Considering a Mac questions...

[Allin4greeN]

Although my second computer was an Apple IIGs (first was a RS TRS80) I've been using PC's for the past 15 years or so. Recently, I've been considering a PowerBook Pro as my next home computer purchase.

I have a few assumptions that I'm basing my decision on and I'm hoping some forum folks can help me confirm or challenge my thoughts. TIA.

1) I'm running an 802.11g network, am I right in thinking that the PowerBook will be compatible with my existing network/router (Linksys)?
2) A few years ago I had a conversation with one of our IT folks and it revolved around the superior security characteristics of Mac's vs. PC's, from viruses and other less passive attacks. Is Mac still a "safer" choice? Would I still need to run protection software like antivirus or antispyware? This is one of my biggest considerations in switching.
3) Any other considerations in the debate between Mac and PC?

I've been a poweruser on PC's, mostly data extraction via SQL/Access and an intregrated information system but, in considering a new home computer, I'd like to slot it into my HT and begin using it more for AV duties (video, photo, etc.).

Help in making a good decision?

 

[jgags6]

1. Your router is fine
2. I dont know what the statistics are, but i dont have any antivirus software on my macs and Ive never had a problem with anything like that in over 6 years.
3. If your a big gamer, stay with a pc, but if you just use your computer for web browsing and email, then get a mac.

Ive had macs for over 6 years and there is no way i would EVER go back to a pc. They are so simple and i have hardly ever had any problems with them. I think in my year of using macs ive only had to restart my computer (becuase it froze) 2 times, and I leave my computer on 24/7.

 

[Allin4greeN]

1. Your router is fine
2. I dont know what the statistics are, but i dont have any antivirus software on my macs and Ive never had a problem with anything like that in over 6 years.
3. If your a big gamer, stay with a pc, but if you just use your computer for web browsing and email, then get a mac.

Ive had macs for over 6 years and there is no way i would EVER go back to a pc. They are so simple and i have hardly ever had any problems with them. I think in my year of using macs ive only had to restart my computer (becuase it froze) 2 times, and I leave my computer on 24/7.

Thanks for the feedback! I primarily use my XB360 for gaming. It's been awhile since my PC was called upon for those duties.

Not having to reboot every day would be a major plus. Do Mac's have god awful pop-ups every 10 seconds after initial boot? My parents' new Dell is a nightmare with nearly every application running, popping up some random information prompt almost non-stop. I just don't think I can go there, it would drive me up a wall!

 

[jgags6]

Nope, I dont think Ive ever gotten any popups from my computer. Definately not right after booting up!

 

[Zombie069]

Thanks for the feedback! I primarily use my XB360 for gaming. It's been awhile since my PC was called upon for those duties.

Not having to reboot every day would be a major plus. Do Mac's have god awful pop-ups every 10 seconds after initial boot? My parents' new Dell is a nightmare with nearly every application running, popping up some random information prompt almost non-stop. I just don't think I can go there, it would drive me up a wall!

If you have to reboot every day why don't you clean up your system? People like to blame windows when they load 100 worthless programs and the system slows down to a crawl.
Take that new dell POS and wipe it and do a clean install of windows. Dell/gateway/hp whoever are notorious for loading trialware out the a$$. This is where popup prompts are coming from.
I have not rebooted my PC in over 70 days.. But I maintain my system.
Get a Mac if your tired of enjoying your computer experience.

 

[Allin4greeN]

If you have to reboot every day why don't you clean up your system? People like to blame windows when they load 100 worthless programs and the system slows down to a crawl.
Take that new dell POS and wipe it and do a clean install of windows. Dell/gateway/hp whoever are notorious for loading trialware out the a$$. This is where popup prompts are coming from.
I have not rebooted my PC in over 70 days.. But I maintain my system.
Get a Mac if your tired of enjoying your computer experience.

An avid PC person I see I overexaggerated the reboots just a bit. This Gateway laptop and my Gateway PC have both served me well for over 7 years and 5 years, respectively. I do regular maintenance, including the Registry, and put 'em into Hibernation when they're not in use. I actually rarely have to reboot but, when something goes wrong, especially on this old laptop, it goes horribly wrong. Some Dell tech recently had my parents wipe the HDD on theirs and reinstall everything. It's only a year old! There's so much crap on that machine that I'm still disabling pop-ups and system tray nonsense a week after they reinstalled.

A recent experience with an antivirus app has me looking for alternatives in computing. Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't I enjoy my comptuing experience with a Mac?

 

[Zombie069]

An avid PC person I see I overexaggerated the reboots just a bit. This Gateway laptop and my Gateway PC have both served me well for over 7 years and 5 years, respectively. I do regular maintenance, including the Registry, and put 'em into Hibernation when they're not in use. I actually rarely have to reboot but, when something goes wrong, especially on this old laptop, it goes horribly wrong. Some Dell tech recently had my parents wipe the HDD on theirs and reinstall everything. It's only a year old! There's so much crap on that machine that I'm still disabling pop-ups and system tray nonsense a week after they reinstalled.

A recent experience with an antivirus app has me looking for alternatives in computing. Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't I enjoy my comptuing experience with a Mac?

Yes an avid PC person.. But inspite of myself, I don't hate Macs, they are just useless to me.. I do more than surf the net. I like games and such as well.
First thing I notice is you say "including the Registry".. I don't know how this falls into regular maintenance. Don't get me wrong as I don't know your skill level, but stay out of the registry.. Only do things like that if it's absolutely necessary, as in a virus infection or something. Ran XP for years and NEVER had to maintane the registry.

Also, all those cute little programs that people like to get to "fix the registry" or "speed up your computer" are JUNK.. Windows comes with the tools it needs to support itself, use them.
As for the gateway restore, yes, it's loaded down now again with all the crap the factory put on it. This is the sole reason I build all of my own PC's.. Gateway was the WORST I've ever seen about loading down a perfectly good computer to the point it was useless.. I'd wipe it again and load a clean copy of XP and leave all the crap out.
Windows always gets the blame is these situations, as that's what people see. "Ohh my new XXXXX laptop is slower than molassas, it's that dam new windows that came on it." When in reality it's the 300 worthless trialwares that XXXXX computer company was nice enough pile on for it's vendors.

edit: My .02 on the antivirus issue.... PCCillin... have used it since '99 and have had NO virus's since '99

 

[DefDude]

I see that your member name has bmw logo, that is your answer, a mac is a bmw or another fine auto, and a pc is is a ford "fix or repair daily". most people get a pc because of price and defend it till the end only because they cannot afford a mac. I consider a pc a gaming machine and a bussiness device " again because of price" todays macs are compatable with any office system because of intel chip and the ability to run osx and windows,but you still would have the windows vulnerabilty's when operating in the windows side. the mac is more like set it and forget it when it comes to security.

 

[Zombie069]

Haha, while I like your analogy, I wouldn't insult BMW.
The reason there are "vulnerabilities" in windows machines and not in macs is because macs are not as popular.
You say pc users have mac envy because we "can't afford one.".. Why would I want to pay 2x's the amount, for a fourth the ability. If you do nothing but watch your stocks and make a couple word documents, then by all means waste money for the mac. If you do video editing, content creation, etc. you SHOULD have a mac.
Hack losers don't try to exploit, or write virus's for, a platform that isn't popular, thus macs are deemed "safer" when the fact is it's not worth it due to limited target machines.

Macs do a couple things, exceptionally well.
PC's do a lot of things, pretty good.
Figure out what you can live with and run with it.

 

[koolbean]

I made the jump about 6 months ago from the PC to a Mac. Vista was the main reason for the change. It is the worst OS I have ever used. micro$oft needs a new OS built from the ground up; not to keep adding to Windows 95. I got the 24'' Imac. Had it for a month and a half before the new model came out I sold it on Ebay for $200.00 less than I paid for it. They hold there $$$ far better than a PC. The new aluminum 24" Imac was $200.00 less than my first one... even swap. Because it is an intel machine you can run windows on it. I put XP media center as my boot option and really never use it. As for gaming if you were the guy that spent $500.00 every 6 months to have that new video card I would say keep the PC; This mac has an ATI Radeon HD 2600 with 256 megs of ram. There is no game on the market that I could not play if I wanted. So it's not that a new mac will not play a game if you wanted to. Can you upgrade it? Yes and NO. When does one upgrade? Faster video card for games? Not an issue for you. Bigger hard drive? USB or Firewire Ext. drive takes care of that. Ram? No problem. When it's time to upgrade the OS windows 'basic' is $100.00 and goes up from there. OS X has only one version and is $129.00. And guess what? No activation. No serial. I have also been a power user / builder of PC for 20 years. Do i miss the PC? nope; If I need it all I have to do is hit option on the keyboard at boot and I have a Windows machine running a 2.4 GHZ intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of ram. So I never really left it. The Mac and OS X were a nice change for me and I don't really look back.
I hate to start a flame war on this subject (PC vs Mac) but what I have said is not my opinion but the truth. (other than how I feel about vista) Please feel free to PM me and I'll be glad to help you out and answer any questions you might have.

 

[Zombie069]

While all valid points, I don't agree with you $500 vid card every six months..
While some will do this to "keep on the cutting edge" it's not reality for the other 98% of us. I do have a good gaming machine but I usually only upgrade when it becomes necessary to support what I'm playing.
As for games.. Try looking at the selection available for the mac.. By the time a game is ported to mac platform it's so outdated it's worthless..
Runnin the mac-tel crossbreed may solve this for some but I would rather not reboot my machine everytime I want to switch tasks..
Again, I'm not against macs, and would like pretty silver tower just to play with. The point of all of this goes back to people blaming windows for everything and jumping ship to mac when in fact it's usually a self-caused problem.
Everyone is free to choose what they like, sadly most are just not educated enough to make informed decisions. Rather than fix the problem, they complain and buy something different.

 

[jgags6]

If the problems with pcs are just caused by the consumer, then why arnt those same people complaining about their macs after they have had them long enough to put a bunch of junk on them and "screw" them up?

 

[Zombie069]

1) there's not a bunch of junk made to run on a mac.. See posts above..
2) people are always more carefull with something new.. Some guy that's been using a PC since win95 and "thinks' he knows all about it is more apt to go try to "fix" something and cause problems than a guy that just $2k on a shiney new mac that he knows nothing about.

I'm not trying to stick up for MS here, just trying to get people to see where the problems really are first.. I've screwed up my machine many many times, and lost some precious data in the process.. BUT, I didn't cry about it and blame windows and sell my MS crappy broken OS and run out and buy a mac.. I learned what I did wrong..

 

[jgags6]

2) people are always more carefull with something new.. Some guy that's been using a PC since win95 and "thinks' he knows all about it is more apt to go try to "fix" something and cause problems than a guy that just $2k on a shiney new mac that he knows nothing about.
.

Thats why I said above, that people who have had macs for 5 years or greater still don't complain. Their mac isn't new, and Im sure that there is a percentile that knows that their doing with their mac. Thats why I think your argument isn't very legit. People can still fill their macs up with crap, and they can still change an option or do something else that would cause their mac to run worse that it did when they first got it, but you dont hear about these problems as much as you do with ms, mainly because these problems dont occur on macs.

 

[Zombie069]

but you dont hear about these problems as much as you do with ms, mainly because these problems dont occur on macs.

Well, you can lead a horse to water........

As far as you thinking my agrument is legit or not, who cares..? Not I.. Use what you want..

Not hearing about it... Say 80% of people use MS and 20% use Mac.. (hypethitical, feel free to change these to more realistic numbers, say 95%vs5%. lol) We'll call our population 1 million to keep it real simple.
Of the 800k MS users 10% are in some way unhappy and vocal about it.
Of the 200K Mac users, 10% are in some way unhappy and vocal about it.

Now, here we are with probably 1% of the total unhappy people coming here to complain and voice their issues.
Soo 800 people show up to bash MS and 200 people show up to bash Mac. If you apply the more real world numbers above, you can see how it does seem like everyone is bashing MS, because we so outnumber Mac users, by default there is more complaining.
I've spent almost equal time fixing/formatting/restoring/fighting software issues on pc's AND macs.. Macs DO have many of the same issues. If you load them up with crap (like any machine) they spit back in your face. This does not mean OSX sucks tho, it means the operator sucks.

 

[Zombie069]

And, since you are trying to get to a point you can call victory on with me....

If everyone hates MS and Vista and the Intel machines sooooo bad...

WHY DID MAC MAKE IT WORK ON THEIR MACHINES??????
Why did they "go to the darkside" and allow a desgusting, detestful Intel chip inside their glamorous little cases?

:

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I was a very solid PC guy... until about 3 months ago.

I never wanted a Mac or even considered one... until 3 months ago.

So what happened 3 months ago?

A co worker brought in his Macbook Pro, and showed me what it could do... I was HOOKED!

I do a lot of video editing and am starting to do a lot of HD, my PC would choke on HD editing (even though the specs were much higher then what was needed to do HD editing.

I love the fact that it now runs the Mac OS, but Windows XP and Unix as well, its like having 3 computers in one.

I picked up a 15" Macbook Pro and have loved it since I got it. I now use it more then my other PC's. I love having the best of everything at my fingertips.

 

[jgags6]

Zombie you really need to take a deep breath and relax. Although you say that you dont care what my opinion is, your little freakout made me think the opposite. Nonetheless, Thank you for your great comparison between PCs and macs. It really helped me visualize the topic in which we are discussing. My hat goes off to you because you are clearly right. PCs are the computer of choice for mostly everyone in the world and Macs are for the stupid, incapable, non-computer fixing portion of the world's population. I don't remember ever saying that Intel is a bad processor nor do I remember saying anything about hating MS or vista, but since you claim "everyone" does I guess I do.

 

[Zombie069]

Well I didn't "freakout" about anything. Simply put, your opinion is yours to do with what you like, it makes no difference to me.. We can play symantics all day long, "everyone" was a generalization.. Obviously everyone in the world couldn't agree one 1 thing good or bad.
By reading all these and others posts (where this started) I was making a generalization about the subject.

What I do get angry over is people (such as yourself, no insult intended) who come on forums such as these and make blanket statements like "macs don't ever do that, is because you run windows...."
I realize most people type first and think later, and don't care about that they usually know about 10% of what they think they know. I'm here to gain and share knowledge about things that I know about. People passing along mis-information do a huge injustice to everyone. Read several of my posts lastnight and it will sound like I was on a tyraid... No so.. I just don't like it when people pass information that is just WRONG.

Case in point:
In April I rebuilt my Cummins in my truck. Somewhat mechanically inclined, but had been into anything this deep before. So I find a few sites related and start asking questions. Now there I am, $7000 in parts and machinework, relying on someone I don't know, will never meet or have no way of verifying, to give me accurate knowledge. Luckily I found a good forum with good people and now all is well..
This is something I DO know about and I try to look at it the same way. Others out there need help and guidance like I did.

People who simply reply "Vista sucks dont' get it" have contributed nothing and wasted time and space.. I'm not saying this is you, just know where I come from.

We're all here to learn something, and I like to help when I can, but I do still get irritated.

 

[jgags6]

What I do get angry over is people (such as yourself, no insult intended) who come on forums such as these and make blanket statements like "macs don't ever do that, is because you run windows...."

I do understand your point about people passing on wrong information, but I did not pass on any misinformation. Also I do not remember saying anything like your quote. I was simply giving a personal example. I have never had any problems with my mac. I did have problems with my PC. I did never say that it was becuase of windows. Nor did i ever say that Mac OS X was the reason that I do not have problems with my mac.

You do not need to attack people who are giving their personal experience.