OT: To Mac or not to Mac

[DeltaOne81]

Don't think so...

Power adapters are power adapters and can be gotten for any electronic device - to conform to local sockets and voltages. Basic network connections (modem, ethernet) are worldwide standards, I believe.

One thing I've noticed from my group of friends is Macs tends to have longer battery life - which might be important for travel. All the Macs I know will last 4-hours-ish, while my friend's PC tend to only last a couple. This could just be random (my friends buy cheap batteries? :-) ), but since the Pentium 4 runs very hot, it may also be a pattern.

I'm willing to be corrected in the post - it runs of of my area of knowledge, but these are my impressions.

-Fred

[jtwcornell91]

The nice thing about power conversion for laptops is that the AC/DC converter already has a transformer built into it which can handle a pretty good range of voltages and frequencies, so you usually just need an adapter plug. Since I started shaving with a blade when I moved to Switzerland, I was able to leave all of my electrical appliances behind and not worry about transformers.

Incidentally, if Sydney, Pisa and Florence are any indication, Euro/Commonwealth cities are lousy with (relatively cheap) cyber-cafes.  I even found one that was offering a plug-your-laptop-into-our-ethernet service, which would have been useful if I hadn't been on a day trip with my laptop back in my hotel room.

[RedAR]

Greg,

A good place to check for deals for Macintosh related products is www.dealmac.com.  There's also a pc component at www.dealpc.com.

Also, if you can manage to get educational pricing, you could save a bundle.  I know Cornell always seems to have good educational pricing on Macs.  As for me, I just recently bought the 800Mhz PowerBook with the 3 year AppleCare warranty for $2799.  

The Apple Store also has a education section, and purchases for K-12 as well as higher education qualify for the discount.

[CowbellGuy]

It's funny about batteries. Apple was the last company to stick with NiCd batteries (more stable power but far, far less of it). So Mac laptops always had hideous battery life. I remember playing with my friend's PowerBook 180C for all of 20-25 minutes before the battery would bite it. I got a far more impressive 45 minutes from my 180. Well, you get the idea. But that was remedied with the first G3 PowerBooks. G4s draw very little power, so you get very good longevity. When my car DC/AC converter died in British Columbia just as we started driving back to NY this summer, I was very grateful for it.

As for actually purchasing it, educational discounts aren't what they used to be. At least not here. Personal purchases from the education store will get you about 5% savings. Departmental purchases will get you 10%, but Apple will charge tax and shipping. You're probably better of getting it from one of the big online retailers. Apple doesn't let them lower the retail price, so they just throw a bunch of extras in for free (printers, memory, monitors, etc.). Do the MacMall, MacZone, MacWarehouse, et al. crawl and find something that looks good.