, but now that they seemed to have stopped innovating, it is a good time to look at other vendors. Your dollar will go farther.