Quote :

"i honest to god havent had a PC crash on me in like 3 years"

switched to a Mac too eh?

[Edited on August 8, 2007 at 9:31 AM. Reason : ^]

8/8/2007 9:31:06 AM

Quote :

"Not to hate but it sounds like your Dads problem - Not Dell's."

Perhaps, but we left for the weekend with it working fine, no one was at home, and when we came back it no longer recognized JPEGs.

That hasn't been the only weird problem over the years, but the fact remains that I've had four Macs and never had any problem resembling that one.

8/8/2007 9:34:30 AM

i haven't had a pc crash in a long time myself. probably 3 or 4 years.

8/8/2007 10:09:59 AM

I've decided that with Windows XP vs. OS X, it's no longer about which crashes more or less, which has more programs, which gets less viruses/spyware, etc.
As far as I'm concerened, both OS's are mature and stable enough so that those shouldn't be issues. I know some people still have issues with crashes and viruses, but I don't. My Windows XP and OS 10.4 machines both run silky smooth. Neither crash, both have an abundance of programs, and I've never gotten a virus or had a spyware problem on either of them.

Therefore, discounting all that, it comes down to user experience, which is similar to what I was talking about with software UI on the previous page. As long as both machines run fine, why not choose the one that you enjoy using the most? The one that looks and feels better to use, has more integrated programs that have nice interfaces and functionality, and yes, even the one that simply looks better just sitting on your desk. If you go by that criteria, then the Mac wins out.

8/8/2007 10:17:01 AM

well, as far as programs go, it's kind of split between mac and pc. for me personally there are a few pieces of software that i use for work that aren't on mac.


but i really like the unix backbone on os x. (and DOS is really crappy in comparison)

[Edited on August 8, 2007 at 10:22 AM. Reason : .]

8/8/2007 10:22:00 AM

and keep in mind, with Parallels and VM Ware (and Boot Camp), the Mac will now run anything the PC can run at or near native speed. PC can't do that.
So as far as I'm concerned, there's no need to buy a PC any more when you can get your whole Mac and PC experience on a Mac.

8/8/2007 10:25:04 AM

thing is: there's nothing that i want to run that my pc can't run.

but believe me, when i get a new comp, i'll thinkabout getting a mac. maybe i'll just get a macbook at some point.

[Edited on August 8, 2007 at 10:37 AM. Reason : .]

8/8/2007 10:36:47 AM

^ yeah, that's fine.
and i'm not trying to make converts or convince anybody to give up PCs.

but I will still go back to the point that if you have 2 OSs that both are mature and stable, and both run whatever programs you need them to run, then you might as well choose the one that is most enjoyable to use. And a lot of people would pick OS X for that.

8/8/2007 10:39:18 AM

Quote :

"I've decided that with Windows XP vs. OS X, it's no longer about which crashes more or less, which has more programs, which gets less viruses/spyware, etc. As far as I'm concerened, both OS's are mature and stable enough so that those shouldn't be issues. I know some people still have issues with crashes and viruses, but I don't. My Windows XP and OS 10.4 machines both run silky smooth. Neither crash, both have an abundance of programs, and I've never gotten a virus or had a spyware problem on either of them."

well said. i think that pretty much summarizes why i've been looking to get a Mac for the last year. looking forward to Leopard so I can finally get one

8/8/2007 10:57:17 AM

Quote :

"but I will still go back to the point that if you have 2 OSs that both are mature and stable, and both run whatever programs you need them to run, then you might as well choose the one that is most enjoyable to use. And a lot of people would pick OS X for that."

Understandable. I guess its smilar to the preferences that you see in the threads of desktop screen captures... some have clean and elegant desktops with only a handful of icons while others have oodles of files/folders, embedded terminals/apps, RSS feeds, etc. I agree with your comments on Mac Pro and MacBook Pros, with regards to price, but the iMacs seem to be where Apple is gouging (which honestly makes sense given its target demographic).

I also have to say I haven't had my PC crash in several years and I've even been using Vista Ultimate x64 the last few months!

8/8/2007 10:59:31 AM

holy crap. this actually turned into a legitimate, non-flaming discussion of PC vs. Mac. i want to say that i am proud of all of you, because i don't think i've ever seen this before. well done.

8/8/2007 11:24:48 AM

^
Right when I was about to troll

8/8/2007 11:56:16 AM

does anyone know if the apple stores in Charlotte/Raleigh have these new iMacs yet? The new 24" imac at 1799$ seems like a really sweet deal. I'm waiting for OSX 10.5 (Leopard) before i buy one though.

8/8/2007 12:22:13 PM

I think 1200 for the 20 inch is a damn good deal...
and yea you are paying for a premium, but like that guy said, it's made up with the loss of headaches..
I have a dell for work, and I swear at it a few times daily..

8/8/2007 1:44:02 PM

yeah, if a mac is saving you from even an hour per week of not having to put up with windows crap, even if your time is worth a measly $10/hr, you will save over $500/year by using a mac instead. and that's pretty conservative estimate.

8/8/2007 1:53:37 PM

shame the tax free weekend was last weekend, eh?

8/8/2007 2:10:05 PM

yea that's what I'm angry about.. Had it been on tax free, I would have compulsively gone to the store and put in on credit

8/8/2007 3:34:18 PM

Quote :

"yeah, if a mac is saving you from even an hour per week of not having to put up with windows crap, even if your time is worth a measly $10/hr, you will save over $500/year by using a mac instead. and that's pretty conservative estimate."

That "not having to put up with windows crap" is pretty ambiguous and if you counter with "not having to put up with dual boot crap to use Windows" then you can make a similar claim for the other side. Besides, for the $1800 spent on that one 24" iMac, last week you could have purchased 3 Dell machines with 3 24" LCDs. Hell, I have 2Gb of RAM in my Vista machine now and if I wanted to upgrade to 4Gb it would cost me $60 but Apple wants to charge $700 to upgrade from 2 to 4 on the iMac. I understand the Premium for Mac Pro, but just don't get it for the iMacs.

8/8/2007 5:10:22 PM

Quote :

"I understand the Premium for Mac Pro"

there is no/little premium for Mac Pros. part-for-part, they are on par with high end dells.

and you can't compare upgrading the RAM on your PC by yourself to upgrading it your Mac Apple. You can upgrade your Mac RAM by yourself too, for exactly the same cost as your PC, because they use the exact same memory.
Everybody knows it's retarded to upgrade through Apple during the purchase, just like it is to upgrade through Dell. To upgrade a Dell Optiplex 745 from 2GB to 4GB is also $729 - http://tinyurl.com/2cyfy7

[Edited on August 8, 2007 at 5:21 PM. Reason : .]

8/8/2007 5:20:34 PM

^ That looks like the upgrade from 512 to 4GB 800 mhz ram. The point is valid though, pretty much all pc makes price their RAM upgrades up quite a bit. Apple upgrades seem to be in their own league of over-pricing though.

8/8/2007 6:41:27 PM

I switched to a mac at work after using a PC for about a year.

- The only PC program I missed was Matlab, which runs fine in parallels (for some reason, they didn't have Matlab for intel mac).
- I thought I would also miss Exchange, but Mac Entourage syncs the calendar and contacts with iCal and Address Book, so that was a non issue. People always mention that no Exchange is a big issue, but I must have not used any of Exchange-exclusive features in the first place.
- For my purposes (drawing nice-looking diagrams for papers), I also strongly prefer programs like OmniGraffle over Visio.
- Today, I started trying out Pages, Keynote, and Numbers, and I can see myself switching to those. I don't need all of the Office features (or the constant battle with Word), and the iWork programs can make what I already do look really nice. They also seem much more pleasant to use.
- I do like VisualStudio better than Xcode, but I don't really do a lot of development on my computer. I do, however, evaluate a lot of programming stuff, utilities, and server stuff. The UNIX platform is superior for that.
- To go along with that, drag and drop installation is the nicest thing ever. I wish installers that shotgun random files all over your system could be eliminated altogether.
- Reading PDFs is a whole lot nicer, and I do this enough for it to be an issue.
- Searching! Not only is spotlight better and faster for searching local drives, it's better for searching our team's network share. My coworkers are jealous of how I can do full text PDF searches on the network drive while windows search just chokes.
- In general, I have to fight less with the Mac to do simple things, and I have more control over what it does.
- One thing that's easy to overlook: Noise. I have one of the pro towers, and it's silent except for disk noise. Recently, I got officemates and they have similarly-equipped Dell towers. The Dell boxes are loud, running fans all the time. The ambient noise in the office has increased several orders of magnitude. This might seem nitpicky, but it's something that you can't help but notice when you are used to sweet silence.


[Edited on August 8, 2007 at 7:06 PM. Reason : df]

8/8/2007 6:52:28 PM

I'd like to see energy consumption comparisons between mac pro's and similary spec'd machines from dell and hp. I'm sure they'll be similar, but the power supply and power management components of Apple machines are fairly impressive in terms of quality. I wonder if they buy you even marginal consumption savings.

8/8/2007 6:55:01 PM

Quote :

"^ That looks like the upgrade from 512 to 4GB 800 mhz ram."

not to dwell on this point (because we all agree that all of them will rip you off one way or another), but on that Optiplex Page, the base config is 512MB. To go to 4GB is $850.
If you select 2GB (all 667), then to go to 4GB with 2 DIMMs is $729 extra, but 4GB with 4 DIMMs is $215 extra.

8/8/2007 7:23:04 PM

^^ on iMacs, at least, the reason there's so much power savings is because they're made from laptop parts (except for the hard drives). That's one thing that really makes me wish Apple would release an affordable mid-tower. I don't want to pay a premium for laptop parts. That, and I don't want an integrated monitor. I already have a monitor, thanks. I don't want to keep paying for one every time I upgrade my machine (which, by extension, requires buying an entirely new iMac).

8/8/2007 9:24:07 PM

Quote :

"- To go along with that, drag and drop installation is the nicest thing ever. I wish installers that shotgun random files all over your system could be eliminated altogether."

They still do, it just doesn't tell you. Install drop shit ALL OVER THE PLACE, but it's transparent to the user. And if you drag the App the to the trashcan it transparently removes it all (except for some of the apps with licensing engines, same problem as in windows)

Also, the new Dell Vostro's can be configured to match EXACTLY the specs of the Macbook and Macbook Pro. And they are only a hundred bucks or so less.

Also the latest Parallels supports hardware Direct3D and OpenGL, which effectively ends the dual boot debate. parallels is fucking amazing btw. It should be the staple application on every Mac.

8/8/2007 11:07:22 PM

dot

[Edited on August 8, 2007 at 11:17 PM. Reason : dot -> .]

8/8/2007 11:16:43 PM

Quote :

"there is no/little premium for Mac Pros. part-for-part, they are on par with high end dells."

Sorry, that was simply poor word choice. I meant paying a "premium" as relative to a basic machine. In other words, the Mac Pros, though very expensive, are well worth the high price tag because of what you are getting.

Quote :

"and you can't compare upgrading the RAM on your PC by yourself to upgrading it your Mac Apple. You can upgrade your Mac RAM by yourself too, for exactly the same cost as your PC, because they use the exact same memory. Everybody knows it's retarded to upgrade through Apple during the purchase, just like it is to upgrade through Dell. To upgrade a Dell Optiplex 745 from 2GB to 4GB is also $729 - http://tinyurl.com/2cyfy7"

yeah I didn't notice that they were limited to 2 sticks. I assumed, like most any PC, that a 2GB to 4GB upgrade would be 2x1GB+2x1GB. I also thought you had to upgrade components through apple, but I now see the bits about a memory compartmajigger. I still would hate not being able to upgrade other components on a whim. To me the iMac just seems a lot like the iPhone in that you can get more bang for your buck (better tech, more options, etc. all at a cheaper price) from numerous other options. I guess it boils down to where you place value (tech vs. ui and so forth) and what your experiences are with the respective brands. To each his own!

8/9/2007 12:34:55 AM

Quote :

"i haven't had a pc crash in a long time myself. probably 3 or 4 years."

Quote :

"I realize this is a Mac circlejerk thread"

8/9/2007 7:35:18 AM

Honestly I got to say the same as others, Mac's just friggin' work.

I've been building systems since middle school, and I've never had Windows operate as stable as OSX.

The new iMacs are VERY nice, makes me glad I waited until after tax free weekend to purchase an iMac to complement my MacBook.

Debating about getting a nice LCD TV and MacMini for the bedroom though. Either way, the systems are friggin' awesome.

Anybody really think there's justification for iLife '08? I haven't really seen anything that made me drool.

8/9/2007 10:43:46 AM

do you think it would be worth it to buy a usb video input box for the Imac, and try to run an xbox through it? I'm not sure if I could pull 720p that way, it's something I'm going to have to look into... otherwise I might get a mac mini as well, and then spend the other 500 on a 32" LCD

8/9/2007 10:51:09 AM

So Mac's been making efforts to be more competitive with games, but the best card available for the iMacs are 2600Pros?

8/9/2007 3:39:13 PM

^the new mac book pros have 8600s in them.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/id-tech-5-project/810525p1.html

Quote :

"The point of the row of monitors is quickly explained: it's the new idTech5 demo running parallel on a Mac, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, and it's hard to notice any differences between any of them. But before getting into the tech, we move to the PC box, where we boot up a special trailer for id Software's new game: Rage."

Don't know what type of "Mac" they were running it on. But a lot of the newer games i believe are coming out for Mac without a LONNNGG release delay like usual. So that's good.

[Edited on August 9, 2007 at 3:45 PM. Reason : .]

8/9/2007 3:44:37 PM

The 2600's and 8600's are just about the same speed.

New games being ported over to Macs is a bad thing. It'll expose just how bad the graphics cards Apple's been using are. No one could tell with all the three year old games Mac users were getting.

[Edited on August 9, 2007 at 3:50 PM. Reason : .]

8/9/2007 3:47:55 PM

^Yeah pretty much. 8600 is a little more powerful, but not by much. They need to start putting better cards in thier mac pros. They come stock with a 7300 GT.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=855&model2=858&chart=318

[Edited on August 9, 2007 at 3:52 PM. Reason : ..]

8/9/2007 3:49:25 PM

^^I don't see apple catering to serious computer gamers at any point in the near future. It's not a large enough part of their targeted market to make it worth addressing the litany of complaints serious gamers have about Apple.

Sony and Microsoft are now learning how little most people care about top-notch gaming hardware or the technology of games. Apple has no desire to learn the same lesson the hard way. They are more like Nintendo --- just target the middle XX% of gamers and reap the profits.

Also, anyone who expects the iMac to be a non-casual game machine is bound to be perpetually disappointed.

8/9/2007 7:47:35 PM

Quote :

"does anyone know if the apple stores in Charlotte/Raleigh have these new iMacs yet?"

They've got display models at the Raleigh store, not sure if they have any stock yet.

8/10/2007 1:57:59 AM