I was planning on getting a MacBook but then was considering the fact that most professors at school would be using Microsoft software. Anyone have any input on this?
I would recommend against buying the MS Office Suite. Apple's iWork suite is far superior, and it can read and produce powerpoint, excel, and word documents. I have almost never had conversion problems opening up documents created with windows.
The main reason I think iWork is better is b/c the comment and markup features are more user-friendly, and standardized across the applications. The programs also start up faster and run more smoothly. Keynote (i.e., powerpoint) allows you to group your slide thumbnails into tiers, which is fantastic for large presentations. Numbers (i.e., excel) is much more flexible because of the sheet layout, and Pages (i.e., word) runs much more smoothly than MS Word does. You can see examples of all that great stuff at
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/iwork/
As for those of you who don't think your computers are necessary for optometry school, think of it this way: wouldn't it be great if you could take that stack of course packets and search through every note you ever took (instead of paging through incessantly to find that reference your professor made to the new Daily SiHy lens from Acuvue that the college will be in the test market for...what was it called again?)? Does learning/studying color vision with black and white handouts really make any sense? How useful are your 1/6 a page sized ocular disease slides at showing you a Krukenburg spindle in retro-illumination off of the iris? What about that note in your outline that you wish you could move two bullet points up because it would make more sense in that spot? Are you really going to have time to go home and type up your notes after class, or is that going to fall by the wayside as things start heating up and midterms begin to approach?
And get pissed when he lost a big hand.
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