I've recently started my photography course at uni and have now been exposed to the program "Aperture". After finding this program extremely helpful and easy to use I get told its Mac-based only and being a Windows person I was quite disheartened by this. So can anyone point me in the right direction of finding a cheap Macbook?
Thanks
As above, I'd suggest looking into Adobe Lightroom, which is a sort-of equivalent Photo process-management-library-workflow program. As a student, you'd qualify for a discount from Adobe on it, and it's also worth remembering that you can use the Apple store for education (or Higher Education for an even bigger saving) which will reduce the cost further if you intend to go down the Mac route.
There is a free demo of Lr available from here, so I'd give that a try on your Windows PC first and foremost.
I have two suggestions:
Apple has refurbished machines in their online store, that's a good way to get a discounted machine.
You could take a look at Lightroom, it's the main competitor to Aperture, and has similar functionality, but it runs on Windows as well.
I strongly suggest looking at Lightroom too. I've tried Aperture and for some reason the interface seems more distracting than the Lightroom interface. Lightroom places the emphasis on the photos being displayed smack bang in the center of your workflow and all the palettes surround it but in a more subtle way due to the consistent dark UI.
I run Lightroom in fullscreen and it's great as all of the control remains but you are 'sectioned' off from the rest of your distracting computer environment such as browsers and social networking apps etc.
