[PCBrandon]

Hi all,

I have enough grad money to purchase a new laptop for college. I currently have the "desktop replacement" laptop that's listed in my signature which is still great for everything I do at the moment. The main problems with it for college however is it is huge and doesn't have an extremely long lasting battery. In other words, I'm not going to want to take it around campus to classes and such, but keep it on my desk in my dorm.

I've also been wanting to experience a new environment and I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and look into getting a MacBook. Since my Dell is still a pretty decent powerhouse I'm not looking for a top-of-the-line notebook but rather something light, clean, and small. The laptop would be used for word processing, web surfing, iTunes, simple things like that. I'm sure I want to go with the MacBook series because they use Intel processors so that if it turns out I hate everything with the the Mac OS I can install Linux or Windows.

I have a few questions: What model do you think is best for me? What Mac OS should I get (I think I've heard of Panther, Tiger, OS X, etc?) I've heard I can get a student discount, is this true (even if I'm now officially no longer in High School, but have paid the tuition deposit for college)? Can I run this MacBook off the same Linksys wireless router that I do my Dell? How's communication between a Mac OS and Windows? Can I share files easily between them?

Thanks all!