PC to Mac: My Not-So-Genius Switch - Page 7  

I just wrap the purchase of new computer gear into a new project.
I had to get supplied in hardware and software by deadline but I'm sure I'll upgrade by the next project.

Glad to see the 17" retains a firewire port and offers an alternative to those %$#@ glossy screens.

Return it?

Return it! Sure, there'll be a few Rev. 1 bugs, but that supposed 8-hour battery life would win me over. When I graduate (hopefully this fall), I'm gonna pick me up a new 17"!

Someone mentioned the Matte 17 inch Unibody MBP, but $150 for the privelege of getting the screen all the photo/image professionals are looking for.

I was hoping for a MacPro upgrade this week, but that did not happen. I did order one as currently made, and chose the same HP monitor that Jude mentioned after a lot of research.

We run a lot of Macs at my house, but none of the very new stuff, couple of MBPs, a 2 and half year old Black Macbook is travelling with my daughter in Paris for her junior year in college. She took the initial plunge into Mac-hood, as an artist, she wanted it.

I am a previous pc-builder-hobbiest who became disenchanted when I had to start calling for XP install codes everytime I changed too much hardware, or replaced broken stuff. Pretty much became a mess when the first issues of Vista rolled out, they had 1 or 2 installs only on them before you had to spend 2-3 hours to get new codes.

I do get AppleCare, and even in my podunk little southern town, there is an independent Apple dealer (not an Apple store, so no "geniuses") which is quite happy to perform warrenty repair. One of the nicer parts of warrenty Apple work is that you need no reciepts, or documentation. They read the S/N from your machine, and get down to business. My 2 year old MBP has only needed replacement of one of the speakers, my wife's 1 year old MBP did need a new screen at 9 months. The Black MacBook has never needed anything other than one OS reinstall after she hosed something in the file system. All my kids have learned the importance of backing up their music and data files to USB drives.

On the other side of the coin, my 17 year old spent most of our Christmas week at the beach prying off one of the new PC viruses. "go.google.com" and "XP antivirus" both nasty things, prevent you from downloading and running antivirus software that can do the disinfecting. He had to do some research, and downloading on another laptop, then rename the new antivirus program to even load it on his machine. And remember his machine is used with an "image" from the high school, uses enterprise virus protection etc.

Who knows whats best. Apple is more expensive, but then the hardware is usually better, and sleeker than comparable Windows machines. It is funner though, that much I know.

I am glad you got your system under control Jude, welcome to the Mac-side.

I'm pretty sure the Apple Store will have no problem with an exchange. I've read frequently about people doing this after new revisions. You're within your 14 day return period anyways.

Maybe in terms of the market share, but certainly not as user friendly and safe.

Dude, the wheel seriously not suitable for typing hey...

I took the plunge in November when my Dell XPS was rendered useless by Vundo_5. I lost everything that I didn't have backed up.

I bought an iMac 24" for home in November and a Macbook Air for the road, last month.

I never had to look back. I bought a 685 page book "The Missing Manual that should have come in the box" by Pogue Press/O'Reilly (that and help from Grawk and others on this forum).

Even with the learning curve, I am extremely happy. I am using the Optical out with VLC through a borrowed Duet and also a Microdac/amp of my choice combo and a terabyte of .flac files (not iTunes) on an external HD.
Time Machine is an ingenious invention for backup.

Less concern about viruses and intense web copy/paste features and a compatible Microsoft Office program, and I'm set.

Safari loads webpages almost twice as fast as XP/Vista.

Maybe I've been lucky, but I haven't had one lockup or blue screen of death in 3 months. And guess what, when I close my Air, and reopen the lid, it actually works and goes back to where I was. With my PC's that was a crapshoot.

For loading up my iMod with alac files, I use the 32 gigs Fat 32 system partition with Bootcamp and use dbPoweramp and Ephpod.

I have to use a Dell laptop for work, so I still stay current in PC world.

To each, his own, I suppose.

Switch from VLC to cog or play

Do you reckon it makes a difference?

This is one place I've found Mac a bit lacking, as Excel 2008 seems to crash anytime I open one of my larger datasets. The new version of OpenOffice seems to handle Office files pretty well though.

Get the new Firefox 3.1 beta - it sports a new Javascript engine that loads webpages 2x as fast as Safari!!

It's actually this rather polite "grey screen" that explains that you need to reboot, and how to do it, in a number of languages. I've made it come up a couple of times in the almost two years I've had my MBP.

Ouch. Never had any of the problems described with my 1st gen 15.4" MBP. Guess you should've waited for later revisions that fixed all the issues.

Nice to see more Head-Fi'ers switching to Mac's.

Well its only safer if you don't know how to take care of your PC. Viruses are not a threat if you work consciously and actually know what your PC is doing.

I find it hard to believe hearing this from a "previous pc-builder-hobbiest." I think anyone who kept up with computer hardware, even if he/she were a Mac purist, would have to agree with me that hardware in Macs are behind. I cannot believe Mac Pros are still touting Nvidia 8800 gt cards as being high end when they've already ended production. Maybe they plan to leave the desktop market entirely soon but still, any "pc-builder-hobbiest" should easily be able to build a PC with more power and at a cheaper cost than a "comparable Apple machine".

I really despise it when people say Mac and PC. Apple PCs are PCs. The only difference is the OS. Internally Apple PCs are 100% PC hardware. I don't see how people can still be calling Apple PCs, Macs when they even advertise so proudly Intel Core 2 Duo inside and Nvidia powered discrete graphics. Why don't people start calling Linux machines Linuxes and Vista machines, Vistas?

Windows XP/Vista doesn't load web pages, Microsoft Internet Explorer loads them. Ya, its slow, but thats what Firefox is for.

I have to agree that Apple design is pretty but their products are, as always, form over function. If you go the non-Apple side, its not hard to get both form and function, all for cheaper too.

Man, you really get wound up about this stuff, doncha?

I've been using Macs for 20-odd years now, and while there used to be a large difference in cost, it's not so great anymore. When you factor in the Mac's higher resale value there's almost none.