If you would like something small and light and stuff, a Mac book would be excellent. If you don't mind a bigger size laptop then Macbook Pro is good for you. While Mac takes less system resources, they will lasrt a long time. If you buy a really good Mac now, then it should easily last 5 years especially considering the work you do. The Macbook is going to be cheap and the Macbook Pro will be more expensive. I would go for a Macbook considering your position and I would also buy a large 20" or more screen and nice speakers to use when at home to watch movies and listen to music. When you are using Office, the extra screen space can help a lot. As you say that you will be using Office for school, I would like to suggest iWork 06. iWork, in my opinion is wa better than Office considering you want to use it for school. go to www.apple.com/iwork Most people dont use all the features of Office as they are complex. But iWork is way simpler and can produces very very good looking documents and presentations and way more easily. Talking about presentation software, iWork has Keynote 3 in it which blasts Powerpoint away when home user like people use it. You should have a look at the product tours of iWork. Another thing is that iWork is quite a bit cheaper than Office at $79. apple can preinstall it for you when you order it with a Mac. It is rumoured that iWork 07 will also have a spreadsheet program in it.
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hey guys, im a long time windows user looking to switch to mac. i'm just a big media guy and realized that macs deal with media very well. not to mention its more stable and there are less problems (viruses, maintenence). i'm in the market for a new mac book but i need help deciding what kind of configuration to choose since im not so familiar with how apple hardware specs compare to PCs. im mostly looking to listen to a ton of music (i'll be ripping a lot of cds), watch some videos, and some light photo storage. Also the usual stuff like web surfing and using microsoft office (mac edition) for school. A super drive would be convenient. i dont think i really use any programs or do anything thats very hardware intensive. i also dont really care about hard drive space because its too expensive to have the big capacity drives built in. i can just get a USB drive for cheap. this is also somewhat of a desktop replacement that i would like to carry around with me every now and then. i'd like this computer to last atleast 5 years. both of my uncles still use g4 emacs and they still work fast and do everything as if they just came out of the box.
i know i've said a lot but if you guys could help me choose the right hardware configuration, i'd appreciate it A LOT. oh and one more thing, what do you guys think about buying a refurbished one off the apple website? theyre so much cheaper and come with a 1 year warranty.

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