Down to two choices - mac/pc

It's amazing people usually post in the Apple forum if they're trying to decide this often thought question- IMO if you post here; it is your subconscious telling you to get a mac lol
not sure about the whole open office thing... but the macbook would probably be better for portability... but of-course it's down to your personal choice; if you can go to a computer store and try one out for a bit... just see if you like how it works...

I 2nd the Macbook. If you have an Apple store near you got it, they'll have Mac Pro's, iMac's, MBP's, and Macbook's. Whenever I go to the Apple store I just like to go on the internet and do stuff that I'd do if I had a macbook. I know they don't have WoW or the right software to write code on the Macbook at the store but if you like to watch movies, go and watch some trailers off of Quicktime, do stuff that you'd do. Is it comfortable? Is it portable? Ask some questions. By my expierence, yes to both of them.
Go with the Macbook, you won't be dissapointed.

I had the exact same decision about a month ago. I was looking at the same dv2000t and the macbook. In the end it came down to battery life. the dv2000t gets 2.5 hours with all wireless shut off and the screen turned all the way down without doing anything processor or hard drive intensive. a little less than 2 hours with wireless turned on and the screen above half brightness doing typical things(web surfing, while chatting and doing a word document). The macbook gets about 4.5 hours with all wireless shut off and the screen turned down to about halfway without doing anything processor or hard drive intensive. During typical websurfing/chatting/word processing situations it with the screen brightness nearly at maximum and wirles turned on, it gets about 3.5-3.75 hours.

That was the deciding factor. Under 2 hours of battery life just doesn't cut it. It makes having a "portable" computer unportable no matter how small or light it is if it only lasts for under 2 hours during typical usage. If you get the larger battery it lasts double, but the larger battery also defeats the purpose of getting a light, small notebook.(plus the battery doesn't go completely across the back of the laptop making it very difficult to balance on your lap). So i got the macbook. The black one with the 2.0ghz core2duo and 1gb of ram. I will be upgrading the ram when i can afford it

I am a digital photography student and use it often with photoshop cs3 beta. With photoshop cs3 running with several layers and wirless on, web surfing, IM'ing and the screen at maximum brightness i get about 3 hours of usage. sometimes more. When i'm just doing schoolwork and various other things i get about 3.5-4. I"m very happy wiht it. It only took me a week to adjust to mac osx.

If you do get a mac, some programs you should get are:
neo office: a great version of open office for mac

toast: good c burning program like nero for mac

transmission: if you use torrents

adium: if you want a more robust IM client than iChat. however it does use more battery power than the highly efficient iChat. I use ichat when unplugged and adium when plugged in.

as for browsers, i really do suggest opera when unplugged. It uses a noticeably less power than firefox(and safari just doesn't render alot of pages correctly. this websight included)

Well thats my opinion. Good luck

also with portability. If you do have to bring the power adapter with you, the macbook power adapter is the most portable adapter i have every seen. Its exctremely light and small. 2 hinges on it reveal 2 hooks that can be used to wrap up the wire and lock it into place. Then when you unpack it, you can just fold the hooks back into the adapter.

(as you can see, i'm very happy i chose the macbook. especially when it comes to portability)

Mac

(...duh!)

as far as the screen goes, it does fade quicker than the dv2000 from left to right. But unless you have more than 2 people looking at it, then it wont matter. Up and down is bad, but so is the dv2000 and every other laptop i've seen.

But yeah, the battery does not go all the way across the back. So if you have the extended battery in, and it is on you lap, the battery will only be on one leg so you either have a crooked laptop or you balance it with you hand.

hey skeletor im in the same situation as you. I'll be mostly doing coding as well and i was really leaning towards the macbook. So yea i guess keep it posted cause im curious as to what you choose.

the only thing im worried about is the compatibility with my desktop with documents and such

Unless your documents are in some proprietary format for software not available on OS X you're fine.

And it's very easy to network Macs and PCs.

I think that the biggest stumbling block that I have come across when it comes to my switch to the mac was in networking PCs and Macs. Yea there are plenty of settings one can use to enable Windows Sharing and what not, but what I miss the most from Windows has got to be te ability to select any folder on my hard drive, and share it. As it is right now, I am having trouble figuring out how to share files on my external hard drive so that my roommate can get to them. Not to threadjack, but this may be information useful to the OP as well.

Coding on the mac is a wonderful thing. Eclipse, JGrasp, XCode, whatever your choice, it works well. I would actually recommend against JGrasp since the default text size is huge, and it never seems to remember settigns, so every time I run it, I have to reset the text size. XCode is a little hardcore if all you are doing is simple java and C++ programs, but certainly capable. I think that Eclipse is an excellent choice if you are doing simple things, and seems like it would scale well to very large project.

OP: for this reason, get a mac. you won't know how refreshing it is to work with a system where you don't have to compensate for it's deficiencies. whether it's the OS or industrial design you'll have a chance to see what it's like when the computer does not get in the way of computing. :-)

the cheapest route usually is the apple refurbished stuff. 2nd to that on a stock system go with amazon. :-)

i have 2 2ghz macbook, and have to say, it is no slouch in the battery department. i get around 3 and a half hours with full brightness and wifi on the whole time... turn wifi off and the brightness to half... i am sure i could get an extra hr out of it. i had a debate between a sony umpc and a macbook, and i couldn't be happier... its probably the best comp i have ever used. You will be happy with it, and as far as gaming goes, the intel GMA 950 really isn't that bad, i play albatross 18 (free golfing game) in windows via bootcamp, and it runs great.. WoW wont give you a problem, and other games will run good too (i almost had a heart attack when i found out UT2004 runs acceptably on it as well)

congrats!!! i got my iBook through amazon and had no problem in getting the rebate in short order. now they do it online i believe, so it should only be quicker.