I've Got This Overwhelming Urge...

[J. Allen]

To switch over to a Mac.
I guess I've been fostering that little seed that was planted years ago as I watched the G4 Macs roll off the line, and certainly movies made by companies like Pixar have helped nurture that little seed. I think the final straw was when Boot Camp came out and I could run a Mac and Windows environment, all in one powerful and beautifully styled machine.

Then, I saw this:
http://www.macofalltrades.com/Apple_.../g518im201.htm

A used Mac, in excellent condition, with everything my current PC has, for $600? Preposterous! But there it is. I could probably make $300 or $400 from my PC (if I sold the whole package, PC & 22" Acer Widescreen), and save up a little more and buy that Mac.

All I know is, I think I'm smitten.

J.

[Chaos Descending]

Don't do it, man.

Don't do it.

Think of the children.

[J. Allen]

Chaos Descending wrote:

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Don't do it, man.

Don't do it.

Think of the children.

I keep thinking to myself, "Why was I resisting the first place?" Price. Macs were always way too expensive for me. Yet here we are, the whole package for $600, something that is very recent, and has quite a punch to it. I could run OSX and Windows Vista on it. What more could I possibly need than a machine that can do all of that? I'd be willing to sell my computer to put toward that Mac.

J.

[Lindley]

Santa Claus wrote:

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I could run OSX and Windows Vista on it.

You could. Or you could run OSX and XP on it. Which is what I'd do.

[J. Allen]

Lindley wrote:

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You could. Or you could run OSX and XP on it. Which is what I'd do.

Yeah, that would probably be best.

I'm going to have to brush up on my understanding of OSX. It's been a while.

J.

[Lindley]

First rule of using OSX: Don't talk about using OSX.

Second rule of using OSX: When in doubt, the most obvious thing to do is probably right.

Most 2-button mice will work fine with any Mac. While you won't usually need the second button in OSX (since it's UI efficiencies are built more around keyboard shortcuts than the mouse anyway), the second button will be pretty much a necessity on the Windows side......

[MIB]

I'd find out whether any of your local computer stores has a mac tech on hand before you buy one. Otherwise, you're going to be shipping the thing off to some mac service center in Bumsville whenever something goes haywire. (Which is one of the reasons why I won't switch to mac myself.)

[jongredic]

I did this last year - I actually flew out to Chicago and bought it in the US. Even with the flight and the hotel it still worked out cheaper than the UK price

I've honestly never been impressed with it. Apart from the music and movie editing software, I can't really think of any particular reason to switch to Mac. I haven't found it to be more stable. I don't have as many application crashes - but that's because I can't afford most of the applications.

I did buy Parallels Desktop so I could run XP and some Linux distros, but it has some built in flaws regarding how much memory you can assign to a guest OS.

If I had the chance again, I'd probably give it a miss. It's a massively overpriced fashion statement, nothing more. It's time the Commodore 64 made a comeback.

Failing that, stick with XP

[billcosby]

With my 4th hard drive dead in 4 years...
I'm thinking the same thing.

It doesn't even affect me anymore. It's like... oh, another dead hard drive. Everything is backed up in the expectation of such an event.

The only thing is not being able to play games. I'll have to keep a spare PC for gaming, and have work and photos on the Mac.

[FordSVT]

I paid about $100 more a couple of months ago for a brand new Quad Core Q6600 2.4Ghz Intel with 3GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive and a 22" monitor. I'll take hardware power per $$$ any day of the week, which is why I'll probably never own a Mac.

To each his own though, buy what makes you happy.

I've never been an OSX fan. I grew up with Windows and find it very simple. I like that there are usually half a dozen different ways to do any one thing. Vista has worked great for me, no complaints.

[Lindley]

A Cosby Christmas wrote:

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The only thing is not being able to play games. I'll have to keep a spare PC for gaming, and have work and photos on the Mac.

Why keep a spare PC? Just dual-boot with XP. It'll work fine. My brother plays Crysis that way on his MacBook Pro.

Besides, there are plenty of Mac games even if you don't do that.

[BCI]

Macs are overpriced. PC has twice the bang for the buck. And why use bootcamp - because there is no software for Macs. These things are definitely better in the imagination.

[Lindley]

BCI wrote:

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And why use bootcamp - because there is no software for Macs.

I'll be sure to pass that along to everyone who got on just fine on Macs for years before Boot Camp came along.

It's a bonus which lets us play a few games that never made the jump, nothing more.

Boot Camp is really more useful as an incitement to Windows users to be able to retain their old environment while trying out a Mac, than as something long-time Mac users are likely to spend much time with.

[BCI]

Another downside is that you have to pay for every minor upgrade to the operating software. And should you refuse to do so, half your other programs will stop functioning.

[Lindley]

BCI wrote:

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Another downside is that you have to pay for every minor upgrade to the operating software. And should you refuse to do so, half your other programs will stop functioning.

Huh? Bug-fix upgrades are free, they come in via the Software Update tool.

Only major version changes (10.4->10.5 for instance) must be purchased, and nothing stops working if you don't upgrade. (Although future software may stop being backward compatible a year or three down the line.) Changes which will be particularly significant, such as 10.5 dropping support for Classic Mode, tend to prompt the backwards-compatibility reprieve to last longer for most products.

These major version changes come about a bit more frequently than MS releases a new OS, but not overly so. There's typically one every two years or thereabouts. And once you own a copy of the new major version, you can install it on all of your family's machines (if they are fast enough to handle it, of course), since Apple doesn't do the "activation key" stuff.

You've got a lot of misconceptions about Macs....