PC vs Mac - Apple looks very attractive right now!!

[Barry]

Actually, Dear Sir, it is currently possible to run Windows programs natively in OSX, through the use of software virtualization. Parallels for the Mac will allow just that thing.

Is this any better than the old Virtual PC? I have a new Mac Mini (Intel) an a 2 year old Powerbook. I have (had, rather, before my HD started sounding like a lawnmower) Virtual PC on my Powerbook. It was slow as molasses and was just painful as all get out to use.

Barry

 

[scotrace]

Windows on the new intel macs is supposed to be much better than the old VPC, which, as you say, was unusable.

 

[Buck]

Macs

Seems to be well covered so far. My $.02.

I went from a typewriter to a Tandy 1000 pc in the mid eighties. Loved it! Bulletin boards, Compuserve, etc. Then Mac came out with the Mac SE. I bought an SE30 and fell in love. Windows! ( I still can't believe they lost that lawsuit) Much more intuitive. In 2000, when I took a managerial position for a couple of years (brief brain malfunction on that one), I has a PC on my desk. I truly expected my anti-PC bias to be reduced. The opposite was true. I walked away with a deeper dislike for the PC.

My main Mac points are:

* Always a leap ahead with graphics

* It always seems to take at least twice as many clicks or windows on a PC too accomplish the same task (I hate to see a new computer user, especially the elderly, buy a PC)


* Consider the DOS. It began with 386kb and grew from there. Take a look at how much RAM it takes to run just the OS now. It's now MANY megs of RAM, all sitting on that little 386 like an inverted pyramid...Very unstable. No wonder they crash so much.

I have one fast mac, one medium mac, and one slow mac in my home office, along with a fast PC. I always have problems with the PC..from connection issues to virus's and spyware. No probs with the Mac. And they're much easier on the eyes too:arated:

I also have an old imac at camp. None of them ever have hardware or software problems (except for AOL....why can't I just say no?)

The latest Mac has the dual processor, so it should be even longer before I buy the next one.

I still find them a bit more $, but well worth it!

Tough decision....Good Luck!

 

[scotrace]

Scott,

I do. I enjoy using it from time to time.

Barry

We should plan a group Virtual Lounge Get-Together sometime for those who can participate.

 

[Riposte3]

I had the opposite experience. My home PC works like a dream, my old colleges Macs died on a regular basis.

It comes down to how you treat them really.

It appears Macs are easier to look after, but I'd never replace my PC with a Mac, I love being able to upgrade however I like. I just like opening up the tower and adding RAM etc.

When were those old college Macs from? I had a couple of work study jobs in college in the late '90s that were both done all on a Macs. At the time they had a reputation for serious stability issues, and crashing often. (At least once each 4 hour workday for my one job, sometimes even during the startup sequence. :eusa_doh
On the other hand, they also had a reputation for excellent quality hardware. The rumor was that a Mac PowerPC could run Windows programs in an emulator faster than a high end PC in it's native OS.

Modern Macs seem to have fixed these problems, and are excellent machines for most users.

-Jake

 

[scotrace]

Any mac with the old OS, especially OS 7 and before, would have been prone to all sorts of burps. Today's Macs and today's OS are as different from those (decade ago) days as it's possible to be.

 

[Fleur De Guerre]

We are replacing our PC with a Mac at the earliest opportunity (ie, when my boyfriend gets his first decent cheque from his publishers ) because this infernal PC has given us absolutely no end of trouble. Stupid thing has needed a new PSU and motherboard and it's only 3 years old. Plus it's a Dell so only Dell's proprietary harware works properly/at all. We had to punch an extra hole in the case just to get the new PSU to work and the motherboard cost about 4 times the equivalent no name model.

The most galling thing is that he hasn't actually finished paying off this computer (about £1,500 at the time) and you can now get laptops with the same RAM and most of the same features (minus some extras but still) for about 1/3 of the price! Rage!! :rage:

I use a Mac at work again, having just left a job where I had to use a PC for a year. Thank god.

 

[Barry]

I remember having to "administer" a Quickmail system running on several old Quadras. This must have been late 1997. I thnk that was the time the firm I was with switched to Microsoft Exchange. At the time, Quickmail was great for its directory services. I was surprised to find out this mail system is still available.

The Quadras would hang sometimes but not all that often.

The other Macs in the office were a different story. There were all sorts of extension related issues as I had to support basically any application the users chose to download.

I love my two newer macs though.

Barry

 

[jazzzbaby]

I am a Mac gal & have been since 1994...Love them!!

 

[Slicksuit]

Is this any better than the old Virtual PC? I have a new Mac Mini (Intel) an a 2 year old Powerbook. I have (had, rather, before my HD started sounding like a lawnmower) Virtual PC on my Powerbook. It was slow as molasses and was just painful as all get out to use.

Barry

From what I've heard, it is much better than the Virtual PC experience, with the appropriate hardware. If your Mac Mini is a CoreDuo (2 processors) it will work best, although it will work on a CoreSolo. Most importantly, you need RAM, minimally 512MB, but 1GB or even 2GB would be great. With 1GB, Windows XP will run at damn near its native speed - I'm told that the difference is nearly imperceptable...it feels like you're running WinXP on a PC. Of course, the more programs you have running in Windows as Parallels is open, or the more memory intensive the programs are (such as Photoshop), the more memory becomes an issue. Parallels is offered as a free trial download here. http://www.parallels.com/en/download/desktop/

Microsoft has dropped development for Virtual PC for the Mac this past summer, and is now offering the Windows version for free.

Having researched the OSX Tiger issue, Apple is indeed making Boot Camp an official component of OSX in Tiger (it is currently beta).

 

[Nathan Flowers]

Ah, but..

Actually, Dear Sir, it is currently possible to run Windows programs natively in OSX, through the use of software virtualization. Parallels for the Mac will allow just that thing. Without rebooting to Bootcamp, Parallels is invoked, and Windows operates as a window within OSX (whether or not a Windows bootcamp partition is present - a virtual installation of Windows is performed on the Mac).

How is works is that Parallels is installed, and then Windows is installed using Parallels to create one singular, large file that resides on the hard drive, called a virtual machine. Windows is then started in its own Window, and is fully usable for web browsing, program installation, etc. Once the virtual machine is established, it can be backed up, flushed clean and reinstalled...even put on another Mac with Parallels on it - it is fully portable. This allows great convenience should the Windows install become corrupted with malware and such. Software virtualization is generally becoming more of an attractive option in modern processors, as the multiple CPU cores allow each virtual machine to occupy the work of the CPU independently.

VMware is an alternative to Parallels, and offers similar functionality. Independent tests show, however, that Parallels runs faster.

I have heard of possible native support in OSX Tiger for this same funcitonality, but it is not confirmed by Apple as far as I know.

Dear Sir, if you read the date that accompanied my initial post, you'd see it was written in July of last year. At that point in time, Parallels was not really known by most of the public (and was still quite buggy), and VMware had not even released their Mac client yet. So at the time I wrote that post, my assertions were more valid. One must take the date in which they were posted into account. Your explanations of how virtualization works are accurate as of the date I write this.

I personally expect Apple to buy out Parallels and include their software in Leopard, or the next iteration of their OS.

 

[jugband1]

I have been using macs since my first computer purchase and have never looked back. I work in the photo/graphics industry and it is the standard. I didn't even know until my brother just bought a dell that PCs don't come with any software installed...I just thought that was normal to take the computer out of the box, plug it in and be ready to roll....lol

 

[J. M. Stovall]

I worked at a company a couple of years ago that had about 400 employees, 1/3 on pc and 2/3 on Macs. There were 5 System Admin people for the pc side, and ONE for the Macs. I think one of the things it comes down to is almost every Mac person I know understands how the thing works and how to fix it themselves if it's not. PC people are always saying they don't like Macs because they can't get into the code, but I bet only 1% of PC people even do that, the other 99% just want the thing to work, and if it isn't they have no idea what to do, so they have to call the Admin guys down the hall.lol

 

[Molorom]

The only reason people prefer Macs over PC's is because they cant understand how to use a pc. A PC is far superior to a mac in the lower end range of things. The lower end macs are pieces of junk. Nothing can be upgraded because its all locked up tight in there. You people sound like you are advertising for apple. I've had so much bad experience with macs it blows my mind.

heres a review I posted on another site.

Whatever you do don't buy the self contained G5 Intel. We have one at work, the boss bought it without consulting any of us. Figures....He was in one of his buying moods. The thing is a piece of rubbish. And for 200$ we could have bought a Mac pro probably.

We have 3 "newer" macs at work.
2 17" G5's (pre intel) and 1 20" intel mac. (in the Schools Audio visual shop)
I used them all DAILY. The new 20" is full of
system errors. For quick work I use I movie, (for REALLY simple stuff, makes things go faster, when people come in with videos for us to copy for them, dv tapes etc to dvd) and it adds transitions randomly, and crashes when you try to add anything animated. Vision lab is the only thing that works (thankfully) and even then it is REALLY slow sometimes. I actually prefer the older 17". I've edited hours of footage on that, and the drive space and speed is really constricting. When your project file is large, the video skips, and its really annoying, and wastes time. Even though I really like these mac's, they changed my view of how macs "are", I would NEVER buy one, at least not one you can tare open or add onto with fire wire 800.

So even with all these mac's available to me I still would rather use my Pentium 4 3.4Gz, 2 GB ram desktop I edit on at home. Its much more reliable, It renders faster and does not give me, I need to shut down for no reason at all messages when I have 3+ hours of work on the timeline. Plus I can just tear it open and switch things out when something is not working.


If you REALLY want to get a mac. Buy something In the pro lineup. Unless that is, you are working with video thats only 3-5 minutes. I even got lag on the I macs with projects that were 13 minutes long....

These are just my experiences with macs over my past 2 years of working with them daily. Lots of people swear by macs, and if thats your path, maybe you will be lucky, and be really satisfied, i know there are tons of people that are.
Adam

 

[MrBern]

I'm a graphic artist.
I believe close to 90% of professional graphic artists work on the Mac platform.

And really , the PC OperatingSystem is about 2 generations behind the Mac...

 

[Samsa]

The only reason people prefer Macs over PC's is because they cant understand how to use a pc. A PC is far superior to a mac in the lower end range of things. The lower end macs are pieces of junk. Nothing can be upgraded because its all locked up tight in there. You people sound like you are advertising for apple. I've had so much bad experience with macs it blows my mind.

heres a review I posted on another site.

I suppose it depends on what one wants out of one's computer. I use a MacBook, and had previously used Dell desktops that ran Windows (anything from 98 to XP). For day to day purposes (internet browsing, word processing, downloading music, uploading media from removable devices, etc) I have found using a Mac to be much more user friendly. I never need to worry about installing drivers, scanning for viruses, or defragmenting the hard-drive. Those are the big draws for me.

I can't speak to video editing, as I do not do any of that. I would think it stands to reason, however, that a lower end ANYTHING is not ideal for that purpose. The salespeople at the Mac store were quite honest upfront that the lower end Macs were not for me if I wished to do a lot of video editing or gaming. Lower end Macs, however, are more than adequate to serve the day to day needs of most users.

 

[J. M. Stovall]

The only reason people prefer Macs over PC's is because they cant understand how to use a pc.

I think that's our point.

 

[Lady Day]

Who else has Mac/iChat/iSight?

*raises hand*



LD

 

[Chanfan]

Oy, I can't believe the platform holy wars are here as well.

My main take on PC vs. Mac is twofold.

Firstly, my serious view - I've used both, and will likely continue to use both. They are tools, use the tool that's good for the job, and that you are comfortable with. I admit I love the Mac aesthetic, the OS, and so on. I love the PC's ubiquity, price, and gaming friendliness. I use a PC at home, because it's primarily a gaming machine. But pick based on what you want to do.

Secondly, my semi-serious view - I certainly take advantage of some aspects of the PC vs. Mac wars. I have friends who are Mac Zealots, and those who are PC gurus. I taunt both mercilessly, and enjoy every second of it.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Yep! I'm an original Apple man!