Thinking of a Change and a Dilemma

I am in the market for a Laptop and I have been a PC user all this long. I am looking at DELL and also at 17" Macbook Pro.

I am a photographer by hobby and I work a lot on Photoshop and related applications. Just this would make my decision simpler (that is the move to Mac) but now my wife has enrolled into a IT Programming Degree course (2 years) at a local college and she will learn Visual Basic and may be many other programming languages.

This is where my difficulty comes in. I will be a secondary user for the Laptop (I can always use Photoshop on my PC Desktop at Home) and my wife will be the primary user.

I am aware that one can run Windows on Macs and there are specific programs like Parallel, VM Ware (I dont know a thing about those, just heard of them), but my question is will my wife be able to use the Mac for her programming needs easily ?

Budget is not a big constraint but ideally I would not want to shell out a lot of $$ for those additional softwares.

Help/Thoughts ?

Regards/Ram

Bootcamp software that ships with mac os x leopard allows you to duel boot with windows at the touch of a finger. so when you start the computer simply choose xp or osx. This will let your wife program in windows natively.

you will of course need a copy of xp to install though.

safarisurfer said:

Bootcamp software that ships with mac os x leopard allows you to duel boot with windows at the touch of a finger. so when you start the computer simply choose xp or osx. This will let your wife program in windows natively.

you will of course need a copy of xp to install though.

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Awesome and Thank You. If its as simple as that, my choice is pretty much made.

What safari surfer said. If she's more comfortable programming her stuff in Windows natively, BootCamp makes that easy. If either of you ever decide you want to run both at the same time, both emulation softwares, VMWare Fusion and Parallels, can run Windows through your BootCamp partition.

Also, if your wife gets interested in some other programming languages--like regular C++ as opposed to Window's mutant versions--the developer tool XCode comes with OS X and supports programming in many, many languages, like C++, Python, Perl, Java, etc. Of course, that doesn't include Visual Basic...which is a Microsoft language.

Kuwisdelu said:

What safari surfer said. If she's more comfortable programming her stuff in Windows natively, BootCamp makes that easy. If either of you ever decide you want to run both at the same time, both emulation softwares, VMWare Fusion and Parallels, can run Windows through your BootCamp partition.

Also, if your wife gets interested in some other programming languages--like regular C++ as opposed to Window's mutant versions--the developer tool XCode comes with OS X and supports programming in many, many languages, like C++, Python, Perl, Java, etc. Of course, that doesn't include Visual Basic...which is a Microsoft language.

Click to expand...

Kuwisdelu, Thank You for the additional information. She will learn VB, VB.Net/Database, Basic Java and Advanced Java Programming. So it appears that will need Windows help only for the VB content of the course. I will stay with Bootcamp initially and then let my wife decide what she wants to do - I am sure she will also get some additional inputs from her co-students and teachers.

I cannot wait to have the new Macbook Pro in my hands now

One last question before I customize my system. I have a wireless router at home (Netgear). Does the MB Pro come with a wireless card built in or do I need to buy any accessory to make the computer connect to the Internet ?

The MBP comes standard with 802.11n

straycat said:

The MBP comes standard with 802.11n

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Thanks much, for the prompt reply. Much appreciated. Is there anything else that I need to think of as a first time buyer coming from the PC World ?

May want to see if the education discount is available because your wife is a student... I bought a Macbook today and saved 100 bucks on the computer, almost 70 bucks on the Apple Care, and bought a 100 dollar printer that comes with a $100 mail in Rebate..

Something to consider

buddenbohn said:

May want to see if the education discount is available because your wife is a student... I bought a Macbook today and saved 100 bucks on the computer, almost 70 bucks on the Apple Care, and bought a 100 dollar printer that comes with a $100 mail in Rebate..

Something to consider

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Thank You, Buddenbohn. The discount has already been considered. I will get a little over $ 200 as part of the education discount. Not much but a blessing nevertheless.

Adobe on the other hand gives very phenomenal discounts on their softwares for students - as much as 75% on certain packages.

There was a change in plan. We went in for an iMac finally - just brought the baby home - looks gorgeous. My wife has access to a computer all the time while at college and she can copy her files on USB Drive and bring the work home - hence we decided against a Laptop.

Please help me out with some basics if you dont mind guys. In windows environment, when we right clicked the mouse on a photo for example, we could see the URL, Cut/Copy/Paste options etc. How does one do that easily on a Mac ?

Ram

In System Preferences, under Keyboard & Mouse, you can activate the secondary mouse button for a context menu.

If you find it difficult to use the mouse that came with your iMac, you can always buy your basic everyday mouse. I prefer Logitech with the wheel and two buttons. never could get accustomed to a single button mouse. Regardless, any mouse will work fine. And then you can easily "right click" like you did in windows.

What they said. The other, simple, answer is Ctrl + Click. That will always right-click a Mac, whatever your other settings are.