Colleges and computers

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Are colleges typically wired to accommodate both PCs and Macs, or just PCs?

Tim

A decent college can do it all. I know at my bfs college there is a mac lab, a linux lab, and a windows lab, plus plenty of ports for your labtops

It just seems that some colleges assume that everyone has Windows and PCs. I hope to own a Mac eventually, and my current computer (a PC) is nearly 4 years old--antiquated by today's standards.

Tim

Most lab reports and assignments at my college involve Microsoft word and excel, which I don't have on my mac, so I use the computers in the library for that.

It might be different among those schools that are "known" as computer schools such as Georgia Tech or MIT.

Boot Camp with XP will take care of that problem. You can use it on the campus network with XP and when at home, you can use OS X. That is assuming that the campus does not accommodate OS X.

The college down the road uses Macs in the libary for internet browsing and has PCs, and Macs in the computer labs.

I'm running OSX and XP on my MacBook. I used BootCamp and it was dead easy to do.

This has helped me out quite a bit to have both OS's (I'm working on Linux - Ubuntu for my old Dell Latitude).

I prefer Mac, but work with windows when needed, which for my school is all the time.
I think in our computer lab we have one Mac.

When I attended UAF (University Fairbanks), there were Macs all over the place... that was in the early 90's.

They also had a lab with a bunch of Black Next Computers.

My current school is a 2-yr college, so funds are probably even tighter than for a four year.
Even so, we do have courses in Linux that I hope to take some day.

I'd still say that PC's are the dominant computer in schools... even gaining ground in public elementary schools.
The iMac used to be out there in force, but I think Apple is losing it's grip on that market.

My college has a bunch of different buildings everywhere, so the computers they set up are different. My college library has mostly PCs, but there are a few macs. There's another lab that consists of Linux computers. Which is great, because I abhor using Winblows. Particularly because whenever I use them on campus, they take forever to log in.

With the improvement in compatibility between Windows and Macintosh computers, it probably shouldn't be too much of a problem. You can get the essential stuff, such as MS Office and web browsers for both platforms.

What course of study are you going into? That may play a role in determining what systems are preferred. Here at UF, the College of Education is primarily Macintosh based (they have a Mac lab), while most departments, libraries, and labs are Windows based (there's even at least one lab with Vista). Most of the back end stuff (servers and such), and some of lab computers run Linux and Unix based operating systems.

If you're using a wireless network, it shouldn't matter too much which platform you use, as nearly all networks use the standard TCP/IP interface.

I primarily use Windows myself, though I have played with Linux a few times. I haven't used a Macintosh since high school.

My school has a nice Mac lab, but it's always empty. We have a wireless network on campus so anyone can logon, regardless of OS or PC, with a wireless card. I would estimate on campus computer types as: #Macs + #linux = 1/2*#Windows. It's amazing to see soooooo many kids with laptops in class that aren't running windows. Every ten years, the kids are less and less Microsoft dependent.

Plus, the marketing geniuses at Apple have done a brilliant job marketing Apple products as the cool/in/hip thing. The people who drive the marketing and branding at Apple are worth their weight in gold ... of course it also helps that Apple makes superior products and has great vision. I remember the first time a mass-marketed PC that was not black or white. That bright orange Mac was the coolest looking PC I had ever seen. Apple's attention to detail and willingness to think outside of the box is quite commendable.

Of course, I don't own a Mac, haha. I run linux and windows. I would be lost without my free tools and compilers that don't run on Macs. But for the average computer user, Mac is the way to go.

What compilers would those be? MS Visual Studio is pay for software (I got a basic copy years ago with a huge student discount for £60), while XCode comes free with OSX, and GCC is also available for OSX.

The only dev software I use on windows is MPLAB (I program PIC microcontrollers in assembly language), although I could always use GNU ASM for OSX.

I use the free Express version of Visual Studio for C++ and Eclipse (the best compiler ever) for Java. Though I recently linked gcc to Eclipse so I can use it for C++. It's a slow compiler, but it's awesome and its free!! ! I can't wait for MS to copy the cool features of Eclipse into Visual Studio. And yes I have used gcc many times, but it needs a good front-end GUI.

I don't know anything about XCode. Does it have a decent GUI?

I've never been able to get into programming compiled languages (because the teaching here is crap when it comes to IT), so I haven't used either VS or Xcode enough to know.

Mac only developers seem happy with Xcode, people coming over from VS say it's lacking some features though. I guess at least part of it's down to expecting things to be the same, instead of learning a different way.

What makes Eclipse the best-ever is that it compiles as you type. The left of your window, even with the line of code, will have red mark for an error and yellow for a warning. If you mouse-over the mark, the error message or warning pops up. Sometimes it even has suggested fixes to click on that will fix the error for you. No more hitting the compile button and having to scroll through tons of crap in an undersized window at the bottom of the screen. There is no compile button, it's all automatic!! !

It slows the environment down a little, but not so much that it's annoying.

Also, if you call a library function, then mouse-over the error mark because the function is not found, you can click to automatically import the correct package from the Java library into your code.

Also, it has refactoring, which by now may have been copied by other compilers. You can refactor(a fancy kind of rename) any file, variable, class, etc... and the compiler will go through your whole project and update every instance of that variable or class, whatever, with the new name. It sounds like a simple feature, but ohhhh the time it saves when you have a big project and need to rename a variable for clarification or because it sounds too much like another variable.

Best of all, Eclipse if FFFFFFFRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! !! !! !! !! !! !!

I thought refactoring was great when it was part of dreamweaver. Must be great to be able to switch variables between short versions for when you're typing, and long winded versions when you want the code to be readable.

My favorite language has to be python, because it does away with all the brackets and semi colons required by C like languages, and it runs really quickly too, as it's compiled the first time it's run into a .pyc file. That gets used every time it's run again until the code gets changed.

I did a bit of network programming in it, using a packet sniffer to see what was in network packets, then using python scripts to mimic parts of programs that sent or recieved network data.

I do more web stuff now though, so I'm stuck with PHP as that's what everything is written in.