PC to Mac?

[Lisa]

My office has both Mac and PC, at home I have a PC. It is a different way of thinking. It is not that I find one more user friendly or easier then the other, just different. When I am on the MAC for a long time and I go and sit in front of the PC, it often takes me a few seconds to rethink how to do things on it.

I have had no issues with my MAC, the PC on the other hand has had to be serviced and cleaned a few times because of bugs and stuff.

 

[Dave Leverich]

What's the update Bob?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Trip 1 - drowned in helpfulness.
Trip 2 - spent 30 minutes on our own as the staff shot the **** with each other.
Trip 3 - made 3 laps around store without talking to a single person. Store was empty except for us and staff.

Even so, we're looking at picking up a pair of IMacs soon as the cash is available.

 

[Shicomm]

Used to work with mac's when the adobe software was running better on macs then pc's .
Since that issue got solved i can't see why you should use a mac instead of a pc.

Agreed ; the hardware looks stunning but is it worth such a premium ?
OSX is a very good os but some other apple software is just #censored!#

If design is your weak point and you don't mind about spending quite some cash on it , you won't get dissapointed from a mac but otherwise i would doubt...

 

[Bob Hubbard]

The GUI on any modern OS is a ton of bloat, part of why Vista needs 4GIGS! to start to walk and chew gum. MAC's OS's seem to always have been much better optimized and run well with less memory...meaning if you buy more ram you use it, not the system.

 

[Steve]

I'll just say this. I have had PCs for years and bought a Mac about 1 1/2 years ago. It's been with mixed success. I'll say that if you intend to do anything other than browse the internet and run Apple and/or Adobe products, stick with a PC. My Mac works great as long as I don't expect it to run any third party software. When I do, it's slows down to a crawl and crashes/freezes.

My opinion is that every advantage the Mac has is a direct result of the relative cocoon they've carved out. As they begin to market to every day users more than graphics pros, they have to contend with variables like third party software and peripherals... and Apple is 30 years behind the PC market in doing so.

I also find the user interface overly simplistic. While this is a justified criticism of Vista, the Mac is far worse, IMO. For example, I have iLife '08 on my Mac. I wanted to take a photograph from iPhoto and reduce the size to 300x400. It was ridiculously difficult to do this very simple thing. First, because of the vocabulary differences between PC and Mac, but also because the Mac wanted me to change the size to small, medium or large. I had similar difficulty trying to do a screen capture. On the PC? Hit the Print Scrn button. On the Mac? You have to strike a yoga pose.

I work with a lot of television and print professionals. We have PC based systems running CS4 and they all agree that the PC has pretty much caught up with the Mac... that it's really about personal preference. My own lay opinion as what would be considered a power user is the same. While Windows PCs have their headaches, Macs do to... just different headaches.

All of this isn't intended to make you not switch... just if you're going to do it, don't get sucked in by the cult mentality of many Mac users and the seductive advertising.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Nah, doubt I'll get cultified. Been referring to macs as boat anchors for years. lol

 

[Bob Hubbard]

IMac ordered, eta a week. 24" Imac with nvidia 130 card. Played with the model below at the Applestore, had a decent response time but I'll be doing some 3D rendering and need the extra horsepower. Had to special order the extended keyboard as it seems Macs all come by default with these little stubby things. 1st thing going on it, Unreal Tournament 2004. Been dying to play it for a few years, lol! (my laptop can't handle it with it's built in chip, need a real GPU it seems, LOL)

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Mac arrived an hour ago. Fast setup, easily got online. mouse and keyboard are gonna take some getting used to. So far, so good. Got Firefox installed, now to import bookmarks and email from old system. Then, its UT2004 time.

 

[ShelleyK]

WOOHOOO!!!! New Mac is gonna blow you away! Cant wait to get to your place and show you some fun stuff to do on it!

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Its driving me nuts. LOL. 24" screen takes forever to mouse around, lol!

 

[Dave Leverich]

You can change the 'acceleration' of the mouse also Bob, check System Preferences/KeyBoard & Mouse. Play with tracking/scrolling speed.
If you get a Kensington Trackball (Or Logitech etc), they have an actual acceleration curve so if you move slow the mouse goes micro movements, but fast and it busts across the screen. That works really well.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

So, any ideas on how to cool this space heater off? Case is so hot I swear you could cook on it. Clueless people at the Applestore were no help, neither was Apple's forums. Power supply is scoring close to 190' right now according to iStat.

 

[K-man]

I just changed over to Mac yesterday. Partitioned the file to run Windows until I get the hang of this new horse! Now I'm on an accelerated learning curve. Can't get it to accept icons though!

 

[Carol]

So, any ideas on how to cool this space heater off? Case is so hot I swear you could cook on it. Clueless people at the Applestore were no help, neither was Apple's forums. Power supply is scoring close to 190' right now according to iStat.

I Googled 24" imac runs hot and got a buncha hits back.

Here's one from apple that has some suggestions:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1453331

And another one that has a number of 24" imac owners saying their machine runs really hot "like I need a pitcher of water just to surf the web"
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=340365

 

[Dave Leverich]

Try this Bob:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23049

 

[Bob Hubbard]

smcFanControl seems to help a bit.

 

[Xue Sheng]

So, any ideas on how to cool this space heater off?

ice...lots and lots of ice

 

[Bob Hubbard]

I was thinking a liquid cooling system, grafted on, making it look Gigerish. LOL

 

[Cryozombie]

Macs run hot. We used the one in our old office as a handwarmer in the winter (it sucks being in IT in an air conditioned room in a Chicago winter)

The rest of this is Opinion based on my years in I.T. It is opinion, mine and I don't expect you to agree or care... I'm gonna share it anyhow.

I'm pretty Anti-mac. Being in IT, I have worked on PC's, Macs, and Linux systems in our offices and with our end users. I find most of Apple's claims about the superiority of thier systems to be downright deceptive, (Hey, YOU try explaining to a doctor who is used to getting everything he wants because of that MD after his name that just because Mac SAYS it will run your PC programs DOESN'T mean they are actually runable under their emulator and to interface with the hospital that shiney new MAC you just bought has to go back and you need a PC). they do crash often (as mentioned above) when running emulation software or even 3rd party programs... and I dislike their "cartoony" interface with overlarge buttons that bounc and hop when you hover, and it annoys the crap out of me that Windows is starting to copy that.

From a Videographer standpoint, I have edited with Sony Vegas and also Pinnacle on the PC and Adobe on the Mac...

I hated editing on the mac... partially because I didnt find the interface as intuitive (which I admit is because I have more experience on the pc) but I also found that the PC was, on a hardware level, able to handle some of the complex rendering, and rotoscoping and the masking we were doing "better" (i.e. faster and with less error) because we could beef up the hardware, as opposed to the mac stuff.

Mainly... my huge complaint about Mac is the Kult of end users who have a weird Smug Superiority about being Mac users... Get over it, its a computer designed for, IMNSHO, Twelve O'clock Flashers. If you like it, great, but despite thier advertising campaign, that doesnt mean anything: It doesnt make you Hip, cool, stylin, whatever... it makes you a Mac user.

And as a last note, As far as the Virus issue goes... the "reason" you are "safe", isnt because Mac is secure... its because such a small percentage of people use them that it's less "profitable" to write virus for them. And if you are silly enough to have a Mac and claim, "Gee I dont run any antivirus, and I never had one" my question is:

Without somthing to detect it, HOW DO YOU KNOW?

Not all Viruses show up and do malicious things to your computer that you know... some sit quietly and gather information and broadcast it back without you ever seeing anything... there are plenty of backdoors and trojans that dont show up with any actual symtoms.