Mac's and PC's :-)

[swyn]

With a large family of eight our original Mac SE had a hard time but it taught us all to work a 'pooter. This was well before our 'internet' days 20 years ago. We then upgraded to another which was an iMac SE with dial-up modem built in....Wow, a whole new worlld opened up! The old SE was still used as a word processor with mac word (still a good system)
When internet banking/shopping came into our lives our little iMac really struggled so on the advice of a specialist internet company, who were sharing office space with me at work, I purchased a Mac mini. This was a massive improvement and we've never looked back.
All of us now have Mac minis except those who work for 'the establishment' where compatibility is still problematic.
I have no idea how a pc works, so have no comparison to make there!

Simply put, from our families point of view, Mac is a reliable and useful tool. We would struggle without this to do many things. What it does, it does well, without fuss, for a long time. What more does one want! I personally have never worried about the price.....Even though we've never needed or wanted the top of the range models.

Swyn.

 

[Dingo]

yeah i hear you

Verloc, agreed there's no comparison between a £300 laptop and a mac book (pro) but there's a lot of difference between a £1000+ laptop and a macbook or especially a mac pro going at £2k

i think that if i had the dosh i'd get one but they're so hard to justify

you dont have to have many days of unproductiveness to warrant spending the extra dollar my friend, and when you think of the ongoing expense over the next say 3,4,5 years they become even cheaper.
Depends if you put a value on your time reinstalling, rebooting and generally being miffed cus the darn things running slow again!

Sorry bout the capitals the keyboards broke! That can happen on any computer

 

[ged]

I've got Ubuntu on an old 1.6 laptop and its OK but took a heck of a lot of messing about to get it connected to my wireless network so in all honesty won't be using it again (life's too short).

I'm a long time Unix/Xenix/GNU/Linux user. That gives me a lot of breathing space. I don't need to use anti-virus packages for example, and there are no BSOD-type issues. Many of my machines average continuous operation in the hundreds of days and the only reason they get rebooted at all is to update the kernel - which more often than not isn't really necessary. I tried Ubuntu a couple of years ago and I didn't get on with it, plus at the time it had a lot of trouble with my 64-bit AMD Opteron multiprocessor machines. I expect it's better from that point of view now, but there still seems to be quite a lag in the updates and Debian worked out of the box on the Opterons.

You might want to try Debian (the current 'stable' release is version 5, which is called 'Lenny'). I'm using that on at least half a dozen machines for work. I actually don't like quite a lot of things about it, and I tailor it a lot to suit the way I do things, but IMO it's much more capable, complete and workable than most of the other (what I would call) "consumer orientated" GNU/Linux distributions. The update system is the main reason I use it, IMO it's the best going by a long way and it saves me a great deal of work.

Probably the main snag with Debian 'stable' is that has a rather conservative approach to software enhancements (as opposed to security and bug fixes) so you aren't on what we call the 'bleeding edge' like you can be with some other distros, although you can go for Debian 'unstable' or 'testing' if you like a little excitement in your computing. That's not my scene. There are about 15,000 packages available from the Debian archives. If you can't find something that does what you want in there it probably doesn't exist. You could write it though. The default user interface in Lenny is Gnome. It's easy to use but it's one of the things I don't like much, so I usually replace it with fvwm2 on machines which I will use myself and need a GUI. Sorry, Graphical User Interface. Many of the machines I manage are servers, so they don't need one. The network manager is another one of my pet hates about Debian, like Gnome it's a bit too 'helpful' for my taste. My networks tend to be a bit more complex than it's expecting and it gets in the way more than it helps, so I disable it. But I don't think your wireless setup should give it any trouble. If you're into entertainment, I recommend mplayer for videos and music. My wife has about five terabytes of videos and music on disc (yes, it's all properly purchased ) plus getting on for 20,000 digital photos that we've taken. She's written a Web-driven front end for her entertainment/photo database and I have to admit I'm impressed with it.

I don't really want to compare Mac/Windows/Unix, there isn't time to do the job justice. But I do have a (personal) Mac and I can't remember the last time I switched it on, and some of our suppliers at work will give us free PCs with Windows on them for doing purchase ordering from them. I tell them that if they send a PC with Windows on it to us, I'll put it straight in the skip. Being unable to log more than one user into a powerful computer is a criminal waste of resources, and having to reboot a machine because you've changed some network setting is downright laughable. I can't believe the world puts up with such junk. I don't do Internet banking, I think my security is better than my bank's:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8620432.stm

 

[rik_uk3]

Cheers Ged, I put XP Pro back on the laptop, I only use it to run an excel spread sheet and small data base for another hobby will use it for web access via a dongle when out camping.

 

[Firebringer]

I'm stunned, well into page 2 of a discussion about Macs vs PC's and things haven't (yet) completely degenerated into the kind of rabid vitriol usually reserved for civil wars or Scottish football.

 

[Tony]

He he, yeah, I was wondering if it would survive

Now at last after all these years i htink i've finaly been sold on getting a mac,anyone see any good deals let me know

 

[Adze]

You've been sold on the idea of a Mac by the arguments put forward in this thread?

Err... Tony - could I interest you in a lorry load of snow I've got for sale mate? Yours for the meagre sum of an arm and a leg, or a leg and an arm I'm not fussy.

 

[steveparry]

I bought my MacBook Pro - a top of the line model - from the refurbished section of Apple's online store. You get about 20% off and the machine's have the same 1 year warranty as a new one. They're the ones people have bought and not got on with (eg one dead pixel or ex pc users) so returned as new. I thought the one dead pixel would be awful but after a few days use I don't notice it at all. Get a Mac. Just remembered Apple updated their MacBook Pros last week. The new one's are a league ahead in terms of battery life/graphics processor. I expect it may be a few weeks before these new models appear in the Refurbished store.

Steve