COMPLETELY OT: computer recommendations

[olivierfouquet2000]

Hi Scott,

Instead of telling you what I think is best, as I don't know Windows XP enough to give 
and sound opinion, I will simply tell you that I own an iBook since January with Mac 
OS X and Debian Linux on it. I am very satisfied with it : in 6 months of extensive 
use-including daily hard computations (as I am a mathematician and use my 
computer professionally) I had to reboot it only once and suffered no data loss of any 
kind. 

One comment on software, if you intend to study science, I would strongly suggest 
Mac OS X or Linux (or anything UNIX based) as your operating system as it is much 
more compliant with the standard tools used  than Windows. In fact, in my area, 
Windows has almost disappeared. However, I think the reverse is true in marketing 
and some branch of economics.

Good luck

Olivier