GameBanshee Forums

My younger brother is heading back to college in about a month or so. He was an art student and decided to switch and go into music after 2 years of art school. He's trying to decide on what to get for a computer, his school has said to get either a Dell or a Mac, either was works with what he's doing.

Personally, I'm thinking for the fact he's more of the anti-computer type person that he won't do art on the computer. Yet, after he graduates he'd need some way to do his music, which would involve a computer. With a limited budget, and needing a computer for school NOW, yet just heading into the music field I told him to not bother with a high-tech system since he's still learning and wouldn't end up doing anything too intensive requiring high-end stuff and so on.

Any thoughts on what to do with that, or a system that would be good for him? I'm in the process of taking his school's suggested PC from Dell and looking up parts for him. His friends father offered to build him one and I'm looking to see if that would save him money or not. Any sites that would give good prices on parts would be appreciated as well. At the moment I'm looking at http://www.tigerdirect.com and I'm not sure if that's a good place for parts regardless of what a roommate has told me.

Thanks in advance.

College student? I'd say a mac power book but I don't know if that's in the budget.

It could be that there's better music software for Mac than for Windows, but I'm not sure about that.

Either Macs or Dell would do, but upgrade the sound card and speakers. Find a Dell model which offers at least a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 if he goes the PC way.

Thanks for the input. I think he's decided on waiting until he's about a month into classes and seeing whether it would be worth it to go for the more expensive mac or not. It was my opinion that with his budget, he's not going to be finding anything that would truly help him later on with music after he graduates so he should just get whatever he felt most comfortable with.

Still, he may end up being thrust right into something where he needs to use his computer for music and will end up needing to get a specific system right away. I know I've had a few musician friends who said Mac all the way because of the software, but the school says either works for the time he's there.

I know right now, he's looking at a budget of roughly 1000-1200 dollars total, going through Dell he can get a fairly good system with that, and a few upgrades. Going Mac, he needs to tone down a system with equivalent hardware in order to fit it into his budget. I've no experience with Macs outside of when I was first introduced with computers as a word processer more than 10 years ago so I had no clue what to tell him.

I recommend buying the Dell. Macs are NOT a good choice until at least 2006 when the Intel-based Macs come out.

Remember the sound card and speaker upgrades.