Mac, Pc Build or Built

evotwo

evotwo

Messages
200
Name
Paul
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi All

I have got £1500 (possibly a tad more :nono:) to spend on updating or buying out right a new PC. In the past I have always built my own and in honesty its my preference but today I went off looking at a 24" i mac :love: which I must admit did appeal. I have lost touch a bit with the build market so don't really know where things are in that department.

Are there any very sleek designs that are out there that I know nothing about. My build has to do the graphics bit to high end and it must be able to push out media to my amp for integration into my home systems it must also have a very good screen and do all the office tasks. I presently run a dual boot system win xp pro and Ubuntu (not asking a huge amount) oh and as an aside I am starting to look at the power issues with an interest as my pc now runs 24/7

So if you had this budget what would you be looking at, what guidance do you have for me before I seriously take the plunge down a route

All your comments are very welcome

Cheers

Paul
 
Didn't read all the post, only the 1st line. Get a mac, trust me you won't forget it.
 
I used to build my own. Both standard office machines and my own go-faster super computers.

Then I realised I was spending far too much time, never mind money, on building them, upgrading them, rebuilding them and generally faffing around with them.

So, about three years ago, I switched to macs. I wish I'd done it years before. I now just get on with life - both work and play - rather than problem solving, fixing, tuning and rebooting.

You see, the main difference between macs and pcs is that the former just work. The later have to be continuously cajoled into cooperation.
 
£1.5K won't even get you the most basic mac pro, so a 'normal' mac desktop is out the window right from the word go, and even imacs start at just under a grand... see below, but you can get a high powered dual screen setup for this....even though the 1.8k mac pro is still a pretty basic spec in pc terms. 3gb ram, and 640gb hard drive, for coming up to £2k? what the hell apple....

If you're going to build it yourself, you can build a high spec pc with decent gfx, couple of tbs of storage, 8gb ram, and a decent quad core proc for in the region of £500-700. You can then spend a lot more on screens (a very worthy investment imo, see far too many people struggling along with 19" things...) .

If you want file read/write speed, and generally improved performance, the optimum storage setup atm, is get 2 smaller drives and raid 0 them for OS and programs to be installed onto, but then have a bank of large (1.5tb is the cheapest price per gb iirc at the moment) hard drives in raid 5, so you have backed up large volume storage, but fast performance for your OS and programs. This setup, combined with fast quad processor, 8gb ram and windows x64, or ubuntu, should be pretty blistering :D

Most mobos now have decent built in sound, often even with optical ins and outs, so unless your media and music needs are very specialist, you should be fine. If you need extra tv outputs or whatever, but still want a couple of screens, you could always put in a pci graphics card for another 2 outputs, albeit lower specification ones.


If you _really_ want OSX for the odd thing or whatever, just make sure you get a mobo and gfx that can support osx86... :p

And just to resolve the constant myth that mac lovers spread: you DO NOT need a mac to 'run photoshop well' or things like that. And if you want a computer that 'just work's, dont go comparing a home built pc to a mac... at least compare it to a reasonable quality and brand store bought laptop or whatever. Having said that, I've been using home built computers for a long time, and *touch wood* have had reliable performance, with a much better spec and features than are even available from a commercial computer.
 
Just to clarify.... When I mentioned that the macs 'just worked' as opposed to the built ones, I was referring to the operating system rather than the quality of my built computers. I used to build for others including a couple of local businesses. Home built from quality components is often of significantly better quality than bought machines. Heavily used machines running an MS OS have to be rebooted during the day. Macs don't.
 
2blue4u said:
I used to build my own. Both standard office machines and my own go-faster super computers.

Then I realised I was spending far too much time, never mind money, on building them, upgrading them, rebuilding them and generally faffing around with them.

So, about three years ago, I switched to macs. I wish I'd done it years before. I now just get on with life - both work and play - rather than problem solving, fixing, tuning and rebooting.

You see, the main difference between macs and pcs is that the former just work. The later have to be continuously cajoled into cooperation.
Click to expand...
Same here i always built my own mainly as i could change diffrent parts as and when but just built a whole new machine each time.

Im Mac user now and wish i had years ago.

Only real use for the pc is gaming and thats where the constant cost of new graphics card each year comes.

If you want to play games a dedicated game machine is the answer on that front.

Lot of cool pc's out there but the Mac is all i will ever have now.
 
2blue4u said:
Just to clarify.... When I mentioned that the macs 'just worked' as opposed to the built ones, I was referring to the operating system rather than the quality of my built computers. I used to build for others including a couple of local businesses. Home built from quality components is often of significantly better quality than bought machines. Heavily used machines running an MS OS have to be rebooted during the day. Macs don't.
Click to expand...

I dread to think of your definition of 'heavy use', as long as those pcs have a couple gigs ram in them. I _beast_ my computers, but honestly can't remember the last time I had to restart because of a crash or it going slowly.

To get back ontopic, OP, you may also, if you do go for a high spec computer, want to consider a NAS that can run ftp/bittorrent (for legal linux distributions, obviously), or a print server, so that you don't have to leave your PC running 24/7. They can easily pay for themselves over the course of a year or so, and you'll get better life from your pc too...
 
itsdavedotnet said:
And if you want a computer that 'just work's, dont go comparing a home built pc to a mac... at least compare it to a reasonable quality and brand store bought laptop or whatever.
Click to expand...

There is no reason why a home-built PC should be any less reliable than a brand PC.

If anything, if the builder is savvy, they would check what the components are capable of, and which revisions have issues before buying. It may depress people if they knew how little of this occurs in teir 1 machines, of any class level. Also, many of the motherboards which are supposedly only available to teir 1 systems, are available legally, as alternative products.

If you self-build, you will have the oportunity to get what you require a lot cheaper, unless what you require fits in with what the teir 1 vendors want to sell you. In my experience, wanting what they want to sell people is rare, and 'upgrades' are costly.

On the storage side of things, having two seperated logical disks is a good idea. Have them on different raid cards, and ensure that the raid card is a real hardware raid, not software.
Personally, I would not recommend raid0 for the OS, it is the builder's choice of course.
The reason I would not recommend raid0 for the OS raid, is that it actually doubles the chance of the OS volume failing (i.e. statistically, the MTBF would be halfed. The chance of the disk failing on any one day is effectively comparable to 1/MTBF for a single disk, for two disks, you have twice the chance). Raid0 is where two disks have data striped across them. This means that if you are writting a file, chunk0 goes to disk 1, chunk1 goes to disk 2, chunk2 goes to disk1, chunk3 goes to disk 2, etc. etc. This speeds things up because the internal memory of the drives (cache) can store and deal with the chunks whilst the other disk is being written to (very basic explaination, but enough).
Unfortunately, if either of the disks fail, you will loose half of every file written to the disk (anything greater than 64k with most default raids). This means you will loose everything basically.

For the OS drive, as most of the time people forget to backup regularly, or update their backup software within the OS, and then forget to update the magic CD for recovering the backup, this usually means a loss of all the data.

Other raid levels more worth considering are:
raid1 = mirror mode. Data is written to both disks simultaeneously. If you have a good hardware raid card, there will be no reduction in speed, but no gain in speed. The disk space is the disk space of the smallest disk. If one disk fails, there is no loss of data. Raid 1 is usually 2 disks exactly

raid5 = parity raid. Data is written to (n-1) disks as per a stripe. The n'th part of the stripe contains a checksum. This means that if one disk fails, the raid card can recalculate (and work with) the data that is on the disks on the fly. The speed for small writes is usually improved because of the cache on the disk. Writting large files can be vastly improved. You loose the size of one disk in this situation though. For example, if you have 12x 300gb disks in raid5, you get 11x 300gb available = 3.3TB (actually what I have described is actually raid3, but is close enough not to argue about). For raid 5 you have to have 3 disks or more. For example. 3x 1.5TB disks in raid 5 gives you 3TB

If you have money to burn, and really need the speed, then raid10 combines the resiliency (not the same as reliability, you have 4 times the chance of a disk failure, but only 1.5 [or is that 1.6] times the chance of loosing data), and the speed of raid0
Basically, you mirror two disks together, and another two disks together, then take these two virtual disks, and stripe them. This gives a lot of speed due to disk caches and writting to different disks at different times. It gives you the storage capacity of 2x a single disk though. For raid 10, you can have any even number of disks above 4.


Edit:
Not that I want to be pushing up MS sales, but my desktop running windows XP says it has been running for 17 days now. It has had a little less use than usualy it would in that period, but it usually does get pretty hammered.
On the other hand, my linux machine reports 48 days, and that was only due to me changing the UPS it is on. That really gets hammered.
 
coldpenguin said:
There is no reason why a home-built PC should be any less reliable than a brand PC.

If anything, if the builder is savvy, they would check what the components are capable of, and which revisions have issues before buying. It may depress p
etc
Click to expand...

The storage system that I was talking about was regarding your OS boot disk as 'disposible' in the event of disk failure, but because you only stored your OS and program installs on those disks, no actual data, it's just a day's worth of reinstalling windows that's lost. Basically, I was treating OS so that you got best performance, and data, so that you got data security, while getting the best £/gb ratio. Each person's priorities vary.
 
evotwo said:
Hi All

I have got £1500 (possibly a tad more :nono:) to spend on updating or buying out right a new PC. In the past I have always built my own and in honesty its my preference but today I went off looking at a 24" i mac :love: which I must admit did appeal. I have lost touch a bit with the build market so don't really know where things are in that department.

Are there any very sleek designs that are out there that I know nothing about. My build has to do the graphics bit to high end and it must be able to push out media to my amp for integration into my home systems it must also have a very good screen and do all the office tasks. I presently run a dual boot system win xp pro and Ubuntu (not asking a huge amount) oh and as an aside I am starting to look at the power issues with an interest as my pc now runs 24/7

So if you had this budget what would you be looking at, what guidance do you have for me before I seriously take the plunge down a route
Click to expand...

Do you want to spend your money on something you have to **** around with to get up and running or something you just plug in and get on with doing what you need to do? Excepting the macbook air and the mini (to some extent), all available macs will do everything you have listed. You buy it, you plug it in, you get on with it. I used to build my old PCs, and I quite enjoyed configuring and speccing a system. These days, I just want to do my work and not concern myself with anything other else. My mac does exactly that.

No, they're not cheap and yes, you can get an equivalent specced PC for cheaper. For me, buying an equivalent specced PC for cheaper was irrelevant because I want to run OS X not Windows (although I can do that), not Linux (although I can do that too) and not OSX86.

What you get with a Mac is stability, fantastic support (if and when you need it) and a great community and masses of flexibility in what kind of software you want to run but mostly carefree computing where the computer becomes pretty much transparent and lets you get on with what you need to do.
 
Some great posts there

For those who are running Macs what have you done regarding all the windows software you may have built up. Is it ditched, or do you dual boot or do you run in Mac. Also what would you class as the essential mac software packages to have? Any pointers on the software appreciated.

Itsdavedotnet, you talk so much truth in that post. Its where I was thinking before I posted and I know where you are coming from. I can also see what the mac side has to offer.

Cheers

Paul
 
Dave, that is a fair comment.
Unfortunately I find that people tend to get to the stage where they install things to the machine to the OS drive, then have to re-install everything, and this can take a really long time (windows XP patches last time I did an install, was around 700mb, and that was a year ago). Then I have visual studio to install and patch, mouse/tablet drivers, microsoft office, dvd software, canon utilities (bloomin awful their download site), nvidia drivers etc. etc.

IF it were a linux system, then yeah, no probs (but you should see how confused SWMBO is when I have a VNC window up on the linux system!), as information about how a program runs, can be stored in a directory, rather than a registry.
I was considering a move to vista, or Windows 7 this morning. Then thought of how much of a hassle I would have if I wanted to install the 80gb of PROGRAM data after a re-install.
 
Unless I missed it, what are you planning to use the computer for? You say "graphics bit to high end", is this for gaming or something else?

As far as I understand it, gaming is the only thing that'll need high end graphics. Photo editing, watching videos etc is quite light by comparison.

1500 is quite a lot to spend you would get a good pc & get the new HP 24" monitor which is meant to be very good.
 
evotwo said:
Some great posts there

For those who are running Macs what have you done regarding all the windows software you may have built up. Is it ditched, or do you dual boot or do you run in Mac. Also what would you class as the essential mac software packages to have? Any pointers on the software appreciated.

Itsdavedotnet, you talk so much truth in that post. Its where I was thinking before I posted and I know where you are coming from. I can also see what the mac side has to offer.
Click to expand...

It's been such a long time since I had a PC now that it's all ditched. I just decided to make the move over to OS X and sold my PC, burnt all my warez and completely started afresh. I've actually bought more software since moving to OS X as I've found much of the indie software for OS X is of far higher quality than it was for Windows, plus there's so much more open source software available for OS X than Windows.

Essential OS X software? Depends on what for specifically :) As a web developer, Pixelmator is my new favourite software. It's dramatically reduced functionality Photoshop but it's ridiculously quick to load and do anything and suits me perfect for doing any web graphics I need - wouldn't process any photographs with it though. Textmate is the ultimate text editor. iWork 09 is a brilliant productivity suite and is about 95% compatible with MS Office but only 60 or so quid. Skitch is very useful for quickly uploading images to flickr, your own web space or Skitch's server. VLC is a very useful media player but obviously that's available for Windows too. Perian is a Quicktime plugin that will play pretty much any media file you throw at it. A lot of the useful day to day software comes with OS X anyway.
 
I always used to build my own PCs, always found it quite fun, and the best way to get exactly what I wanted. At the time I was also a developer for the PC, so became a little bored with the whole MS thing, so five years or so ago, I decided to grab a Mac for home to experiment with.

Since then, for my own use, I've always stuck with Macs. Rids me of the temptation to fiddle, does what I want and does it well. The kids have PCs for their games, and their reasonably stable, albeit, a bit more of a faff than my Macbook Pro & iMac.

Upon first switching I got really hung up about finding a way to run my old Windows apps, but I don't think I've had the need for one in the last few years, so really not an issue for me anymore.

So if, you fancy a change - go for a Mac, see if you like it and decide for yourself. I don't think you'll regret it, but if you do, I'm sure someone will swap!

I do find the Macs are a little more expensive than the PC, but not so much as you would initially think - they are quite highly specced anyway, and if you try to match spec for spec, the difference is not so great.

If you do decide to go for a Mac, get it with the least amount of memory possible and upgrade with a 3rd party. Much cheaper than Apple's memory upgrades!
 
You have opened up a can of worms here! :LOL:

I always had pcs upto about 2 years ago when I got a macbook. Still have the desktop pc but use the mac 99% of the time (Not just because its portable!!). All my photo editing, music and videos are on the mac. Its just more enjoyable to use.

As Furtim said, when you compare specs the price diff isnt massive and to be honest unless you mess with video editing or monster photos most macs will do exactly what you ask of them! If I were you I would look for performance comparisons of programs between the two OS's instead of simply comparing specs.

Andy
 
andy_m said:
You have opened up a can of worms here! :LOL:

Andy
Click to expand...

:clap::clap::clap::clap:

Can't beat a bit of good debate

I would use it for Photo editing, video editing and graphics. Other than that I would like to hook it in to my home media system to play mp3s and dvd's etc and also trawl through the day to day office stuff.

Anybody opened theirs up to perform the likes of memory upgrade, hard drive upgrade graphics etc or is it a leave well alone thing.

Cheers

Paul
 
mac pros are very very easy to upgrade, this is even a selling point for them.

imacs, if I remember right, have a slot to add a laptop style extra stick of ram, but that's as far as you can get without sending it to apple.

Mac minis, you can upgrade, but they're a bit of a pain, a tiny tiny cable that you've got to be careful not to break, etc...

And if you're buying a new mac, they do sting you for upgrade parts... £240 for a £70 value hard drive, etc... buy it premade and add in your own ram / hard drives, way cheaper :)
 
evotwo said:
:clap::clap::clap::clap:

Can't beat a bit of good debate

I would use it for Photo editing, video editing and graphics. Other than that I would like to hook it in to my home media system to play mp3s and dvd's etc and also trawl through the day to day office stuff.

Anybody opened theirs up to perform the likes of memory upgrade, hard drive upgrade graphics etc or is it a leave well alone thing.

Cheers

Paul
Click to expand...

My Macbook has a panel that just snaps off and you can replace the hard drive by undoing a single screw. The memory requires you to remove another couple of screws. It's nothing too painful.

In a mac pro, you move a single level, drop off one of the side plates and you've access to everything. You don't even need a screw driver to replace most stuff in a mac pro.


To replace ram on an imac, it's even more simple:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1432

and replacing a hard drive is like:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10210484-17.html

Bit more involved for replacing a hard drive though.

You're lumbered with the supplied graphics card for macbooks, minis and imacs. Mac Pros are more versatile on that front for adding or replacing new hard ware.
 
My suggestion would be to try a Mac over a weekend, maybe see if a mate has one? £1500 is alot of money to drop on a completely different system just because it feels good when you have a flick of the mouse in a shop and some people on the internet tell you its the dogs danglies.

I was considering buying a mac, I then spent a weekend using an iMac and to be honest I didnt find it any quicker than my current PC - which I've spent no where near £1500 on. For sure I've had a few issues with it such as a PSU dying but Windows has been fine for me.

I think the problems with Windows are largely blown out of proportion - sure you can break Windows but only if you go touching files you shouldnt be touching! I used to **** around with all sorts of back end settings on my PC and ever since I stopped doing that over a year ago I havent had an issue with windows ( Touch wood :p )

Im not trying to talk you out of a Mac or anything like that, but if I was you I wouldnt primarily listen to peoples opinions but actually get out there and have a go before you put down that amount of money on something unknown to yourself.
 
First of all I would follow most of Jamesbuk's advice, and second I would read good old Ken Rockwell... Once I had read that I would consider everything he says and realise it pretty much covers all the "plus" points of macs that mac fans wheel out, then I would realise most of it is either **** or older than time and with no relevence to modern Windows machines.

First thing you need to realise is (and I assume you already know this) that Windows and OSX run on exactly the same components, they only have a different case and operating system. Then you need to realise macs do get viruses, crash, need upgrading, can slow down, have problems, to a very similar extent to windows PC's.

Both quality prebuilt windows machines and OSX machines will "just work" out of the box and will work equally well for good, unless you touch something you shouldn't do (which appears to be what a couple of the mac users in this thread seem to be alluding to, such as pointing out it removed their upgrading fanaticism, because it is harder to upgrade partly, or there isn't the upgrade culture with macs, not because macs can somehow make their machines work faster/as fast as new machines. Although along with a couple of other myths that mac users seem to like spreading this could be due to the seemingly mythical technology Apple use in their machines:cautious:).

And on the mythical technology side, apparently Macs just start instantly, whereas windows machines take an age... Well wrong, Macs take just as long to load from a cold start, and when in sleep mode both will start in 1-3 seconds. If that wasn't the case then Apple would have found the holy grail, sme hind of hard disk technology that could unload a Gb or two of information in a ssecond or two...

As for software, Macs do come with some useful software, as do Windows machines (much to the displeasure of the EU:LOL:). When dealing with the photo side of things, Photoshop is pretty much the main piece of software, followed by lightroom, both of which were written for windows machines, and ported over (with a couple of problems) to Macs, in that respect vista is actually the better OS for photo editing.

I think the main reason so many photographers and creative people use macs is not due to the fact they are "better", just that it has become the culture to use them, especially if you are a "pro".

So the jist of it is strip all of the usual rubbish away and just get to the main differences between th two, the OS. Do you want to try something different (just because it is different, not because it is better) or do you want to use something you are more comfortable with/have experience with?

If you want to try something different, just for a change/ realise it won't "change your life"/ and/or you have the money then go for a mac.

If you just want something that works out of the box, then go for either

If you want something you are comfortable with/ feel cheated by the price/ works with existing software/ has greater backing for software etc./ plays games, then go for a Windows PC (if prebuilt go for something from a good manufacturer)

If you want something unique/ something you can tailor to your specific needs/ want something powerful yet cheaper/ want to fiddle, and you possibly have a reasonable understanding of how to build a PC then build your own (remembering a little bit of research on component compatibility, which is pretty much universal, will mean once you install the OS, it should "just work" too).
 
Some fantastic advice/pointers debate, all appreciated thanks for taking the time. (y)

What am I going for :thinking: well still undecided. My windows rig was put together by myself some 6 years back running win2k and on the whole it rarely falls over and has been a loyal workhorse but is now way past its best. Graphically it is just hopeless, onto the laptop for anything that way.

The mac thing has sat in my mind over a few years really. I have used other peoples and have found them to be more user friendly but again with a bit of work and time the windows interface can be tailored to suit.

I know I could build a really tasty rig for the bucks I have available and put a decent monitor on the end of it and have a machine that did everything I would want of it. I guess I will do has advised and go and have a few hours sat on what I would want to buy. Perhaps a trip to the apple store is in order and then make my decision

Thanks

Paul
 
How about a bit of devil's advocate, if it is allowed: (I am not affiliated with them, but have heard good things)
http://www.alienware.com/

Max out the graphics card and memory.
Spend the extra money (if you have any) on a really nice big monitor.
 
2blue4u said:
I used to build my own. Both standard office machines and my own go-faster super computers.

Then I realised I was spending far too much time, never mind money, on building them, upgrading them, rebuilding them and generally faffing around with them.

So, about three years ago, I switched to macs. I wish I'd done it years before. I now just get on with life - both work and play - rather than problem solving, fixing, tuning and rebooting.

You see, the main difference between macs and pcs is that the former just work. The later have to be continuously cajoled into cooperation.
Click to expand...

You seem to have written my life story :)

:plus1:
 
Amp34 said:
When dealing with the photo side of things, Photoshop is pretty much the main piece of software, followed by lightroom, both of which were written for windows machines, and ported over (with a couple of problems) to Macs, in that respect vista is actually the better OS for photo editing.
Click to expand...

Actually Photoshop AND Lightroom were written for the Mac FIRST !

As were Excel and Powerpoint :) (Microsoft bought them and ported them to the PC!)


I have used Lightroom and Photoshop on BOTH and you forget which computer you are using, they are basically exactly the same !
 
Bought a quad core machine from dell for just less than £300...stuck a 1GB graphics card in it for £70, a Tb drive for £60 and 6 GB ram for I think around another £60. It breezes through lightroom, CS4, illustrator, autocad blah blah...I turn it on, do some stuff, turn it off...it works the next day as it did the day before, no reason to doubt it won't work tomorrow...as far as i can tell it does the whole mac thing for less than £500 and I haven't caught a cold since free av software has been around.
 
There is no argument PCs CAN be cheaper and are in most instances. It is like buying certain brands of car, the residual value of the mac will be much more so the total cost of ownership is not as high as it first appears. It all depends on what you are buying too. Just as an example my Mac pro when I bought it had two Xeon processors which would cost £1300 on their own. With a compatible motherboard the Mac pro was actually the cheapest QUAD core Xeon windows machine !!

I used to build all my own Windows machines and have built some absolute monsters in the past but it is nice to buy a machine with absolutely no issues and just works.
 
I buy a windows pc and turn it on, and what do you know...it works. Bizarre :D purraps I should send it back
 
no issues?

(copied from my post in the other thread)

one of the other guys had an interesting one last week which i wasnt aware about.. a couple of our MBP's have developed screen faults (basically a dead screen and DVI out).

both have just been taken back for free out of warrenty repair as its a "known issue" according to our supplier.
 
FWIW when doing large batch jobs using Photoshop I have found the a PC wins everytime due to memory management. I have been able to manage larger files than a mac on a lower spec PC with less memory. Strange but true.
Yes there are problems when doing large batch jobs on both PC and Mac, the work-a-round is to use Bridge to manage the batch, closing and re-starting Photoshop after a number of jobs.
 
I've got to address some of your points because they're patently incorrect.

Amp34 said:
First thing you need to realise is (and I assume you already know this) that Windows and OSX run on exactly the same components, they only have a different case and operating system. Then you need to realise macs do get viruses, crash, need upgrading, can slow down, have problems, to a very similar extent to windows PC's.
Click to expand...

In 2006, there were two mac viruses "in the wild". There has been less than a handful since then. Viruses on macs are simply not something that Mac users need to be concerned about. The same with spyware and security as a whole on a Mac is far tighter. Yes, there was the recent hacker who supposedly hacked into OS X within 10 seconds. Well, it was actually a Safari exploit that required visiting a particular website. Read more into that story and you'll soon read it was actually a load of rubbish. (The guy typed in the URL to a previously prepared server he'd spent hours setting up before the competition).

"Then you need to realise macs do get viruses, crash, need upgrading, can slow down, have problems, to a very similar extent to windows PC's." is absolute rubbish. Macs do crash, there's no denying that. All computer systems crash (yes, Linux does too). Macs do not get viruses, need upgrading nor have problems anywhere close to "a very similar extent" to windows. That is simply untrue.

Take upgrading - the ability to upgrade any Mac (excepting the Pro and their servers) beyond memory and hard drive upgrades is simply not an option. Apple Macs have a far, far longer shelf life than their PC equivalents. You can run - and it will run happily too - the latest version of OS X on a 867Mhz G4 Mac, of which a model was available in 2002.

Amp34 said:
And on the mythical technology side, apparently Macs just start instantly, whereas windows machines take an age... Well wrong, Macs take just as long to load from a cold start, and when in sleep mode both will start in 1-3 seconds. If that wasn't the case then Apple would have found the holy grail, sme hind of hard disk technology that could unload a Gb or two of information in a ssecond or two...
Click to expand...

I've never, ever heard the "Macs start instantly" claim. Where did you find this claim? I don't really know how long my macbook takes to boot up, I never reboot it.

Amp34 said:
As for software, Macs do come with some useful software, as do Windows machines (much to the displeasure of the EU:LOL:). When dealing with the photo side of things, Photoshop is pretty much the main piece of software, followed by lightroom, both of which were written for windows machines, and ported over (with a couple of problems) to Macs, in that respect vista is actually the better OS for photo editing.
Click to expand...

Photoshop 1.0 was written exclusively for the Mac. It's never been "ported (with a couple of problems) to OS X. That's a load of rubbish. The first version of Photoshop for Windows was 2.5. And I can't find a single article on how Lightroom was ported from Windows to OS X either. By all means enlighten me. Software like this isn't "ported". How is Vista in any way a better OS for photo editing? What could I do in Vista to my photos that I couldn't with OS X?

Amp34 said:
I think the main reason so many photographers and creative people use macs is not due to the fact they are "better", just that it has become the culture to use them, especially if you are a "pro".
Click to expand...

As a whole, Macs are used by the creative industry because it's a more reliable platform that simply gets out of the way and lets users get on with their job. "Better" is personal. I've been a Mac user for about 4 years now. It is a "better" system for me. At the end of the day, I can get more work done with OS X than I can with Windows or Linux and I'm more confident in Apple hardware and software than I am with Windows and a machine from a PC manufacturer. That's simply going on my personal experience.
 
Cut from my post in the pc or mac thread.
Take note of the latest custom pc, mag mention....

whether pc or mac set your price point and see what you can get.
Personally having built pc's for years and having very stable sytems and always updating the virus software with free top class software Avast.
I still got fed up of all the junk and slow downs etc defrag etc.
For me and many others the Mac looks cool as ever, but does all i want and its all in one unit the screen of my imac no issues no freezes no virus etc etc.
I love it, you can get all your software in mac format.
The choice is yours.
Just to point out that custom pc this month has a feature comparing the imac to a custom build, very informative.
They build a imac beater for a bit more than the imac at imac new price point.
They then change some components such as taking out liquid cooling and down grading the graphics card to bring it in at £300+ less than imac and 25 or 35% faster.
Good mag anyway and i would say a valued purchase in your position to help you decide especially if you go the home build route.
I would use xp on a windows system not vista its too hungry.
All the best and let us know how you go on.
I still love my mac and will never change.
 
as a PC user i have read this with intrest but most Mac use tell one story but please read this:-
For the first time, Apple is recommending the use of anti-virus tools to protect Mac systems
Long something of a phantom menace, strains of malware capable of infecting Mac machines have gradually been increasing in prevalence over recent months. In addition, VXers are making more use of web-based attack and applications specific vulnerabilities to infect PCs whatever their underlying operating system might be.
The admission that security scanner software was a good idea for Mac users came in an unheralded update to Apple's support site made on 21 November 2008
Apple goes further than just recommending the use of one scanner to advise the use of multiple tools. "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple anti-virus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult," it said.
Quite aside from the expense, the use of multiple anti-virus scanners could affect system performance and smacks of overkill. Users who use one anti-virus scanner, a personal firewall and keeping up to date with patching would be safer than just relying on two anti-virus scanners to bail them out of trouble, according to general security best-practice.
Using multiple scanners on mail gateways and servers makes sense, but on the desktop the advice is a lot more questionable.
Apple suggests Intego VirusBarrier, Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh and McAfee VirusScan for Mac as possible security options. All these packages come at a price, while AVG is well known for supplying a basic version of its anti-virus software to Windows consumers at home at no charge. Avast! Home Edition and Clam AV provide similar options for Mac users.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top