Mac VS PC

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ophiuchus

One thing Ive learned is that computers are like cars; you have to take of them on regular basis (regular scans, defragmenting, don't overload them with crap, etc).

Another thing to keep your PC running smoother is don't keep all your files on it, especially music and pics. Both of those fill up a hardrive really fast and start slowing it down really fast. I suggest getting an external harddrive to keep all that stuff on. Basically, if you don't use the file on a regular basis, it doesn't need to be on the HD.

---

Exactly!!! we have an external drive, with music,videos,pics & misc stuff. It helps alot. I defragment, I run scans everyday early in the am, I leave my pc on 24/7.

Not a bad thread; actually some decent comments inbetween the usuall mac/pc dribble.
For what it's worth, I have been in the IT field since 1993. I have seen many computers come and go. I started on macs (back when people called them apples) doing graphic design in the latter 80's and switched to pc's in the early 90's.
Any OS is fine if it does what you personally need it to do. As far as being better than the other, far and away the most stable OS I ever worked with was WinNT 4 with sp2 or later.

Crashing... guess what? They all crash under certain circumstances. Win, Mac, Linux, DOS, whatever. I've brought them all to thier knees.

Ease of use... all in the persective of the user. Efficiencey would be a far better category to look at.

Virus/etc... They all can get them these days and guess what? It's self inflicted. It's not the OS's fault, it's your fault for either not taking appropriate precautions or for actually executing it or both.

Durability... Mac zealots can tout this all they want, but there is no accurate way to compare them from a manufacturing standpoint to pc's. Apple makes macs. Period. One comany. Pc's are made by hundereds if not thousands of companies in addition to "joe public". They also make far fewer models than most major companies. The desktop section is pretty irrelevant, but on the laptop front, lets say mac vs. gateway... mac wins; I suppose, but it's not an apples to apples comparision. You really need to look at items with similar speed, quality of construction, etc. You also need to take warranties and extended service into account. I'll just comment on HP for example. You cannot buy a "business class" HP computer in a retail electronics store. You have to order it for the most part. What's the difference? Construction and warranty period. They cost more too... You are paying for that warranty service period. Oh, but get this, they'll come to you and fix it.

Disposiblity... Yes, lots of pc's are disposible. Again, you are talking general public retail garbage.
You get what you pay for. People that look for the cheapest solution without reguard to anything other than price will get what they deserve. A mac is a mac for the most part. All pc's are NOT created equal.
Most of my pc's have been built, not bought, but here's my experince. My current tower is just now 4 years old. I replaced one of the hard drives a year ago. It was the backup drive and I needed a larger one. (i run nightly backups of the enter pc and keep about 30 of them on file). As far as repairs, i've replaced several of the fans.
I generally keep them around this long before getting new. This one, however, I am going to keep longer, as it is still plenty fast at doing what I need it to do.
That NT4 box still exists. It's well over 10 years old. My folks had it after me and then gave it to the church. There's other 10+ year towers I built floating around my friends as well. that have gone from win95 though xp and still run on the original hardware and some have been changed to linux.
Now, are you going to be able to say this about your $299 emachine? Not a chance.

Back to mac, they do make nice hardware (notebooks). Now that they are intel based, what they need is an option for a windows keyboard and a friggin right click so I don't need to add a usb mouse if I don't want. I recently got a refurb macbook pro and set it up with boot camp for xppro. It works ok, but not great. It's a pretty half butted trade off on getting more software to run on a mac and IMO not greatly useful because of the reboot time and annoyance of the key differences and mouse. Parallels is probably a better route. The old Virtual pc worked ok as well.
I digress...
Oh, that factory refurb mac had a dead key on the keyboard. Has to go back.

Anyhow, PC for me, but mac is fine too. If they make a laptop setup for Windows as primary os, I would seriously consider it.

In sum, the one that is better is the one that is better FOR YOU.

There's one thing I hate about pc users. Advice. Every swinging door knob that ever installed extra RAM or reinstalled windows thinks they are pc technicians. That's a whole 'nother tread.
The only thing I really don't like about macs are certain users. The ones best desribed here:
(bad language warning: mod, please delete if inappropriate.)

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse....gi?u=macs_cant

Oh, btw, I drive a bmw 740il and i'm probably just as guilty as the mac users about talking about how awesome my car is. :oops: That's another thread too. :P

Well said, Damon.

And I love Maddox's site and that one page cracks me up every time. Thats probably one of the biggest beefs I have with MAC users is that its almost a religion more than just a machine to them and they just want to cram it down peoples' throats.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ophiuchus

Well said, Damon.

And I love Maddox's site and that one page cracks me up every time. Thats probably one of the biggest beefs I have with MAC users is that its almost a religion more than just a machine to them and they just want to cram it down peoples' throats.

---

Believe me that as a life-long Mac fan, I hate these type of people who think they're so cool and better than other people because they own a Mac. The same can be said of the PC people who rip on Mac's left and right w/o actually having used one (or the last one they used was in 1986 in elementary school).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AaronP

Apples & Oranges (No pun intended). BMW has a Low US Market, but they're German based where they do pretty darn good for themselves. Dell is [newer] than Apple is and they have a very large market share. Apple's overall market share reflects greatly on the company as a whole. In the end it's one big pissing match cause it always come down to preference but if you want to talk numbers, the Mac loses, and loses hard.

---

I don't think anyone disagrees with this (except for the mp3 player market, but different subject all together). My point is that market share does not indicate quality or superiority one way or the other. That's all.

Quote:

---

BTW one of the main reasons you see so many macs in college is because Apple has big education discounts, and always has. Speaking of which this past week I setup computers for a Elementary school that were all based on Fedora, and they were for the children!

---

I think another reason is that you get all these goofball kids trying to be cool and hip. Though I used my education discount right before I graduated college to buy a a PowerBook. Saved about $300, so that is a nice gig they have going.

For a laptop a Macbook Pro all the freakin way. Not sold on the desktops yet, mainly because I can build a fast one recycling my dvd drives, sound card, monitor, power supply, case, fans etc for under $600.

$150 directx 10 video card for running stuff on a pretty good level

$200 for an Athlon 64 bit processor 6000+ dual core processor and motherboard.

$90 for 2 gigs of DDR 800 ram and another $80 for a good sized SATA hard drive.

Like I said everything else gets re-used so for people like me who already have a nice monitor, a good keyboard/mouse setup and nice speakers it is easily the best option IMO.

What I listed is nothing to write home about compared to some of the top end quad core setups out there but it SMOKES anything else you'll find at a comparable price and you can't get a nice mac for even half that price. Just don't run Vista until they work some more of the bugs out. I run XP on service pack 3 with all updates and its nice and fast.

I also loaded XP onto my sister's Macbook Pro with bootcamp so she isn't limited to just the MAC OS. She says she gets really funny looks when people see XP booting up on a Mac lol.

MAC MAC MAC MAC MAC


End Of Story.


:)

I haven't read through this thread yet but I have to say I've really been considering crossing over into the world of Macs... Right now I'm a PC user, have been forever but the more I get to play with Macs the more I like them. I don't want to be alone though so I'm going to try and get my husband on board with me when he gets back from deployment. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Entropy

I haven't read through this thread yet but I have to say I've really been considering crossing over into the world of Macs... Right now I'm a PC user, have been forever but the more I get to play with Macs the more I like them. I don't want to be alone though so I'm going to try and get my husband on board with me when he gets back from deployment. :D

---

I have to say that i used to be all about the pc til about 3 years ago. I had gotten a new job and they had a mac for me to use... ever since then i have been all about the mac. I bought myself a mac laptop and love it. I cant stand pc's anymore. Macs are just so much easier and user friendly. We don't have to worry a bout vista ruining out computers LOL

Well honestly, I browse the internet, edit my photos, run my camera software and....that's pretty much it. I'm not a big PC hobbyist, it's a useful tool for getting what i want done done. My husband can build is own PCs, but rarely has time for much with the navy.

Well now they have those "mac geniuses" in apple stores to transfer all files over. I think its a good idea since most ppl have no clue how to do anything with computers other than browse the internet, use word/powerpoint, or maybe play a game.

But like I said, having used both I think that a PC running the latest windows XP, taken care of(regularly defragged/scanned) is just as fast as a mac. Now, Vista is a whole other story...

Exactly what problems are people having with Vista? Our family got a new PC last year and I got a new laptop in Oct. Both have vista and we've yet to experience any issues with it. What are people complaining about?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ophiuchus

Exactly what problems are people having with Vista? Our family got a new PC last year and I got a new laptop in Oct. Both have vista and we've yet to experience any issues with it. What are people complaining about?

---

Hello, I'm an IT Consultant myself. At work we use Windows XP, at home I have Vista. The only reason I have Vista is because it came pre-installed with the laptop I have now.

The problem people have with Vista, is they say it runs slow. Well the reason is plain in simple, Vistas graphics are a lot more demanding then XP. When I first got my laptop it only had 1 gig of ram in it (2 512 sticks). All I did was go out and buy a 2 gig($55) stick of ram and pop it in, update the BIOS and I was good to go. If you don't update the bios, you may see the blue screen of death.

It does seem annoying after a while that when you try to install a program/application on your computer, it asks you permission to do so. Yes that is annoying, but it also does this for removing programs/drivers, anything like that. I was cleaning up my computer one day and almost uninstalled the VideoCard driver for my computer, but because it asked permission, I obviously said no.

There are little things here and there, like compatibility with programs. A lot of programs won't run on a MAC os. Someone I know, went and sold there laptop for a MAC, and I warned them before they did so that a lot of the programs they use, will not work on a MAC. They didn't care, they tried a MAC and thought it was great. 2 weeks later he sold his MAC and now has a laptop with XP on it.

For me it's not about personal preference, it's about what I can do with my computer. For me, I have no use for a MAC. Yes I have used them, and no I don't like them.

For however much MAC laptops are going for, read the specs of the computer itself. 80 gig hard drive, 2 gig of ram. You can double that or more, if you buy a pc with vista/xp on it.

The macbook air, $3500.00. Doesn't even come with a cd-rom, needs to be bought seperately. People think Windows are all about making the money, but look at price differences compared to what you can potentially get in each.

One more thing, if you install XP on your MAC at the same time as the mac osx, that's taking more space of the tiny hd's that come with macs. So no, it's not really beneficial to install XP and the mac os both on the same machine.

That's all I have. Sorry. :oops:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ophiuchus

Thats probably one of the biggest beefs I have with MAC users is that its almost a religion more than just a machine to them and they just want to cram it down peoples' throats.

---

I totally agree. Last time I was at an Apple store the kid helping me had a tattoo on the back of his neck of their Apple logo. I'm all for tattoos but thats a bit over the top.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by piper

Hello, I'm an IT Consultant myself. At work we use Windows XP, at home I have Vista. The only reason I have Vista is because it came pre-installed with the laptop I have now.

The problem people have with Vista, is they say it runs slow. Well the reason is plain in simple, Vistas graphics are a lot more demanding then XP. When I first got my laptop it only had 1 gig of ram in it (2 512 sticks). All I did was go out and buy a 2 gig($55) stick of ram and pop it in, update the BIOS and I was good to go. If you don't update the bios, you may see the blue screen of death.

It does seem annoying after a while that when you try to install a program/application on your computer, it asks you permission to do so. Yes that is annoying, but it also does this for removing programs/drivers, anything like that. I was cleaning up my computer one day and almost uninstalled the VideoCard driver for my computer, but because it asked permission, I obviously said no.

There are little things here and there, like compatibility with programs. A lot of programs won't run on a MAC os. Someone I know, went and sold there laptop for a MAC, and I warned them before they did so that a lot of the programs they use, will not work on a MAC. They didn't care, they tried a MAC and thought it was great. 2 weeks later he sold his MAC and now has a laptop with XP on it.

For me it's not about personal preference, it's about what I can do with my computer. For me, I have no use for a MAC. Yes I have used them, and no I don't like them.

For however much MAC laptops are going for, read the specs of the computer itself. 80 gig hard drive, 2 gig of ram. You can double that or more, if you buy a pc with vista/xp on it.

The macbook air, $3500.00. Doesn't even come with a cd-rom, needs to be bought seperately. People think Windows are all about making the money, but look at price differences compared to what you can potentially get in each.

One more thing, if you install XP on your MAC at the same time as the mac osx, that's taking more space of the tiny hd's that come with macs. So no, it's not really beneficial to install XP and the mac os both on the same machine.

That's all I have. Sorry. :oops:

---

Anyone with a big corporate logo(not your own small business or something similar) tatooed on them is a gigantic tool in my book unless they are a ceo or own the company etc...

As far as running XP on a Mac, my sister's laptop had a 120gb hard drive and I used the minimum 32gb size for XP. She basically runs office, windows photoshop and other similar programs on there and the rest on mac OS. Its the best of both worlds since she's not limited by one system.

And I agree with you on cost as I mentioned before. When you buy a mac you're paying for a brand name and you're stuck with mac everything. With a PC, you have a ridiculous array of products/support to choose from. So you pay double or sometimes triple for a machine of equal capabilites for all intents and purposes.

Now, I still love the macbook laptops but I can get a nice web browsing/word processing laptop for like $400 that'll do everything I need it to just fine. For graphic heavy stuff/games I see no point in a laptop unless its your only computer. This is where the PC really shines from a price standpoint as you can get a very nice one for under a grand. Like I mentioned before I can build a pretty good dual core AMD based machine for about $600. This is basically just pulling the mobo/video card(I don't have to change the vid card but a radeon 9600 is just not getting it done anymore) and ram and replacing it with a new mobo/video card and ram. Oh and a new heatsink.

Vista does have massive memory loads compared to XP but ram is so dirt cheap now that it should never be an issue. I still do find Vista to be pretty buggy which is why I prefer XP but it'll get worked out in a year or so. Remember when Windows 2000 came out? By the time they got a few service packs out it was a really great OS. I used it for quite awhile with no issues from 2001-2004. Support is there, Microsoft isn't going to just sit there and let Vista lose to Leopard, they'll tweak/upate/fix and stay competitive.

I will never. Ever. Own a mac. EVER.

Down with proprietary hardware!!!

PC OWNS
MAC FAILS :rofl:

I love macs. I love everything about them. I don't feel like i'm being babysat by the user interface, and it just... works. It doesn't do weird stuff i don't ask it to do, and it communicates well.

I have a linux machine at home for stuff that just doesn't work on mac, but i only fire that thing up once every few months or so for like.. games.

Macs are very smart and operate with a good-faith relationship with the user. I just don't feel that way about windows. Windows is for.. like.. the people who hate computers and only use them because they have to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Morphie

Macs are very smart and operate with a good-faith relationship with the user. I just don't feel that way about windows. Windows is for.. like.. the people who hate computers and only use them because they have to.

---

See, now I feel the opposite. Granted I've only used a mac once or twice, but to me it felt very dumbed-down. Of course, I'm one of those people who like to know everything that is going on with my computer. It only does what I tell it, when I tell it. Most people's problems with PC's come from them doing something without realizing what it is they're doing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Morphie

I love macs. I love everything about them. I don't feel like i'm being babysat by the user interface, and it just... works. It doesn't do weird stuff i don't ask it to do, and it communicates well.

I have a linux machine at home for stuff that just doesn't work on mac, but i only fire that thing up once every few months or so for like.. games.

Macs are very smart and operate with a good-faith relationship with the user. I just don't feel that way about windows. Windows is for.. like.. the people who hate computers and only use them because they have to.

---

Ugh Mac tagline sighted!!! They don't always just "work", they have their issues as well. I don't feel like Windows babysits me at all, I tell it to do something and it does it. If it won't its a safeguard or a setting that you just need to change.

Plus if they always "work" then the Mac fixit forums would not exist. Not saying that PCs don't have their issues either but think about it for a second. There are a TON of companies out there making PCs competing for sales. Some of these companies use really cheap parts to sell a computer that has a nice set of specs on paper but winds up being crap when things start to break left and right. My wife's uncle's e-machine from wal-mart has all sorts of issues and he hates the thing. My homebuilt PC from 2003 has run like a champion for over 5 years because I used quality parts instead of garbage that gets put into stuff like e-machines and their ilk.

I built my PC with top of the line parts(well, back in 2003 anyways) and its still going strong right now. Plus when things do break I can replace them for cheap, good luck doing that on a Mac. I'm still debating on whether I want to drop the money for a full mobo/processor/etc... upgrade or if I just want to get another gig of ram, a bigger hard drive and just go with what I have for another few years. I have that luxury and would not with a Mac. If something on a Mac breaks you're going to pay an arm and a leg for the part and then if you can't install it you have to go to a specialty store that's going to charge another arm and a leg to do it leaving you like the guy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail(tis just a flesh wound!).

Sorry, I just don't think its smart to get a Mac desktop. Laptop I can argue for but not the desktop.

My next PC or laptop will be Alienware. You can't judge PC's as a whole until you've tried one. Dells, gateways, emachines, etc are just crap loaded with spam compared to those computers. I'll never buy a dell ever again.
As for Macs, they aren't that great. I've had to use them for art school and I dislike them. They have just as many issues as PC's in my experience with them and they aren't that much better for art either. The only difference is that Mac supposedly looks better and look more artsy, but that's just the social stigma (cult) that surrounds them. When it comes to how obnoxious the users of these two systems have been, Mac users totally tip the scales so far with the people I have encountered. I'm not saying that's true for everyone though, that's just my experience with a small sample size population ;)

My pc has alway been trouble, but my wife is a teacher and the mac laptop she has never has or give us any problems I will never buy a pc again, its a waist of money.