Technology Using a PowerBook/iBook in Med School

[smc927]

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I grew up on DOS and Windows based systems. My wife has, over the past few years, converted me to the greatness of Mac. Don't get me wrong, I realize they have their weaknesses, too. But, overall, I like them more.

I plan to purchase a laptop for med school. I figured on buying a Windows machine, mainly because so much more software is available for it. And I have a Pocket PC PDA.

Any med students out there using a Powerbook or iBook? How is it going for you? Do you find major compatibility issues? I wonder about things like PowerPoint slides and medicine-specific software.

 

[southerndoc]

What programs are you using (or need to use) that aren't available for a Mac?

I'm about to make a switch to an iMac and a Powerbook because I'm getting fed up with Win XP. (Which should be named Win XPL, which stands for EXperience Lacking).

If you buy MS Office Professional, you can get virtual PC with it. This will allow you to run Windows programs on your Mac.

All of the software I run is available on the Mac... Mathematica, Photoshop, PageMaker, GoLive, Dreamweaver, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.

 

[smc927]

Are there any programs specific to medical school or medicine in general that others have found useful that weren't available for mac?

 

[crazyvladif]

i'm interested in this too . . .

 

[Iwy Em Hotep]

If your school is anything like my school, you only need the following programs:

- a web browser
- a PDF reader
- a text reader
- a .doc, .xls, .ppt reader (e.g. MS Office or OpenOffice)

Nothing that can't be downloaded for free or purchased for the platform of your choice.

 

[deleted59964]

If your school puts up lecture notes in pdf format rather than the original powerpoint format files you will also need a .pdf writer - like the full (or academic) version of adobe acrobat . This is an issue regardless of whether you use a PC or a Mac

General campatability issues are mostly things of the past - just get MS Office 2004 with you Mac, and all the formatting of Office files will work fine. But there are a couple of medical programs that are problems - the only ones I've found are

The CD that comes with the Moore anatomy text is Win only, but having looked at it on a PC it's similar and (IMHO) not as good as the netter CD.

The netter CD works fine on a Mac, but runs in "classic mode", which means you have to wait for your laptop to open classic before it will start Netter.

Symbrio (embryology) CD & Wheaters Histology works fine no prob, that's all the software I've used - though I understand the CD of Harrisons is Mac/PC compatible.

Can anyone else comment on things that do / don't work ?

 

[southerndoc]

The Challenger Corporation programs don't work so well on a Mac (many of the program don't work at all on Macs). They have programs that are more geared toward residents instead of medical students though. So I don't think it'll be an issue as far as medical school is concerned. Hopefully they will port their software to the Mac OS X platform soon, but from the response I received from their CEO about doing so, I don't think they have any plans to make Mac-compatible software in the next 50 years.

 

[(|)]

Too bad they are so expensive!

 

[deleted59964]

Too bad they are so expensive!

The ibook (esp the 12") is a quite competitive on price considering you get built in wifi, esp if you get the education discount - oh and you can save money on antivirus software too. 😀