🚀 go-pugleaf

But you said your friend's son was going off to engineering school
this fall.  Maybe he should wait until he gets to school, and then see
what's in use at that school?  If he's at an engineering school, they
might have many IBM PCs in *his* department.

As a professional programmer, I would personally buy a Macintosh
because the operating system software is much better.  The difference
is like buying a $600 racing bike, versus a $70 heavy Huffy "American"
bike.  You can retrofit the Huffy American (IBM PC) with lighter &
better parts (expensive software), but you'll always be stuck with a
sluggish frame that's a piece of junk (MS-DOS).  Simpler parts
(cheaper software) suffice to get an enjoyable ride out of the racing
bike's frame (Mac's Quickdraw) -- which will almost always be a joy to
ride.  

In fact, I would guess that Macintosh programs are generally easier to
use and cheaper to buy, because the Mac's QuickDraw/OS gives
programmers a "head start" at developing software.

Many interesting things are happening in the IBM PC market right now.
The original 8088 PCs are (thankfully) technologically dead -- they're
not worth the metal they're made of.  80286 (PC-AT) machines are the
standard PCs right now, and clones are being heavily discounted.
Almost all Macs sold today can be expanded with a large display, many
megabytes of memory (PCs can't do this), Hard Disk, and supercharging
68020 boards.  Mac hardware has never been more tempting.