A pc for a film student

Hey, Would anyone be able to recommend a laptop for my friend who'll be starting college (Film director or something along does lines, not sure exactly) soon is looking for a computer.

" A powerful laptop, Capable of intensive film editing, Hasty dvd ripping, multitasking etc."

Any Suggestions in particular or would most current laptops be abl to do what he's after grand?

I would say go with a MacBook Pro 15" or 17". A majority of film editors use Macs.

Cool,ty
A friend suggested a Mac aswell, just needed to get another opinion

what's the budget?

A Macbook Pro will give you style, certainly, but a powerful one will be extremely expensive (several grand for a decently fast dual core CPU.) If you really need the computing power (lots of rendering), a desktop + a cheap laptop may be better.

Mac is no more than an over-rated status symbol - there's nothing you can do on a Mac that you can't do with a Windows system - and likely much cheaper. Don't get me wrong Macbooks are usually good, reliable, and some parts of the OS is better coded - but you will have compatibility issues with most major software on the market and just plain not be able to do some things that others can --- and most importantly you pay stupid amounts of money to get a hardware configuration that you could get far far cheaper with Windows.

Don't buy a mac, untill he finds out the software he needsfor school! Although macs IMO are much better the compatability issues are why I never use mine anymore.

If buying a mac, be sure to advise him to wait untill after starting his course as students get a 10% discount from the Apple store from the majority of higher education institutes.

Which is very important if wanting to become a film director

People will look at your shiny mac / I phone / I pod and go 'oooooohhh, shiny, I like you now co you're cool', leading to the improvement of ones popularity among the average students.

It's funny that people always say that Windows machines are cheaper than Macs. Macs, are expensive, but so are Sonys and a few other brands. You can install Windows on a Mac - then it just becomes an expensive Winows laptop. (With only one lousy button on the trakpad )

It's not the OS that makes them cheaper, it's the manufacturer.

So, basically, the correct response is - you can find laptops with a much higher price/performance ratio than a Mac.

I would agree with the advice to find out what software you are going to need to run and then decide what to buy. My son, the metrosexual, had to have a Mac for the cool factor, but has to run most of his software through an emulator because the school/course uses Windows.