Beige universe

[ravi]

joanna bujes wrote:
> 
> Now here's a question: my son is going off to college and I want to get 
> him a portable computer. I thought I'd get him an iMac because it does 
> everything he likes and does it easily: internet, burn cd's, connect to 
> peripherals, print a term paper, blah, blah. But he says he'd rather 
> have an Win 98 or some kind of Microsoft-based thing...cause there's 
> more applications .... and all his friends have one, etc.
> 
> What should I do? I worked for Apple for nine years: I know they have 
> good stuff that lasts a long time and that is very easy to use. I can 
> use it, and I am very hardware challenged.  About wintel machines I know 
> nothing....
> 

i would go with the windows pc. one of my current PCs has been around 
for four years, without a single failure. i have managed 100s of PCs and 
hardware reliability is quite acceptable. while gates and jobs are 
getting along, you can expect apple to keep up with software such as 
browsers (IE) and MS office, but i am not sure how long that honeymoon 
will last. of course i was never an apple user, so i do not even 
understand user interface is celebrated as more user friendly. even if 
there are differences (that perhaps you have to install a driver for the 
CD burner on the PC; even that is not needed these days), young people 
are quick at figuring these things out.

and in the interest of an open society and communal effort, and all 
those good principles ;-), isnt it better to go with the less closed 
OS/hardware i.e., intel + windows?

of course all this might be moot. whatever hardware you buy, your son 
will probably have linux loaded on it in a year or two ;-).

	--ravi