Laptop for School

So, I'm going back to school in the fall, and I just built myself a pretty nice desktop. For law school, though, they wholly recommend that you have a laptop.

Thing is there are so many choices that it's totally frying my brain.

The system I built is running Windows XP and that will remain my main rig for playing games and watching TV shows/movies with. I also currently have all my music stored on it.

I've been thinking of going Mac, so many people who own MacBooks seem to love them. Plus, they're running that student deal again with a free iPod, free printer, and $100 off. I'm a little concerned, though.

1) Assuming I continue using my desktop for gaming and my MacBook for school work, how annoying will I find it if I can't share anything between my two comps?
1a) The Mac commercials pretty much say, "Hey, we suck at working, use PCs for that. Use us for fun!". Considering my laptop will be my main workspace, does that mean Mac is a stupid choice?

2) Might I be better off with a non-Mac laptop?
2a) What brands are good these days? Last time I bought a laptop, which was 6 years ago, Toshiba was the hot manufacturer.

I actually tried firing up my Satellite recently but since I've built 2 or 3 desktops since I purchased that, it now just seems unbearably slow.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

According to the law school website, they do support Macs except for one program, ExamSoft, which is used for, obviously, taking exams. I checked out the ExamSoft website and they suggested that people with Macs can set up a dual boot with Windows. I suppose that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to have to set up.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I guess I just have one more question. How useful is the extra $183 3-year warranty usually? I've never owned anything Apple...is there a fair chance I'll use this at some point?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I thought about that, but I'm going to be using it all the time. I wouldn't want a $2000 tablet or anything like that right now, but I'll probably be unhappy with my purchase if I use this nice, fast PC at night and don't have something at least somewhat comparable when I go to school in the morning.

Originally Posted by Zergrinch

Sort of late, but whatever laptop he chooses, I recommend that BlueMikey gets the best quality LCD he can afford, without breaking his budget. I imagine he's going to be doing hours of reading on it, so something easy on the eyes is key. I'd say at least a 14.1" widescreen!

I actually bought a 22" widescreen monitor for my desktop, so I figure if there's any heavy reading I need to do at home that I can't do on the PC for some reason, I'll do it on the Mac hooked up to this nice monitor. When I'm away from it, it will mostly be used for taking notes.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Oh, well, I was never planning on a Pro...you're right, if I wanted to spend that much I would have gone with a Tablet PC. I got the regular MacBook (just finished placing my order), the slowest processor they offer right now (Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz). I upped the hard drive to 120 GB (extra space to load Windows and possibly use it as my music storage rather than my PC). After tax, it came to a little over $1500 with the iPod and the printer, $300 of which I'll get back in a rebate.

Good idea on the all-in-one too, that's what I went with. There've been so many times that I wish I had a scanner and now I'll have one. Yay!

I was speaking idiomatically.

I did NOT order any additional software. I figure I'll use OpenOffice until I decide I don't like it.

No mouse yet, I'm gonna go to the Apple Store to see what I like best.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?