Interesting Article: "I Gave Up My PC for a Mac"

Here's an interesting article for anyone really, especially those considering going to the Mac route:

"I gave up my PC for a Mac"
http://laptopmag.com/Features/Abandoning-My-PC-for-a-Mac.htm

I found it to be a good read myself, it's written in a casual manner and is easy to understand.

Enjoy, and Happy New Year.

 

interesting... i still would not buy a mac, for the same thing, compatability is just not there

 

Though Bootcamp is an option, and although Apple makes all their products look extremely cool to look at, the Cost benifits of their products are not that good. I could get a notebook twice as good as the MacBook for the same $1,100. I can get a Sony Vaio N series, just as sleek, for $899 - better graphics and more RAM. The realness of buying a Mac just isnt there.

 

Very interesting, I've heard ppl's talk about the Mac's exceptional abilities in media tasks and this proves it. However, since i'm a gamer and I'm not planning to go for a high end laptop with a so-so gaming power, Mac isn't for me. I love their designs though, they are really sleek and sexy .

 

compatability is there. How can you say it's not?

 

Wait...in Garage Band you can pick instruments and sort of Play them? Thats really cool. I would buy a Mac in a uick second if they sold 1GB 1.83 GHz models in store. Their usually 512mb.

 

Ok viao N is nowhere as sleek as the macbook. seriously...1.5 inches thick?!?!?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!?!

 

Thinckness doesnt matter to me. It is very nice looking and it coems in 3 intriguing colors. And plus, I'm still thinking about a mac!

 

Great find, Chaz! I agree, it is well-written and easy to understand. I'm surprised how he didn't mention that when you try and maximize a window, it doesn't fill the entire screen!
I guess it's the more subtle feathres that make Mac people love their machines!

 

Good article Chaz! The only beef I have with it is the WMA problem. The Windows version of iTunes will convert those. Also, it is the author's own fault for not using .mp3. Always use the standard. Other than that it was a good unbiased article.

 

Agree, no laptop would match the sleekness of the mac, especially the air vents, apple's vents are place to the back, and no where to be found underneath, or side of the laptop, which make it so sleek. (Sacrifices are made, tats y u hav "HOT" macs)

Others, vents every where but for the sake of cooling.

 

I admit that the N series looks nice, but as someone who goes to school with his laptop on a daily basis, I have to say that even with a car, size matters and smaller is better. The 1.5inch takes up room that can be shared between a 1.0inch macbook pro and a notebook or something.

 

I just read the whole article. This guy can write.

 

nice design.... mac??? what ever, they are all the same color what's so hard with that?. i am legally blind and i CAN paint one color. i like the sony n series WAY better than the macbook pro

As for compatablitity... does it run Zoomtext? No 99% of games? No...

there is hundreds of thousands of windows applications...

Mac's are NOT for some people and I am one of them.

 

When people talk about Mac-compatibility these days, not only do they mean that most apps are directly compatible or there are good replacements, but they also are referring to the Mac being the only system able to run any OS you want. With Parallels you can run Linux, OS X, Windows all at once. There is no more compatible machine than the mac.

 

Not only am I considering going that route - I think I have. About month ago I picked up a Black MacBook, just to test the waters inexpensively.

It took me about a week to find Mac Software to replace all my required PC functionality, and another week or so to find replacements for things I wanted but did not need. Now I'm at the point of playing with things like BootCamp, Parallels and additional OS's jut to test this machines limits.

The speed and stability and security sold me. A lot of the rest of the differences are often personal preference, and while I do prefer the way OS X does lot of things, there are some things I think XP does better, and overall I think they attempt to provide similar capability but in different ways.

Brief MS Tirade - skip if you like: There are more impressive hardware configurations on some PC laptops, but even Windows XP is far less stable and far less reliable than OS X, not to mention the security and speed issues. I don't expect Vista to be much better than XP given some of the things I've already read, and as Microsoft continues along the path of imposing more draconian schemes to protect revenue while reducing value, I don't plan to be along for the ride anymore. If MS had a world class solution I would not mind paying a world class price - but they don't so I won't ;-)

So while I just meant to dabble a bit, I find myself almost exclusively using my MacBook, and I am working on selling my PCs. Over time I'll replace all my PC's with Mac's! I figure the time I save downloading updates, recovering from glitches and maintaining the systems will be more than worth the price of admission.

Keep up the good work Apple!

 

the compatibility is most certainly there

 

I'll be buying an Apple after a year. I want a MBP to be in black though.

 

Don't forget that Steve Jobs originally had wanted Richard Sapper to design these machines--not the in-house staff.

What did Richard Sapper design?

 

thinkpads, right? aesthetically, there is no comparing the two. Functionally, on the other hand...

I'm also considering the MBP for my next computer. Just waiting for Parallels to run the Aero features of Vista, if that will ever happen. I do some basic development work in MS office, and strive to have things be compatible across both mac and windows platforms. Having both on the same machine is very appealing, and not possible any other way. I like the idea of having a virtual machine instead of using bootcamp, but if I am going to pony up the cash for vista, I want to have all the bells and whistles.

 

Its fine if you don't like Macs, but don't think Sony's products don't come with their own problems. If you are going to go PC, do it right.

 

I don't know. They make Photoshop for Windows too.

 

I made the switch about 2 weeks ago.

 

I'm considering the move and would love to hear what you think now that it's been awhile, glad you switched? Would you do it over again?

Here's my pros and cons, would love to hear what you think of them now that you made the switch.

The reasons I wouldn't switch:
- I know PC, Mac is unknown...this will be my only machine and it will be used for work (graphic designer)
- I can't use 2 external monitors...the only reasonable workaround is a large widescreen, I currently have 2 19" monitors.
- It will be a bit more expensive. This only comes from the software, the hardward initially is pretty even. Though I can imagine adding things will be more expensive on a mac.
- I've heard some things can be a pain in mac that are flawless in XP. For example something as simple as reading from a thumb drive.

The reasons I would switch:
- I hate how slow my OS is. It crawls, freezes and I know that I need to reboot at least every other day. My friend who has a mac forgot his password because he hadn't rebooted in months!
- It's fast. This was a 2 or 3 year old macbook and applications opened quickly, I could bounce back and forth. Things that would take my 3 year old desktop a while to go back and forth between.
- I don't play games which seems to be the only downfall I can find.

 

Are you using OS 7, OS 8? Or OS 9?

I know, I know, you imply you're using Windows. But in all of the years of development work I've done, my experience has been that Windows 3.1 was susceptible to screen "freeze" about as often as on Macs (which, by the way, not only suffered from regular irrecoverable screen freezes but were also glacial to boot up compared to Win 3.1 and Win 95).

Win 2000--while boots could be a little slow depending on the volume of stuff installed on the system--also crashes with some driver conflicts depending on vendor and extreme activity. But if you're not running high-end graphics, that was rare. Everyday use is unlikely to crash a preemptive multitasking (especially a protected memory) machine with anything like the frequency you describe. And a screen "freeze" (as opposed to a BSOD) is so rare as to be unexperienced over the life of machine ownership with over 99.99% of users.

I'll put up XP as one of the most stable, and fast-booting, operating systems in widespread use. Blue screens are exceedingly rare, and while I've had corruption problems with it, it has a marvelous calendar rollback feature that lets one revert back in time to a last acceptable stable.

 

Intersintg. I'm not sure how many laptops you can use more than 1 external monitor with though. I've seen a few, but not many. I dunno, nothing in OS X has been a pain compared to XP. XP is a nice OS, don't get me wrong. But I would only use it to play games in now. Theres no reason that I've found to do any production work on it. I can do all my software development, oracle/DB management, web dev, and graphic design on an OS that is much nicer to use.

It has no problems reading from thumb drives. Yup, it is more expensive though. The kicker for me was being able to run boot camp and play games. plus I can now check my web design CSS code against all browsers, not just linux and windows ones if I had an XP machine.