pros and cons of PC v apple mac..

ptholt said:
well we have something in common other than photography there I guess. Grats

25 years in the industry (just short of) and as an it manager for one of the largest companies on the planet and running two it consultancy firms I bow to your vastly superior knowledge oh great one.
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you two should both stop being so pedantic and rude quite frankly.
 
Well my original post was based on experiences at home with both operating systems, and recommended trying both to see what works for the individual, but to then be personally attacked for holding a differing opinion deserved a reply imo.
 
ptholt said:
well we have something in common other than photography there I guess. Grats

25 years in the industry (just short of) and as an it manager for one of the largest companies on the planet and running two it consultancy firms I bow to your vastly superior knowledge oh great one.
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See, you're doing it again.

If you wanted to make me look stupid, all you'd have to have done is quote my first post and point to a set of "registry issues" - but you can't, because they don't exist. What does exist is a large number of people who install anything without understanding what they are doing and then blame the OS. The problem is with the user - not the OS.

A better question may be to ask whether a general user is more or less likely to install stuff on OSX vs Windows. That'll probably tell you which is more likely to slow down with time, although hardware factors - and I'm talking primarily amount of memory with Windows as until recently, laptops have come with insufficient memory IMHO - will affect this.

Funnily enough, the sentiment of rest of your original post I fully agreed with - it was just the claim that lesser hardware slows down due to registry issues that is classic FUD :)
 
joescrivens said:
i do, but it's nothing to be proud of. :thumbsdown:
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Now who's being rude :D :p

And if you take Freuds description of a pedant, you'd find I'm exactly the opposite ;)
 
arad85 said:
If you wanted to make me look stupid, all you'd have to have done is quote my first post and point to a set of "registry issues" - but you can't, because they don't exist. What does exist is a large number of people who install anything without understanding what they are doing and then blame the OS. The problem is with the user - not the OS.
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Sadly I am unable to travel back in time to december to get you the specifics you request - when I last rebuilt one.
What I do know is that of four windows 7 machines in the house, three have been rebuilt since win7 was released. upon being rebuilt they are considerably quicker than prior to being rebuilt with the same hardware in place, but this I fully expect with any os.

However the 5 other machines (a mixture of mac and ubuntu) two of which older than the win7 released machines have not had their performance degraded to the point of being rebuilt.

Granted the use of these machines and the software installed that begins at startup differs, but from feel (I have no performance monitoring running to give you a reference point) the system speed degradation from being "fresh built" to that experienced some 18 months later is higher than on the non windows machines.
 
granted this thread is going downhill and off point but i have to agree with andy on the "registry issues" part. there are no common documented registry "issues" that affects windows that im aware of. granted some nasty software can leave a lot of crap behind when uninstalled but thats about it.

did i mention i work in the IT industry?
 
ptholt said:
Granted the use of these machines and the software installed that begins at startup differs, but from feel (I have no performance monitoring running to give you a reference point) the system speed degradation from being "fresh built" to that experienced some 18 months later is higher than on the non windows machines.
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Sounds like we should be asking this:

arad85 said:
A better question may be to ask whether a general user is more or less likely to install stuff on OSX vs Windows.
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Also, when you say slowdown, do you mean boot speed or general performance when running apps?
 
arad85 said:
Sounds like we should be asking this:

Also, when you say slowdown, do you mean boot speed or general performance when running apps?
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Boot speed from splash to desktop being in a ready state and the opening -operation time of certain apps.

Bizarrely I have just had the entire std desktop build project land in my lap at work as well, how topical!
 
ptholt said:
Boot speed from splash to desktop being in a ready state and the opening -operation time of certain apps.
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What's the memory size like? 32 or 64 bit Win 7? Sounds like it could be a combination of extra stuff on boot plus more memory being used up causing swapping to happen earlier. TBH, I wouldn't want to run Windows and do anything sensible on less than 4G (which implies 64 bit) but preferably 8G. I don't have any image processing programs open but am still using 3.5G and have 8G cached (win 7 improves performance by caching stuff in memory) so I'm actually using 12G of my 16G

ptholt said:
Bizarrely I have just had the entire std desktop build project land in my lap at work as well, how topical!
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Don't forget the A/V on the image disk ;)
 
4-6gb of ram, 1gb of video ram, q9550 CPUs on win7 64.

Hmm 70 apps on the STD desktop build to test alongside a vmware based windows os, this could be fun more so if we had any vmware resource :s
 
neil_g said:
thats almost what im running at home, albeit with 8Gb and an SSD boot drive. what sort of boot times are you seeing to the desktop?
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How do people define boot times to the desktop? From power on (where mobo BIOS will have an effect) or from BIOS splash screen disappearing?
 
Probably from NTLDR, although I think there is a specific way of benchmarking it. If you are benchmarking the machine, probably from power on to windows fully loaded - as you want the overall speed of the computer turning on.

If it's from Windows loading, it will be from NTLDR, if not, probably power on.

I never benchmark, so it might be something completely different.
 
I suspect it depends on who or what you are benchmarking for.

At work the user community expect it from power on to desktop, whereas at home I discount the pre ntldr as there is v little I can do to alter this speed (excluding any fast boot bios options).

No acces to timings ATM, will get some from home this evening from ntldr onwards, could be an interesting exercise...
 
Meh... I was bored. Apparently, the best way to do this using BootTimer available http://www.planetsoft.org/. It measures the time from when the BIOS calls the Windows boot script to when the last program has loaded.

I don't have an account here (i.e. I go straight through to the desktop and don't need to log in), so that includes loading all the programs you load when you log in. In my case this comprises booting windows, setting both screens to on, loading desktop, starting avast, dropbox, coretemp, a dozen side bar apps, malwarebytes, skype, daemon tools, print screen, alternate ALT-TAB program, a remote desktop connection, window manager, autohotkey, 63 system services plus 15 "helper" apps put in by driver installs or program installs.

And for my system that is: 26.7 seconds. That's for a i7-2600k o/c to 4.3GHz with SSD.
 
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ptholt said:
Sadly I am unable to travel back in time to december to get you the specifics you request - when I last rebuilt one.
What I do know is that of four windows 7 machines in the house, three have been rebuilt since win7 was released. upon being rebuilt they are considerably quicker than prior to being rebuilt with the same hardware in place, but this I fully expect with any os.

However the 5 other machines (a mixture of mac and ubuntu) two of which older than the win7 released machines have not had their performance degraded to the point of being rebuilt.
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I have three machines running Windows 7 at home that are used regularly. None have been rebuilt. Nor has my office PC running Windows 7. I haven't needed to flatten and rebuild a computer for performance reasons since the days of the DOS kernel. I except my Mac Mini from that as that did get re-formatted, but was a special case.

One of the computers in the office has been running very slowly for months (on XP), so I investigated last week as it is used by our admin person so delving into the system config is way outside of her remit and knowledge. Turns out something had installed a McAffee virus scanner on it (we don't use McAffee, so that must have been tacked on by some other installer) and there was something else called "HotBar" installed, plus the google toolbar. Getting rid of these and a little bit of other cleaning in the "Run" keys under HKLM and HKCU got it flying along again. This a six year old very basic Dell. It only does "office" type applications, browsing and email but it still fine to do all of those things.

The "problem" with Windows is that software you mean to install sometimes installs crapware that you don't want, or adds a "quickloader" to the startup process. Plus a lot of them run things at startup to check for updates and download them. I routinely kill these things, but a lot of people don't, which means boot times get longer and longer as more software is installed.

None of this is the fault of the operating system. It's all application level. But people still blame the OS.

(While the bulk of my work is software development targetting Windows, I am not a fan as it means I'm very aware of the shortcomings of the OS ;) )
 
Don't forget a lot of consumer PCs already come with a ton of crapware installed.

Obviously the it experts out there will know what to keep & what to get rid of, but your average user won't.
 
onomatopoeia said:
None of this is the fault of the operating system. It's all application level. But people still blame the OS.
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so riddle me this batman ....

why is this something that only windows users suffer from?

This just doesn't happen on mac OSX - why don't the applications built for mac OSX do the same thing?
 
joescrivens said:
This just doesn't happen on mac OSX - why don't the applications built for mac OSX do the same thing?
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Probably because all the cr@pware that gets installed tends to be with free programs as the distributors of the free programs use the revenue gained by installing cr@pware to help support them.

The impression I get with OSX is that users have an expectation to pay for software, so there is less freeware with cr@pware available (as the software writer is paid for the program). Either that or the user is happy enough in the OSX ecosystem as it provides them everything they need. I do think OSX and Apple products in general suit people who are OK with being told "how things work around here" when it comes to computers and this is what people subscribe to in the "I just love how <insert Apple app de jour> works...". Perhaps that's why I don't like Apple products - I once installed itunes - never, NEVER again...

Remember, it isn't EVERY piece of software that installs rubbish, but you do have to be diligent - especially with the installers that use a double negative (i.e. select this not to install the software and have the default as unselected)
 
Craikeybaby said:
Don't forget a lot of consumer PCs already come with a ton of crapware installed.
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Oh my goodness - yes. One of the advantages of building your own PC - you know what's on it.

First thing I do on laptops is either reformat and reinstall or delete every piece of software that doesn't do something useful!
 
arad85 said:
Oh my goodness - yes. One of the advantages of building your own PC - you know what's on it.

First thing I do on laptops is either reformat and reinstall or delete every piece of software that doesn't do something useful!
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Probably why yours runs so well then ;)
 
arad85 said:
The impression I get with OSX is that users have an expectation to pay for software, so there is less freeware with cr@pware available (as the software writer is paid for the program). Either that or the user is happy enough in the OSX ecosystem as it provides them everything they need.
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I can only speak personally but I have a ton of shareware or freeware OSX programs installed. I would say in my experience there is at least as many available for mac as there are windows

I mean dashboard wigits alone encompass a huge range of free applications built by people who don't charge for them
 
joescrivens said:
I can only speak personally but I have a ton of shareware or freeware OSX programs installed. I would say in my experience there is at least as many available for mac as there are windows
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Not up on OSX apps ;) Do they tend to install extra software alongside such as toolbars etc...?
 
Some have the option to that you need to untick.

I've also found software availability on OS X to be pretty much the same as windows, with even more option for professional creative tools.
 
neil_g said:
i tried linux once, i binned it after 15 mins :D
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I still run it, as a print/file server

all honesty though, my 5 year old mac is still as fast as when I first switched it on and it's running Snow Leopard, with a 1.6 C2D and 1GB RAM

If only I could say the same for Julie :D
now running an i7 950 Quad Core Hyper threaded, with 6GB RAM and Windows 7 Pro

:)
 
arad85 said:
Not up on OSX apps ;) Do they tend to install extra software alongside such as toolbars etc...?
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the option is there if the developer wants to add it, but it just doesn't seem to be as common place as on windows, most apps you get do what they say on the tin and nothing more

this will be even more apparent with the mac app store. Apple will not approve things that install all kinds of crapware no doubt.

For all the negatives on the restrictions on apple making the decision to what you can get your hands on there are also lots of positives. But you can still get apps from all over the net for your mac, they just dont seem to contain the clogging software that windows ones do
 
joescrivens said:
But you can still get apps from all over the net for your mac, they just dont seem to contain the clogging software that windows ones do
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Then that's probably the reason people say Macs don't slow down.....
 
joescrivens said:
For all the negatives on the restrictions on apple making the decision to what you can get your hands on there are also lots of positives. But you can still get apps from all over the net for your mac, they just dont seem to contain the clogging software that windows ones do
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That is why OSX is seen as better by a lot of people. I want my computer to work, I don't want to have to run this, that or the other, search out what is making it slow, remove add ons that I don't use etc. That is why I prefer Mac.

I know it is a broad generalisation, but I see Windows more of a want to tweak, play with, to get the best out of it where as OSX is just turn on and go.

Everyone goes on about the restrictions Apple are placing on IOS and App store etc. But I have never not been able to find a programme that I need or a task I have not been able to find a solution to. So I would prefer to be safe in the knowledge that everything is pre tested and meets a set of standards.
 
i installed windows 7 on my desktop about a year ago, i havent ever "tweeked" anything, done a defrag, a registry "clean" or malware check and its still fresh as a daisy.

i think some people think that they have to do these things and it causes more problems. if it aint broke..
 
joescrivens said:
yes I think this is one of the reasons, the question is why is there such a difference on the apps
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What difference on the apps? Every benchmark I've seen ever running equivalent apps under OSX and Windows is the same. For example, run the retouch artists PS benchmark. I'll be willing to bet that for an equivalent processor as you have in your mac, the PC speed will be equal. It should be easy enough to verify.... Retouch Artists benchmark with instructions is here: http://clubofone.com/speedtest/ list of processors that have had it run (under Windows) here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/25
 
arad85 said:
What difference on the apps? Every benchmark I've seen ever running equivalent apps under OSX and Windows is the same. For example, run the retouch artists PS benchmark. I'll be willing to bet that for an equivalent processor as you have in your mac, the PC speed will be equal. It should be easy enough to verify.... Retouch Artists benchmark with instructions is here: http://clubofone.com/speedtest/ list of processors that have had it run (under Windows) here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/25
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dont get carried away with your high horse!!!! :LOL:


im talking about the cr@pware like we were discussing before, why is there so much more cr@pware in the free and shareware windows apps than there is in mac osx apps
 
joescrivens said:
dont get carried away with your high horse!!!! :LOL:
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Nay, nay and thrice nay ;)


joescrivens said:
im talking about the cr@pware like we were discussing before, why is there so much more cr@pware in the free and shareware windows apps than there is in mac osx apps
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Ahh.. OK. I thought you meant that the same apps would run slower on Windoze.. :thinking: Cool - seems we're all friends in the Macindows world... Who'd have thought :shrug::D
 
if you want to switch it on and it just works then buy a mac quicker / more intuitive / just better ....however once you are bitten by the apple bug it will get expensive

in our hotels we use macs but our accounts are done on a pc as no sage support and i dont like windows on a mac ...if you have a specific software app that you need to use check for mac support first

apple displays whether on an imac or a stand alone take some beating imo and i struggle with a pc display for photos

i still use a pc for gaming as there are very few games i want to play on a mac but now that steam is mac supported perhaps that will change!

and dont forget too no native blu ray support for macs
 
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