Macbook vs. Linux VM on a Windows Machine...I

[Donald LaFell]

Just randomly checking if there are any professional developers on here. 

 

I need a laptop soon, I'm willing to get a Macbook but I'm not sure if I really need it. 

 

It seems like it's worth the money if you really appriciate it but so far I haven't enjoyed the interactions I've had with one. 

 

I feel like I would rather have a VM with linux for ease of dev work as opposed to Mac. 

 

It's nice that Mac is a *nix system but I don't think it would really be worth it in the end. 

 

Nobody can touch apple on build quality but I'm not really going to keep a laptop for more than 3-4 years most likely and I take good care of my pc's.

 

thoughts?

[Guild]

My network engineer really likes his mac I can tell you that.  Not explicitly knowing what you are doing my first thought if you can get your work done using a VM of what I suspect is a distro you are already familiar and comfortable with why not just go that option and spend the money you are saving on higher end parts for your computer.  Besides you can probably run the Mac OS of your choice on your laptop anyway.  I do on my personal home computer (Win7/8/Ubuntu/Mountain Lion).

[tight lines]

Id run linux. As a matter of fact I do run linux on all my computers. I do have a dual boot on one with win7 for the occasional time I need windows for certain progams I use, but I may boot into windows once a month.