by Phil V

Created on: June 29, 2008

The marketplace is rife with competition at grabbing dollars from the college students of today. In deciding which computer is "best", there are several major points to consider.

OS
Though not nearly as much of an issue as it was years ago, the subject is still as debatable as "Tastes great, less filling" was in the 70's for Miller Lite.
2 major operating systems exist and dominate the market. Windows and Apple. Currently, XP is the "best" of what the poor souls who plunk down Mom and Dad's hard earned money for Dell and HP systems are getting to walk home with. The one argument Window's cronies like to repeat like a mantra when justifying their loyalty is that the majority of the world runs on windows systems. Apple responded to that. They took their powerful, incredibly well designed OS, and just like everything else they have done, they sat down and through their creativity, intelligence, and understanding of the consumer, figured out a brilliant plan. Allow a Mac to run windows. Currently, you can run Leopard, which is Apple's incredibly powerful, beautifully designed, user-friendly OS that you will find on the Mac. You can then, if you should choose so, run Windows. For the life of me, I honestly cannot see the appeal of doing that since I loathe Windows. I spent hours upon hours recently trying to update software, eliminate potential viruses and install new software on an XP system. I would have rather been doing anything else.

Visual Appeal
How the computer looks and feels is just as important. Dell and the other Windows based computers all look the same and it is bland. They are so similar anymore that you better be sure it's your computer you grabbed before you left the lecture hall. Sure, every once in a while they add a color or an interesting graphic on the outside of the case, but other than that ridiculous addition for which they charge a premium, they are still the same, cheap Windows based paperweight.
Apple has spent a lot of time and effort designing beautiful products. And it shows. Just looking at a Mac, you can tell it is a solid, quality instrument. Even the packaging is appealing. You can tell that a team of "Artists" spends time concocting these machines. That makes a difference to someone who appreciates design.

User Friendliness
Right out of the box, Mac is ready to go. No issues with software compatibility, upgrades, rebooting etc. Plug it in and go. The concept at Apple is basically "Simplicity". Make it easy to use and people will use

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