How does it save a lot of stuffing aound
Not knowig what sort of student he is, windows is pretty much standard for nearly all course requirements, i.e., mathematics softwares, programming, CAD, engineering softwares, a lot of graphics packages.... They can all run on windows.
I know that MacOS and Linux really excel at doing some of those things, but as a student, you need something that can do them all, amybe not be stellar at any, but does them all. It is a real issue. Macs are a good option because a LOT of commercial software has mac versions. i.e., software you need to learn to use because that is what you would use in a job. And you can dual boot with whatever you like for the few things that MacOS doesn't handle, in the bargain, you get a nice machine, but also spend more.
Trouble with running Linux only is that most businesses don't use linux, so you can't really learn what you need to on those machines. At least OSX is dumbified unix and is rather close to windows in look and feel now, so learnign the mac version takes you rather close to the windows version (for example Matlab has both windows and mac versions that are exactly the same). Some things are still a pain in anything other than windows. Like, running CAD and engineering software that need licnse server authentication, it just isn't worth the headache to try and run those in linux or OSX.... And when you look at how many things are windows only, you can pretty much think, why the F#$% don't I just use windows for everything. As I said, OSX gets you close for many things, including commercial software, BUT for complete all round compatibility, you will still need windows. And to run windows in a virtual machine is pretty lame for any serious work, might as well run it natively in windows.
^ That is what I mean by stuffing around, having to unnecessarily deal with OS compatibility issues where you shouldn't have to.
If all that has to be done is check email, browse the net and do word processing and spreadsheets, then go buy anything.
