Laptop w/built-in webcam????

[Charles McKinley]

Hi All,

My brother is giong to Kuwait for a year and wants a laptop with a built in webcam to keep in touch with his daughter. He is not very computer savy and want to keep it as simple as possible and not have to keep track of extra accessories.

Thank you for your help,

[Mark Rios]

One of these will be your best bet, IMNSHO.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...D&nclm=MacBook

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...clm=MacBookPro

Make note of the education discount if you have a child in school, if he does, if anyone in your family is in school, etc.

All of these have a built-in iSight camera and are the easiest to use.

[John Shuk]

I'd second the Apple. The education discount is a nice savings.

[Jeff Kerr]

I agree as well. The cost looks a little steep at first compared to a Windows based laptop, but if you look at all the software that it comes with the price is a lot more reasonable.

In addition the Apple OS is very easy to work with and very powerful. It just works. Don't get me wrong I us Windows based machines at the office all day, but when I get home it is Apple time.

Best of luck to your Brother.

[Charles McKinley]

Thanks guys,

Kim Komando agrees. She said the Apple or the Sony Viao.

Jeff, I don't see any included software. The stuff is just the 30 day trials then it is get out the credit card again, unless I'm missing something.

Yep, my niece is in school but the computer will be on the other side of the world. I will look and see about the discounts.

I just looked on the one link and there is an Apple store in Pgh. and it is even close to my mother-in-law's so The munchkins get to visit Grandma to boot.

I have always liked everything about Apples but their price. I could outfit a PC complete with the evil empires workings for less than the cost of the bare Apple hardware.

About the call:

I looked on Kim's website to get the number and confirm I can call between 10 am and 1 pm EST. I call at 10 am. I get right through and am put on hold, at noon the battery on the cordless dies. I call back in and talk with the call screener again explain everything again and he puts me back on hold. 12:30 The call screener comes back on and tells me that there will not be time for me to talk with Kim but recommends either the Apple or the Sony and she is going to send me some goodies for my brother.

Kim is also on the Armed Forces Radio network and she is going to be doing a show soon that will be all service men in Iraq, so I put in a plug for the Freedom Pens Project. I hope that she at least mentions it and it brings in some donations.

Thanks again for the help at least the research is down to these machines. Maybe after playing with the Apple I'll be won over

[Art Mulder]

Jeff, I don't see any included software. The stuff is just the 30 day trials then it is get out the credit card again, unless I'm missing something.
[...]
I have always liked everything about Apples but their price. I could outfit a PC complete with the evil empires workings for less than the cost of the bare Apple hardware.

Charles...

I didn't follow the link so I'm not sure what you are referring to in terms of "included software".
I use an Apple iMac G5 at work, and I bought my wife a Mac mini to use at home.

For managing photos, the built in iPhoto works just fine. You can also download GIMP off of the net for free, and it does much of the same stuff that photoshop does. There are also other image editing programs available.

For Music - iTunes is built in, and works fine.

For Drawing - Google Sketchup. Free, and very powerful.

For web browsing - the built in Safari works well. But I use Firefox, which is also a free download.

For word processing. If you want to buy MS-Office, you can. But instead I use NeoOffice -- it is based on OpenOffice, and is a free download. For word processing and spreadsheet it works very well. I have had almost no problems with reading/writing MS-Word doc files. There is a drawing package built into NeoOffice also, which is all right, but I'm getting more into SketchUp.

For anti-virus and anti-spyware.... If you want to, you can find anti-virus software. I don't bother. There is no spyware for macs. There are some viruses out there, but they are very very rare. In the last two years at work, I doubt a week has gone by without someone's Windows computer getting a virus. But in the last two years we have had exactly one mac viruses and it was just a Word Macro virus, easily dealt with.

So there you go. What were you looking for that wasn't covered in that list?

[Charles McKinley]

Hi Art,

Thanks for your input. My first exposure to Apple was when you hooked a cassett player up to it for storage.

Then in college, after being assimilated to MS, I just rember the frustration of trying to share files with the one person in the group project that had to use Word Perfect or a Mac. I never liked having problems connecting with others and didn't have the resources go Apple and buy the added software. It looks like the open source programs have evolved to a point that this may be an option.

One point very heavy in Apple's favor at the moment is the newness of Vista and Microsoft's horrible record of problems with new releases. Noe to get to the big city and spend some time on a machine.

[Jeff Kerr]

Hi Charles,

My mac laptop is a cople of years old but the OS includes;

1. text chat and webcam chat built in
2. Apple mail client. very simple and easy. No issues like corrupted MS outlook files. (I've been there and recovering that .pst file sucks).
3. itunes. (free on MS XP also)
4. iPhoto. Handles digital photos wit ease. One click cd burn etc.
5. Intuit Quicken. Comes with the machine.
6. iMovie for watching or creating movies from digital photos and itunes songs. pretty slick. Can also edit camcorder footage with USB/firewire connection.
7. calculator/calendar
8. Appleworks (low end MS Office style app. I hate giving MS credit. Able to do word processing, presentation slides, spreadsheets, even simple database stuff.
9. Quicktime player.

Hope this helps. If you go to Apple.com you can find a local retailer. In some cities there are "Apple" stores and in others they can be found at local retailers.

Go test drive one and ask lots of questions. Figure out wants from nice to haves. Before you buy, check the Apple site again and look for the refurbished item list. This is a good way to save $$ and get a warranted machine.

P.S. Macs and Windows boxes connect on the same type of network so there are no problems today like in years prior. Macs can "map" a windows network drive no problem. So if your brother will want to connect to another machine he will be fine.