Mac VS PC

[reptile3]

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.

[Damon Theis]

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. That's another thread too.

[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.

[Blue Apple Herps]

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).

[Blue Apple Herps]

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.

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.

[ScottyDsntKnow]

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.

[Kesslers Kreatures]

MAC MAC MAC MAC MAC


End Of Story.

[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.

[Kesslers Kreatures]

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.

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

[Entropy]

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.