anyone else find PC's more reliable than macs?

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mart77

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OK i have 2 macs and 1 pc, and quite clearly to me having also worked with many of them the PC in general is a more reliable machine these days.

I have had far more problems with macs than PCs. when i say this to people they look at me like:wacky:

i will continue to buy both though as i like them for different reasons, the same as i will continue to buy both canon and nikon for different reasons.
 
YES! I had one then sold it because it was doing my head in. I've never had to reboot a computer as many times. One example, take away a CIFS share that it has open and it cannot recover without a reboot. Not a log off/on, a reboot.

Mac RDP client will crash Windows terminal servers (certainly RDPing to an XP box).

But I'd have one again. I love iPhoto and iMovie. But my machine of choice is PC/Windows XP.
 
i had a powerbook G4 for a bit, and it didn't cope very well with the amount of travelling, getting thrown on helicopters etc. whereas i've had pc laptops that have lasted years of this abuse, my conclusion was that macs look great sat on your desk but if you want to expose them to the real world they don't last.....
cheers
marcus
 
I work in a company with about 40pcs, 20servers, 5macs. Guess what I spend about 40% time fixing? macs, grrrrr.
 
Can't say I've noticed much difference. We support both in the company I work for and we get issues with both platforms.

However, I do see a lot of people in this forum saying that Mac's are more reliable but what they are actually saying is "I think my Mac is more reliable". Based on what I see at work, I cannot agree with that statement or yours. For me, there's not much in it :)
 
I suppose it all depends what you do with it. If you use it to surf the web or if you're crunching numbers or doing 3d modelling. Are you pushing the machine or just using the basics?

In my experience, the latest PCs are very reliable, and XP has been a stellar operating system. Windows 7 is shaping up to be superb as well. We will see how it flows over the next 6 months or so.

Vista was a huge pain.
 
I have an imac, macbook and a work PC laptop. Both macs are fine, sure every now and again a program may crash but no real problems... work pc though is different. Switching on takes as long as my macbook does to turn on, turn off and turn on again (maybe even add another turn off again) and is so clunky to use in comparison.
 
Got a 2y old MacBook and a PC running XP of similar vintage and I've got say I've not had any major hassle with either of them. The PC before that though was another story, but I think I have the "wonderful" Norton antivirus to thank for that.
 
Yes, I find my PC way more reliable and stable than any Mac I've used. Macs always seem to want to restart too. Install pretty much anything and it will want to rebbot whilst PC's just trundle on nicely.

I also find, with PC's when something goes wrong, the PC will indicate/tell you whats going wrong. Macs just seem to go "On your own there, mate".
 
Oh how I love this thread.
I'm going to have to show it to a few Steve Job fanyboys I know ;)

However, if good quality hardware is used a PC should be very reliable.
I think a lot of people blame the PC when their problems have been down to software.
I know a few Mac users who have had their fair share of software crashing but then this will happen on both platforms with buggy software.
Another thing is that a lot of people complain that Macs are a lot more expensive than PC's.
Now, I don't know anything about Mac hardware but one of the problems with cheap PCs is cheap components.
I've worked in the electroninc and IT industries for a very long time.
Everyone has a preference towards their choice of general consumer electronic manufacturers and this can probably be counted as a handful of companies.
Components do make a difference and yes, obviously there will be failures with better quality components, it's nothing like the failure rate with cheaper components.
Most big PC manufacuterers tend to use cheap motherboards but their are smaller companies out there who build custom PCs using higher quality products.
Quite often the people who build these custom PCs are quite technical and can tweak a PC to gain performance whereas Mr Big is producing on a mass production line via conveyor belts.

It's the same old story, you get what you pay for.
 
Jamesbuk said:
Yes, I find my PC way more reliable and stable than any Mac I've used. Macs always seem to want to restart too. Install pretty much anything and it will want to rebbot whilst PC's just trundle on nicely.

I also find, with PC's when something goes wrong, the PC will indicate/tell you whats going wrong. Macs just seem to go "On your own there, mate".
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I've only had a mac a few months but I have installed a fair bit of software and it hasn't asked me to reboot once. On the other hand, PCs seem to need a reboot whenever I install anything. :shrug:
 
Really? Strange... All the different macs Ive used seem to say "ok you are rebooting now" whilst the Pc's say "reboot is required, now or later?" Reboots aren't really required so I just click later. I guess it depends on OS with Pc. I use XP and I hear Vista is a lot more controlling over what the user can and cant do so maybe thats it..?

James
 
Jamesbuk said:
Really? Strange... All the different macs Ive used seem to say "ok you are rebooting now" whilst the Pc's say "reboot is required, now or later?" Reboots aren't really required so I just click later. I guess it depends on OS with Pc. I use XP and I hear Vista is a lot more controlling over what the user can and cant do so maybe thats it..?

James
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Absolutely, not once has it required a reboot. And on the rare occasion when I have rebooted the mac it does it in seconds whereas every pc/laptop I have had, I've had to go off and make a cup of tea.

BTW, I am no mac fanboy, I just knows what I likes. ;)
 
i used to look after about 150 pc and 40 macs , and spent most of my time fixing the macs.

when pc's go wrong parts are just so easy and cheap to replace. ever tried replaceing a cd drive in a imac:puke:
 
I can honestly say my macbook pro has never crashed.
My friend who is a PC genius has 2 PCs and they run very well, he knows what he is doing to set it up and have it protected from nasty stuff, he buys his software rather than running warez stuff.

I think they both do a job, do it well, and when you know what you are doing and run proper software you shouldn't have too many problems.

I prefer a Mac
 
I went from PC to Mac, never had any problems with my PC but just wanted a Mac. Best thing I ever did. I work in IT but still find more problems with PCs rather than macs.
 
Either way - it is a rather big misconception. They both run on pretty much the same hardware nowadays so it's all down to software. And if we consider that PC is mostly Windows - here is where Macs are better out of the box in majority of the cases. The problem with Windows as far as end user is concerned is that it installs with really crappy defaults - out of the box it runs all kind of rubbish whether it is needed or not and not even tuned for the best performance. Macs are much better in this respect they don't run a lot of crap you don't need although it is still available to be enabled if you need it.

This is not a problem for advanced users though as they do spend their time to optimise their PCs or Macs so those are pretty much at the same level. I use both, and wheneverI install Windows, I usually go through the exercise of optimising it (disabling thisng that are not needed, optimising performance of certain parts etc). Never had a crash in years (since Windows NT, 2000, XP and now Vista). My home Windows workstation runs pretty much 3 whole days a week constantly (no switching off) and then occasionally for the rest of the week as needed. The same with Mac - never had a problem really.
 
I have run two macs (various models), since the late 80's and they are what I run my design business on. If they were so terrible, I would have been out of business a long time ago.

I do know them intimately and don't panic when something does not work as expected. I do have a few frustrating moments with them, but can work through it.

PC and macs are just computers. It's the person using it and looking after it who is the weak link. Prevention is better than cure.

Buy whichever suits and learn to love it.

Graham
 
Macs were more reliable when they didn't run Intel chipsets, I think this is the main reason for the issues
 
chrisgeary said:
Are you talking about XP, Vista or 7 here?
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anything from dell/hp consumer/acer etc, with the nice 'default' install with a million trial versions of norton "anti" virus, 60 day trial of MS office, and a million other pieces of rubbish software they've been paid to include in their default image... really degrades the user experience with new windows laptops imo, and means that it's got a load of junk installed from the outset (that in some cases is basically impossible to remove - I'm looking at you, norton...)

Certainly in a corporate enviroment, OS X is in no way as mature or stable wrt 'proper' networking (the mac AD plugin is proper dodge...) as any recent version of windows.

I use both macs and pc's for pretty intensive stuff (video editing and photo work / gaming respectively) and certainly have more crashes on macs - but then that could just be FCP being dodgy...
 
Yes, you are absolutely right. Preinstalled Windows from companies installing "helpful" software is horrible, but a clean install of XP is fast out of the box. As fast as it will ever be, in fact.
 
I have not had any issue with my iMac, and on the whole, it feels more stable, less clunky and faster than XP. Compared to Vista, its a whole different world. Vista never worked for me properly, even the 64bit version with all the service packs had strange and annoying issues. Windows 7 thus far has closed the gap completely. My W7 machines feel just as reliable as my iMac. Saying that, my W7 laptop got the blue screen of death when I clicked on an adobe PDF link yesterday (firefox).

Gary.
 
itsdavedotnet said:
anything from dell/hp consumer/acer etc, with the nice 'default' install with a million trial versions of norton "anti" virus, 60 day trial of MS office, and a million other pieces of rubbish software they've been paid to include in their default image... really degrades the user experience with new windows laptops imo, and means that it's got a load of junk installed from the outset (that in some cases is basically impossible to remove - I'm looking at you, norton...)
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agreed. you have to blame the hardware vendor for that one.. thank god for being able to order them with no preinstalled OS :)

Certainly in a corporate enviroment, OS X is in no way as mature or stable wrt 'proper' networking (the mac AD plugin is proper dodge...) as any recent version of windows.
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agreed. passing authentication details can be a little it and miss sometimes.
 
I work in Television we use Avid software on HP workstations with 8 processors (zenons or something) when rendering or doing anything that requires alot of horsepower only one processor is active. As a result my home setup using Snow Leopard and Final Cut on a mere iMac feels incredibly fast as the work load is shared equally between the cores.

Still I am comparing XP to Snow Leopard, maybe windows 7 will be better, its got to be. Vista was so bad I gave up on PC's at home and turned to Apple.
 
oldnick said:
I work in Television we use Avid software on HP workstations with 8 processors (zenons or something) when rendering or doing anything that requires alot of horsepower only one processor is active. As a result my home setup using Snow Leopard and Final Cut on a mere iMac feels incredibly fast as the work load is shared equally between the cores.
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But that is just one video software out of many - it's pointless to compare it with FC on a Mac really. Adobe ones are able to utilise multiple CPUs for encoding - so compare them really.
 
oldnick said:
I work in Television we use Avid software on HP workstations with 8 processors (zenons or something) when rendering or doing anything that requires alot of horsepower only one processor is active. As a result my home setup using Snow Leopard and Final Cut on a mere iMac feels incredibly fast as the work load is shared equally between the cores.

Still I am comparing XP to Snow Leopard, maybe windows 7 will be better, its got to be. Vista was so bad I gave up on PC's at home and turned to Apple.
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LOL, so you choose Mac based on your experience with badly implemented Avid software?? It's the software that's written to implement one core, it ain't Windows etc that decides that. Poor show by Avid, I too work in TV (broadcast side of things for a Very large Media company) and we have plenty of machines happily running software / processes across all 8 cores of our Xeon based machines (real time encoding, transrating etc).

Carl
 
I find my windows PC's generally much more reliable than macs....


...mind you, that might be because I dont actually have a mac and the only time I get to see one is when my good friends and neighbours have managed to eff theirs up and need me to go and sort them out :bonk:


I think its horses for courses as with most things. Mac users often say they are more intuitive than windows, but I dont find that the case when I do use one, but then I find canons are considerably less intuitive than a Nikon...its about familiarity, not intuition.

Aside from hardware, which strikes me as much of a muchness these days between the two, its usually software issues that cause instability, and that in turn is usually caused by one thing alone - the loose nut behind the keyboard. :naughty:

I definately still want a Mac, but only to run alongside my windows pc's, not to replace as I feel both have their place and their uses - simples :D
 
Completely disagree. I was quite an advanced windows user, custom built the PC, knew what it was doing but Vista proved to be very unstable at times and crashed on me a good few times a week.

Not to say I haven't ever had a Mac die on me, when a Mac dies it tends to jump all the instability and go to complete failure but I'd rather have that happen once every 2/3 years than my Windows PC crashing or restarting in the middle of work fairly frequently.
 
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