by Ryan Bartlett

Created on: November 13, 2009

As a freshman, my computer was the single most expensive item that I owned, apart from my saxophone and my car. As a graduation present for getting all A's my senior year, I was given the option of getting either a laptop costing up to $2,000, or a modest configuration of a 15" Macbook Pro. So why not get the Mac? After all, aren't they supposed to be the best made computer, with the most advanced operating system to boot? After weighing my options, I ended up buying a Dell Studio XPS 16 with a three year warranty for roughly $2000. However, that was my decision, not yours. Let me tell you why a PC is almost always the best choice for a student.

Price

This generally proves to be Apple's Achilles heel, so I'll get it out of the way to begin with. As a student, we generally don't have a ton of mula to throw around on anything. With this in mind, I went and looked at the current Apple website and found the cheapest laptop that they offer. It turned out to cost $999, and had the smallest screen and most mediocre hardware. If that seems expensive to you, you haven't mislead yourself into thinking computers can be relatively cheap. If I compare that 13" computer to a relatively priced HP computer, I end up with 2 more GB of ram, as well as 250GB more hard drive space. If I want 4GB of ram and 500GB of hard drive space, my Macbook now costs me $1,250.

If we look at the larger models, the price difference widens even more. This time, I went to Dell's page and picked out a Studio XPS 16 and customized it so that it would be fairly expensive, but not absolutely ridiculous like some gaming rigs can get. I ended up with these specifics for a whopping $2,449.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Full HD Widescreen 15.6 inch WLED LCD (1920x1080)

Intel Core i7 820QM 1.73GHz (3.06GHz Turbo Mode, 8MB Cache)

8GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz

500GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive

Slot Load Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)

I initially thought, 'well maybe Apple has something comparable.' But, to my surprise, I wasn't even offered the same options! I tried to get as close as possible and ended up with the almost exact hardware (though not as advanced) for a mere $3,249.

MacBook Pro 15-inch Glossy Widescreen Display

3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM

500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm

SuperDrive 8x (DVDR DL/DVDRW/CD-RW)

I couldn't get a 1080p resolution on the screen even if I wanted to, but I guess there

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