Laptop or macbook for medical student?

[whereisthejasmine]

Hi daughter yr12, doing A levels and hoping to do medicine. She wants a new laptop. This will have to last for a few years, so please can anyone advise what is the best thing for medical school (hoping she is lucky enough to get in). TIA

Whichever is lighter, she will be lugging it around with heavy textbooks.

If you want it to last, I'd go MacBook personally. Mine is 5 years old and still going strong with no issues at all.

thank you, that is interesting - she said macbook but I wasnt sure if it was worth the extra cost. I am a laptop user and have never tried a macbook as they dont work perfectly with excel (which is all I do all day!), but I doubt she will be using excel the way I do (lucky girl). Can you advise what is good about a macbook? Sorry if that is a basic question, I try googling but dont really understand what it tells me! Bit too technical.

Macbook. I took mine backpacking. They're super light, durable, really user friendly and the battery lasts ages.

MacBooks last and last and last, they cost more initially but unlike the majority of windows based laptops they never seem to slow down or get junky.

I just bought my son a macbook air - I expect it to last for years! The basic macbook air, maybe upgrade the storage to 512, should be more than enough.

My daughter uses an iPad with apple pen but also has her laptop. So if watching an online lecture she watches in laptop and takes notes on iPad. She uses the iPad more than the laptop.

Final year dental student here; love my macbook air. Battery life is excellent and it's nice and light weight. Doesn't get slow even with a million tabs open which will be standard with medicine too- journal articles, etc.

We got our kids Microsoft Surface - seem happy with them and a sleeve protector that fits snugly. I use a MacBook mostly - I have a HP Spectre which I have to use occasionally because software just works better on a Microsoft PC, so for flexibility I’d go Microsoft - I like my MacBook Pro but I’m always surprised by the love for them.

I'm 3 years postgrad but buying a mac before starting med school was one of my best decisions. They last forever. Mine was replaced in aug last year when I started specialty training and was 8 years old. The student discount is excellent on macs so make sure you use it! I would buy another one tomorrow if anything happened to mine.

As someone who has just finished a degree with a fair amount of anatomical content in it - I would have been utterly snookered without my ipad and apple pencil. It was just so helpful to be able to search up an image of whatever obscure area of the human body we were learning, drag it into notes and then annotate/highlight over the top of it to show whatever was being explained. I do have a bit of a tech addiction so also had a Macbook - but that element of being able to physically draw out anatomy was very very useful. If I was more organised I would have saved basic outline drawings of the areas we used lots as elements in Goodnotes in advance to be able to pull across like stickers.

Macbooks are worth the investment (wouldn't bother with the pro, I use a standard and it's great).

They far outlast laptops and if there's any issues, she can go to an Apple shop and speak to a real person for help.

Second Mac book for the reasons everyone mentioned. But make sure any particular software they need is supported on Mac. I use a tool which doesn't work on Mac so I have to use windows. You can use a virtual machine on Mac to install windows too but comes with extra cost.

Be careful getting a MacBook - we found that the uni had some quite outdated software that was only windows compatible.

DS just finished first year med school. He has a MacBook and an iPad with Apple Pen. He says he used the MacBook a lot more than the iPad last year.

Good point by @MallampatiCatty , Apple give a student discount. It’s accessed via her university login so you’d have to wait until she has her username and password, then she can order via the Apple education store.

There's usually a fair few laptop offers on Unidays as well as the Apple ones - HP, Dell and Lenovo from my memory. You need your uni login to access that though (although a 6th form college email might work as well)

My MacBook is still going after 7 years including 4 years of study.
The one issue I had that other people have raised is compatibility with office.

I got office free but sometimes documents didn't convert properly which was a pain. It also impacted me when I applied for a job a couple of years ago and their systems scrambled every word doc I sent them.

I would still go for Mac though, I love mine and if she's already an apple user the ease of moving between devices is so handy.

I would still go for Mac though, I love mine and if she's already an apple user the ease of moving between devices is so handy.
On a daily basis I move between a Mac, an iPhone and a Microsoft Surface - there is no difficulty - dh moves between a Microsoft surface (the new metal-cased version is amazing) an iPad and an iPhone - no difficulty.
I'll say one thing for a Mac - the keyboard and a tiny splash of water can spell the end - very bloody quickly. If you do buy one - make sure you show they what to do when the inevitable happens.