They have pretty gappy coverage in NH, more so than any of the other carriers (Sprint, Verizon). For now it's not a big issue for me, but it is annoying.
(un?)happily the refurb 24" iMacs that I was looking at are sold out for now so my wallet can breath a little easier until the lists get updated again with more options.
What Todd said, 2G would be better. But at least this is a fresh never installed version that you could then roll into a Win7 edition upgrade in a few months.
First tell him to get the gear back from the shop so he can pop a cover and look at it. If it got soaked or even steamed it's probably not worth fixing in my book. It's not so much the water that is the problem, but what is in the water for contaminants during the fire.
Because if you were trying to explain why to get the winpc it would have taken at least 3 CRTL-ALT-DELETE/END PROGRAM cycles and a few reboots to relay the same message.
The Mac will almost assuredly cost more even with an education discount but fi you can afford it I'd go with one anyway. Looks aside I find the usage of the Mac to be much more straightforward and it's a better built machine than the windows based lappy I have.