Buying A New Computer

[Tsutarja]

MS office and games work on Macs(if the games don't work she can always do that parallel thing and use Windows).

Correct. Most, if not all, newer Macs have a feature known as Bootcamp where you can dual boot into Windows and or OSX if you choose to do so.

 

[Belldandy]

Also, could I not just do a new partition in a Mac and install W7 on that? I don't want to overcomplicate it; I know that The Sims 3 is a little trickier to install on a Mac than on W7.

And I do have a baby PC :3 this little 200$ Acer, but the specs are so low that videos sometimes lag! I'd prefer having nice, smooth presentations. I think it has an HDMI port (pretty sure I absolutely wanted that 100% when I bought this at Staples) but it's so dinky there's no CD slot teehee I figured that out after the fact! XD So no games on this one for me unless downloaded, and then the specs wouldn't be good enough.

Where are these student-discounted Macbooks you speak of, and is the system comparable to the i7 I wrote about?

 

[Zet]

You can see if your school is listed here for the discount: http://www.apple.com/ca/education/how-to-buy/

The macbook pro comes with an i5 with an option to upgrade to an i7(for $200 more, though I'm not sure how much cheaper it is with the discount), but you really won't notice a difference.

 

[tnfsf11]

I highly recommend making 2+ partitions & make one for Windows & the other for any other OS, I would have recommended XP to be 1 of them because it's excellent at backward compatibility (especially for games) but it's support will end on April 2014 so you probably won't like that option :/
But I must say the more OSes you have, the more memory you'll need for it to run, also the OS itself occupies much space, so think it over carefully.

 

[Belldandy]

You can see if your school is listed here for the discount: http://www.apple.com/ca/education/how-to-buy/

The macbook pro comes with an i5 with an option to upgrade to an i7(for $200 more, though I'm not sure how much cheaper it is with the discount), but you really won't notice a difference.

Their graphic cards and RPM + having to pay 200$ more to get to i7 kinda kills it. Even with uni' discounts, I can get a more powerful laptop for less than the 1,400$ it'd cost to upgrade the 1,000$ to a functional, hybrid-gaming laptop.

:(

They're pretty though. I wish I could have a Viao but they aren't powerful enough [yet] from the last time I checked.

 

[ANARCHit3cht]

And I do have a baby PC :3 this little 200$ Acer, but the specs are so low that videos sometimes lag! I'd prefer having nice, smooth presentations. I think it has an HDMI port (pretty sure I absolutely wanted that 100% when I bought this at Staples) but it's so dinky there's no CD slot teehee I figured that out after the fact! XD So no games on this one for me unless downloaded, and then the specs wouldn't be good enough.

Are you sure its because of the specs? I've had some pretty bad and old computers in my life... and none of them have lagged on videos because of the specs alone. Usually some other problem as well. As for no CD slot, you can buy an external CD drive and plug it into your machine. There almost kind of nicer than internal ones.

@Belldandy: If you are going to end up paying any amounts like 14 hundred, them I am begging you to build your own. The machine you could build for that price would be a thing of beauty, especially compared to the ones you could buy pre-built. Not to mention, this would make it really easy to set up nifty things like three monitors or a neat-o light-up fan system. You know, whatever floats your boat. It really is not that difficult at all, and there are many guides online as to how to do this. Other than that, there are certain websites(I'm pretty sure someone already provided one) that build the computer for you, you just select the parts that you want. It's a little more expensive this way, but still far superior than buying pre-built machines.

 

[Catalyst.]

I agree you will probably save money if you build your own. Here's an example build:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157369

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116901

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148543

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139040

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121660

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129181

Total before shipping and tax: 1032.93. And that's a pretty high end rig. If you're worried about actually building the thing, lifehacker has a decent guide. It's not that hard, I swear! :P

@Anarchi3cht: those little acers do lag on video purely because of specs, or at least mine did. They typically ship with GMA 950s, which can't keep up with HD video, especially when iTunes is using up 99% of the crappy Intel Atom CPU.

 

[twocows]

Don't ignore me :(

Don't go with an i7. Period. You don't need it. You probably wouldn't need an i5 if not for the fact that you wanted to do video editing. You also might want to consider AMD instead of Intel if video editing is important to you.

You said you're planning to play games, what kind of gaming do you do? Modern gaming on laptops is problematic, getting a decent build costs a lot and ability to play modern games on laptops scales directly with heating problems and power consumption.

My earlier recommendation for CyberPower still stands. The premium they have on putting together machines is very small compared to other retailers.