Last question for the day

I head to school in about a month in a half and right now i have a macbook pro that im severely impressed with and everytime i have to use my desktop at home it leaves a horrible taste in my mouth however i was just wondering what i will really need when i get to school, i relize mac office would probably be a good investment. However did your guys professors let you take notes on lap tops should i do it in a spiral and scan them in etc. Also are there any comprable programs to photoshop maybe not so hardcore that are a bit cheaper. Im going to be an engineer major so its not a must for me to have photoschop.

Yes, Office is a good investment if you're in college because everyone else is using Office. Keep in mind that you can purchase it with a student discount (Office 2004 Student & Teacher edition is the one you're looking for) and you can use it on up to 3 Macs. Most professors I've encountered don't care if you take notes on your laptop; however, from personal experience, I'd say it's much faster to do it by hand. Typing is much faster on a laptop but anytime you need to sketch something out, some idea or model or whatever, it's much more difficult in Word than with a pen or pencil.

As far as lite Photoshop apps, I'd recommend checking out Gimp. I've used it on Linux and it was excellent; there seems to be a version for OS X here:

http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

In my experience, it is a bad idea to try and type notes on a laptop. Do them by hand in class. If you really want them on the computer for reference, then just type them in later.
I also can't see where you would need Photoshop, depending on what kind of engineering you are majoring in. Even so, if it is Civil Engineering, you are more likely to be using a CAD application and not an image editor like Photoshop.
Your best bet is to check with your school to see what the tech requirements are (if any) for your computer and what software they recommend/require.

I just wanted photoshop because its a good program and ive used it before to do extra curric stuff.

depends on the teacher they will or will not allow laptops in class. i have attended many classes where laptops were allowed and everyone was withr playing snood, solitaire or poker.

personally i have found that i learned the most when i took notes on paper, then typed them into my computer and then printed out and studied off of them. it is the whole theory on repitition, you write it, you read it while you type it, you print it, and then you read it again\

and yes, use office, i played around with openoffice and it was a pain when you are sending files to people when doing projects etc.


-chris

coach_z said:

and yes, use office, i played around with openoffice and it was a pain when you are sending files to people when doing projects etc.
-chris

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My experience has been the opposite. Every Word .doc file that people have sent me at school has opened flawlessly in OpenOffice, and if I wanted to send someone something, i'd just do save as and make it a .doc and they'd open it hassle-free. I highly recommend OpenOffice. Just wait until July when NeoOffice is released for Intel Macs, because the current way of doing things (X11) is kind of slow.

What's NeoOffice??

NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org) is an OSX-native implementation of OpenOffice. If you install the Mac version of OO, it uses X11, and runs slower (not to mention that it doesn't look like a Mac program). NeoOffice fixes that. However, the universal binary of NO isn't out yet (beta is July 1st, I believe).

kaidomac said:

Yes, Office is a good investment...because everyone else is using Office. Keep in mind that you can purchase it with a student discount....(Office 2004 Student & Teacher edition is the one you're looking for)...http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

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Usually $150.00. Bought mine last week with $50.00 rebate, so net $100.00. Believe promotion still on. The whole world uses Word. You really have to have it.

What's better...NeoOffice or MacOffice?

Mac Office. More compatible, more powerful. Better supported.

Ok thankyou.

if your a University of Texas student office for mac is an amazing 22.00 and windows xp pro with sp2 18.00

corey.pete@gmai said:

if your a University of Texas student office for mac is an amazing 22.00 and windows xp pro with sp2 18.00

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$22.00 and $18.00? Dollars?

at Purdue office for mac is $13 and xp pro is $12, so i would buy it from your university instead of in a retail store at microsofts student discount

I have used my MBP to take notes in class and it's definitely feasable if you can type fast enough. just use it in tandem with physical notes.

this is all assuming your teachers let you use it, but they probably will

As far as notetaking in class goes, I have been using various laptops for this task for my entire college (and the last part of high school) career. I can type about 10 times faster than I can write, that was the main motiviation for making the switch to computers. I've found that the best way to do it is to use a plain text editor (as opposed to a full word processor). This way you're more focused on getting the notes in the computer than making them look pretty up front. I also keep a real notebook open and ready in case I have to sketch out a quick diagram or something, and then reference the diagram in the typed notes. This system has worked quite well for me for the last five years.