PC guy here -- should I convert to MAC?

[Caleb]

I have a iMac and a PC, if I start them both at the same time, I can have read my mail and be online with the iMac, before the PC is booted up.
My iMac is coming up to 3 years old, (bought the extended warranty and never had to use it) I've never had a problem, it's never locked up, it does what it says on the box... end of story.
I'll be selling this one soon to get me the new 27" LED iMac

Whats specs on your mac and how much are you selling it for?

 

[sepe]

When people rate their overall experience and satisfaction, or say, "I love my Mac"(/Wilson/nighthawk) it isn't necessarily because it has better specs. It's because it just works, without any fuss or worry, in a way that's easy or intuitive or enjoyable to them. Get a Mac and a good cup of coffee and you'll stop hating puppies.

I love puppies and double rainbows...I only hate children.

 

[sepe]

esrice does a lot of photoshop type editing. He may be purchasing Adobe CS5 before too long(at least that's what I am telling him he needs.. hehehe) so he's trying to decide what the best option is for him. I too am in that same type of predicament. I'm not an Apple fan girl but I do like Apple products. I think they are designed very well, etc but are expensive. I have CS5 and run it on my computer and laptop. My hardware is old and I too need new hardware. Since I often have 2 or 3 Adobe products open at once, I need a piece of equipment that is designed for that. Apples definitely fit that category but PCs are more and more powerful now as well. I've owned Dells as far back as I can remember so I'm having a very hard time switching to a Mac. I'm still not sure what to do because it's expensive. I was looking at one of the newer iMacs that uses an i7 processor. It's $2K for the one I want though. I can get a PC for 1/4 that and I already have 2 nice monitors. It's not 27" but I have 2 23" monitors.

Decisions.. decisions...

If you stay away from the everyday computers, you can still find a PC that will run multiple Adobe apps at the same time without an issue...for much cheaper than $2,000.

I have a iMac and a PC, if I start them both at the same time, I can have read my mail and be online with the iMac, before the PC is booted up.
My iMac is coming up to 3 years old, (bought the extended warranty and never had to use it) I've never had a problem, it's never locked up, it does what it says on the box... end of story.
I'll be selling this one soon to get me the new 27" LED iMac

Using solid state drives will cut start up time by more than half.


Again, Macs have their place and they're fine (if I NEEDED one, I would buy one). It comes down to what you actually need. Research and figure out what is actually needed. Don't buy because of what people are telling you that you should buy. That goes for every product.

 

[IncendiaryGunner]

If you really like the Macs, I would say get what you like... maybe someone you know has one that will let you poke around with the OS? Mac OS has basically evolved into a custom unix distribution with a sleek user interface... some like it, some do not care for it.

Dollar for dollar, a PC will out perform a Mac in most cases... You get more hardware for your money... At one point in time Macs were built with proprietary Mac parts, and often had higher quality video and audio cards than PCs - but that has changed in recent years, and Macs now are assembled from PC compatible parts.

If you don't mind playing with new operating systems, I suggest tinkering around with Linux Ubuntu...

 

[iChokePeople]

If you stay away from the everyday computers, you can still find a PC that will run multiple Adobe apps at the same time without an issue...for much cheaper than $2,000.

+1. Even a PC can do this -- running multiple big apps with minimal pain if you load it up with RAM. Adobe apps LOVE RAM.

Using solid state drives will cut start up time by more than half.

Agreed, again -- my current MBP is running an SSD and it's SHOCKING how fast it is, both for boot and for launching those notoriously large/slow apps. I'd have to put a stopwatch on it, but I'd guess power switch to login screen is less than 10 seconds.

from IncendiaryGunner
If you really like the Macs, I would say get what you like...

Agreed. And if you really like PCs, have a cup of coffee, pet a puppy, loosen up that tie, and rethink your clearly erroneous notions.

 

[Harry2110]

ok if you really dont want a laptop I would suggest a mac mini if you buy any mac as they are only 600 as you seem to already have keyboard and screen. Now I love mac and work on them in a production enviroment and they work 10x better than any windows pc becuase there is little to mess up royally easily. In windows you have all the gui tools mac you have to use CLI which isnt easy. Now the thing about mac is it can run both windows or osx so you dont have to choose oses. I do alot of video editing and love final cut pro but that is extra. For simple imovie is way better than windows movie maker for built in unless you already have something. The main difference is really mac is a easy to use unix system and will always have less risk of viruses than windows.

 

[iChokePeople]

ok if you really dont want a laptop I would suggest a mac mini if you buy any mac as they are only 600 as you seem to already have keyboard and screen. Now I love mac and work on them in a production enviroment and they work 10x better than any windows pc becuase there is little to mess up royally easily. In windows you have all the gui tools mac you have to use CLI which isnt easy. Now the thing about mac is it can run both windows or osx so you dont have to choose oses. I do alot of video editing and love final cut pro but that is extra. For simple imovie is way better than windows movie maker for built in unless you already have something. The main difference is really mac is a easy to use unix system and will always have less risk of viruses than windows.

I mostly agree with what you said, but not the part I bolded. An average user would rarely, if ever, need to use the command line interface. I know lots of long-time Mac users who don't even know what Terminal is.

 

[superjoe76]

If you go the mac route you can run Bootcamp and install Windows on your mac. So you will get a Mac and a PC. This way most of your old Windows Programs will still run!

 

[Expat]

I mostly agree with what you said, but not the part I bolded. An average user would rarely, if ever, need to use the command line interface. I know lots of long-time Mac users who don't even know what Terminal is.

I was a little confused about what he was getting at as well. I use the CLI occasionally just because I use MacPorts.

 

[iChokePeople]

I was a little confused about what he was getting at as well. I use the CLI occasionally just because I use MacPorts.

There's definitely a lot of cool stuff you can do using CLI, or scripting, but definitely not something most people would need to do.

 

[IncendiaryGunner]

If you go the mac route you can run Bootcamp and install Windows on your mac. So you will get a Mac and a PC. This way most of your old Windows Programs will still run!

This is a great point... a dual boot box gives you the best of both worlds, if you are willing to shell out the cash for a mac.

VMware Fusion is another great product you might want to check out....

 

[Expat]

Not only can you run Windows with VMware Fusion (or Parallels), you can have a linux or bsd distribution installed for use. Just in case you would like to use one of them as well. So you could run 3 or 4 operating systems at the same time.

In addition to the back up stuff that was described earlier, with included software you can now have full disk encryption if you are concerned with privacy/security. Apple also offers a locator set up in case your Mac gets stolen or lost. So you can find where it is located and/or lock it up.