Moving from Mac to Windows need help choosing

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Nick
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Hi all,

My 2015 iMac is starting to run slowly and I'm now thinking of upgrading. Long story short, I'm thinking of moving back to a Windows pc. My current spec of the Mac is:

3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5

24 GB 1867 MHz DDR3

AMD Radeon R9 M390 2 GB

1TB HDD

Plus 27' monitor of course.

I'm looking for a better set up to include a similar monitor and minimum 1TB SSD.

It's been a long time since I used any Windows PC's and I'm very much out of the loop, so any advice would be gratefully received.

Thanks in advance,
Nick
 
When you say 'run slowly', what do you mean? s it struggling with apps it used to be ok with? Is it that newer, updated apps and stuff are demanding to much of the system? What do you need it to do?

I ask, as I'm still running a 2006 Mac Pro, which, apart from the graphics card, is still a more than capable machine. The only major issue is the inability to run more recent OS'. But your iMac is 'only' 5 years old, which isn't much, and it's a decent enough specced machine. I'm sure it can be upgraded to the most recent OS. It has a healthy amount of RAM (8GB is often enough for most stuff), and a more than capable processor. It also has an excellent screen. Plus of course having a vastly superior OS to any Windows machine. I'm wondering if it is possibly your HDD getting a bit tired and praps there's loads of 'clutter' on it, which is slowing it down. I chucked a SSD in a 2008 iMac, and it was much, much quicker. So praps a simple swap to a SSD might be a cheaper and effective option? Or investigate, using Activity Monitor, to see if anything is hogging resources such as RAM, CPU etc. I've upgraded a few Macs by simply swapping to faster drives, and the difference between a HDD and a SSD is night and day.


It's been a long time since I used any Windows PC's and I'm very much out of the loop, so any advice would be gratefully received.

Windows is still Windows. IE; it's still vastly inferior to Mac OS. You can get reasonable PCs in terms of hardware, but you will probbly end up spending as much as a new iMac to get anywhere near the same level of build quality, screen etc. And I've yet to see an all in one PC that matches up to an iMac for quality.

I'd be looking for ways to soup up your existing Mac, long before going anywhere near any PC.
 
When you say 'run slowly', what do you mean? s it struggling with apps it used to be ok with? Is it that newer, updated apps and stuff are demanding to much of the system? What do you need it to do?

I ask, as I'm still running a 2006 Mac Pro, which, apart from the graphics card, is still a more than capable machine. The only major issue is the inability to run more recent OS'. But your iMac is 'only' 5 years old, which isn't much, and it's a decent enough specced machine. I'm sure it can be upgraded to the most recent OS. It has a healthy amount of RAM (8GB is often enough for most stuff), and a more than capable processor. It also has an excellent screen. Plus of course having a vastly superior OS to any Windows machine. I'm wondering if it is possibly your HDD getting a bit tired and praps there's loads of 'clutter' on it, which is slowing it down. I chucked a SSD in a 2008 iMac, and it was much, much quicker. So praps a simple swap to a SSD might be a cheaper and effective option? Or investigate, using Activity Monitor, to see if anything is hogging resources such as RAM, CPU etc. I've upgraded a few Macs by simply swapping to faster drives, and the difference between a HDD and a SSD is night and day.




Windows is still Windows. IE; it's still vastly inferior to Mac OS. You can get reasonable PCs in terms of hardware, but you will probbly end up spending as much as a new iMac to get anywhere near the same level of build quality, screen etc. And I've yet to see an all in one PC that matches up to an iMac for quality.

I'd be looking for ways to soup up your existing Mac, long before going anywhere near any PC.
The slowness referees to existing apps. Excel or word for instance now take an age to open. Spinning beach ball hell. I’d definitely prefer to upgrade if that’s going to save the upheaval of a new pc. I’ve added my serial number to Macupgrades.co.uk and the cost for RAM and an SSD around £400. I’m pretty sure I could bring that cost down by shopping around?
 
Windows is still Windows. IE; it's still vastly inferior to Mac OS.

As a long term Apple fan now using Windows 10 and OS X I'm not sure I agree with you. Windows 10 is actually pretty well screwed together. Microsoft still do stupid things but so do Apple these days.

And I've yet to see an all in one PC that matches up to an iMac for quality.

Well, that I can agree on. I've literally just finished photographing my iMac and putting it on e*ay. Approaching 8 years old it's still a quality item and a gorgeous piece of design. The 2012 desktop may actually be the design team's finest work.

The slowness referees to existing apps. Excel or word for instance now take an age to open. Spinning beach ball hell. I’d definitely prefer to upgrade if that’s going to save the upheaval of a new pc. I’ve added my serial number to Macupgrades.co.uk and the cost for RAM and an SSD around £400. I’m pretty sure I could bring that cost down by shopping around?

Upgrading the drive inside a 2015 Mac is always going to be expensive. I've found I can run an external drive on my 2012 significantly faster than an internal. An external 1TB SanDisk Extreme is going to run faster than an internal Fusion drive and costs about £150. If it turns out to be a terrible idea, it will work with your new PC. 24GB of memory is plenty for Excel or Word. The cheapest fix might be to get a fast external drive, install a fresh copy of OSX on that (remember you can boot from any drive by holding the option key) and see where that takes you. You should be able to drag apps from one drive to the other. I bet you find it runs really nicely.
 
I have a late 2017 iMac 4k with 24mg memory, yes 8mb original and 16mb of extra.

I also built myself a pc last September with a Ryzen 9 3600x and 32mb of ram, M.2 4gb/s solid state drives 4k monitor blah blah blah.......

My 2017 Mac still blows the socks off my pc running Photoshop, Office and a whole host of other programs. I'm a reluctant user of Windows 10 but to get the best of my system it has to be.

If my Mac died I'd definitely buy a replacement.

I have a theory that Macs are just better for graphics even with older processors, PC's are great for games.

Both my machines run minimum software and plugins. The Mac is just so much faster at most things than my beast PC.

I'm a 40 year computer engineer and at one time pc's were just way ahead of Macs for speed but nowadays I think Windows and associated software needs to go back to the days when people wrote software not module built them.

The worst program by far are Adobe programs. Photoshop 2020 is even getting complaints from long term Adobe users. I can't print without a tint in Photoshop 2019 which I've gone back to without a tint, yet Lightroom using the same driver and ICC profile prints out perfect.

At the end of the day if your Mac is running like a dog I'd look at wiping it and reinstalling OSX from scratch from a pen drive, look up clearing caches there's a few hidden ones and maybe do a bit of an upgrade. If I remember correctly the 2015 Mac has a screen held on magnetically, maybe do some YouTube watching and upgrade it yourself.
 
My 2015 iMac is starting to run slowly and I'm now thinking of upgrading.

I've not had experience with the most recent versions of OSX, but with 10.5 I found that it needed reinstalling about every 18 months to keep the speed up - presumably down to cruft from updates. If yours is running slower than it used to with the same programs that seemed to be more responsive then it's worth a try. If you have a time machine backup then restoration is normally painless.
 
Windows is still Windows. IE; it's still vastly inferior to Mac OS.

I can agree on your other points, but this is simply BS, both systems have their positives, but nethier OS is leaps and bounds better than the other. And quality of recent mac's hasn't been stellar either. Typing on my Surface Book is VASTLY a better experience than typing on my Macbook Pro, the keyboard is utter crap.

The design and materials is top, I'll give you that, and thermal dissipation has always been really good.

If the iMac is only the 2015 model then the op should be able to resolve the speed issue, no question about that, absoltely no need for a replacement, I'm betting that the 1Tb storage is Fusion at best, spinner at worst, time to go for full SSD upgrade!
 
The slowness referees to existing apps. Excel or word for instance now take an age to open. Spinning beach ball hell. I’d definitely prefer to upgrade if that’s going to save the upheaval of a new pc. I’ve added my serial number to Macupgrades.co.uk and the cost for RAM and an SSD around £400. I’m pretty sure I could bring that cost down by shopping around?

Ok so. Is it just certain apps running slowly? Unsurprising you mention the Microsoft apps; I've had issues with such for nearly twenty years of running Office on Macs. I use the Apple versions, Pages etc, now. But I'm not a heavy user of such software tbh. It's worth running Activity Monitor, to see if any apps are hogging resources. It is likely, that as apps get updated, that there might be conflicts with vestiges of older versions on your machine. You can see how apps use the CPU/s, although I think it's mainly the more graphic intensive apps that use that more. you've certainly got ample RAM for running Office. Or it could just be that your HDD is wearing out a bit, or getting to full, something like that.

Upgrading to a new drive isn't that painful, and needn't be expensive, as you can DIY. As mentioned above; iMac screens are held in place with magnets. There are various YT videos which explain how to remove it safely. You'll need a couple of rubber suckers, is all. You may need a drive caddy depending on the type and size of internal HDD already in the iMac. But it's little more expense than the SSD itself really. Look on BT shop or Novatech etc, for good deals on SSDs. A 1TB drive can be had for as little as £80 or so, these days. Eighty pounds. Not four hundred.

You will of course need to backup your existing drive and system, even if you want to do a fully clean install (recommended). You can use an external drive to backup using TimeMachine, then a reinstall from that, transfer files over etc, once you've put the new drive in. Again, info on internet regarding this. A clean install is the best way, cos it'll remove the rubbish that may have been slowing things down. A SSD Vs a HDD or even fusion drive, will be sig-NIF-icantly faster, and speed things up no end. My 14 year old MacPro fully boots up from power off, in just 20 seconds, and that's with a RAID HDD pair and another drive with an older OS on it. The iMac I restored with a new SSD was similar in boot up time, and just so much faster than before.

To back up all your existing files, I'd really recommend at least a twin-drive NAS/USB drive, with two RAID O 'mirrored' HDDs for redundancy. So if one fails, there's always a second one for backup. Or if you're just using your existing internal drive for al storage, at least get an external USB drive to backup all files onto that as well. Always have a backup. And it's a good idea to back up the back up; I once had 2 HDDs fail within days of each other; fortunately I had a RAID 0 set, or I would basically have lost my 'life's work' of digital files.

But TL;DR; you don't need a new computer. Your existing one will be fine, with a bit of tlc. To replace your current iMac with an equivalently current spec PC, you'll be looking at £1500+ anyway, so that's into iMac territory. Why switch when you don't have to?

It's a good idea to read up on such things regarding replacing drives, SSDs, backups, RAID etc. you can always refer back to this thread for more advice, I'm sure there are others with far greater knowledge and expertise than me.
 
I can agree on your other points, but this is simply BS, both systems have their positives, but nethier OS is leaps and bounds better than the other

No you are wrong.


Windows is, and has always been, rubbish. This is a scientific fact, and is enshrined in Law.
 
and-so-it-begins-the-great-windows-vs-mac-war-of-our-time.jpg
 
External SSD. Modern versions of OSX are optimised for SSD. if You have USB3 it’s a no brainer...
 
Ok so. Is it just certain apps running slowly? Unsurprising you mention the Microsoft apps; I've had issues with such for nearly twenty years of running Office on Macs. I use the Apple versions, Pages etc, now. But I'm not a heavy user of such software tbh. It's worth running Activity Monitor, to see if any apps are hogging resources. It is likely, that as apps get updated, that there might be conflicts with vestiges of older versions on your machine. You can see how apps use the CPU/s, although I think it's mainly the more graphic intensive apps that use that more. you've certainly got ample RAM for running Office. Or it could just be that your HDD is wearing out a bit, or getting to full, something like that.

Upgrading to a new drive isn't that painful, and needn't be expensive, as you can DIY. As mentioned above; iMac screens are held in place with magnets. There are various YT videos which explain how to remove it safely. You'll need a couple of rubber suckers, is all. You may need a drive caddy depending on the type and size of internal HDD already in the iMac. But it's little more expense than the SSD itself really. Look on BT shop or Novatech etc, for good deals on SSDs. A 1TB drive can be had for as little as £80 or so, these days. Eighty pounds. Not four hundred.

You will of course need to backup your existing drive and system, even if you want to do a fully clean install (recommended). You can use an external drive to backup using TimeMachine, then a reinstall from that, transfer files over etc, once you've put the new drive in. Again, info on internet regarding this. A clean install is the best way, cos it'll remove the rubbish that may have been slowing things down. A SSD Vs a HDD or even fusion drive, will be sig-NIF-icantly faster, and speed things up no end. My 14 year old MacPro fully boots up from power off, in just 20 seconds, and that's with a RAID HDD pair and another drive with an older OS on it. The iMac I restored with a new SSD was similar in boot up time, and just so much faster than before.

To back up all your existing files, I'd really recommend at least a twin-drive NAS/USB drive, with two RAID O 'mirrored' HDDs for redundancy. So if one fails, there's always a second one for backup. Or if you're just using your existing internal drive for al storage, at least get an external USB drive to backup all files onto that as well. Always have a backup. And it's a good idea to back up the back up; I once had 2 HDDs fail within days of each other; fortunately I had a RAID 0 set, or I would basically have lost my 'life's work' of digital files.

But TL;DR; you don't need a new computer. Your existing one will be fine, with a bit of tlc. To replace your current iMac with an equivalently current spec PC, you'll be looking at £1500+ anyway, so that's into iMac territory. Why switch when you don't have to?

It's a good idea to read up on such things regarding replacing drives, SSDs, backups, RAID etc. you can always refer back to this thread for more advice, I'm sure there are others with far greater knowledge and expertise than me.
My current set up is a time machine backing up to 1TB seagate drive, a 2TB seagate drive to back up my photos and a 4TB NAS as a total back up of the Mac so I’m covered with regard to restoring files. My concern is doing something stupid whilst replacing the drive! I’m about to start looking at tutorials now
 
External SSD. Modern versions of OSX are optimised for SSD. if You have USB3 it’s a no brainer...

The internal HDD/Fusion drive may be what's causing the issue. An external SSD won't solve that. You CAN run it as the boot disc, butI'm not sure if that will be as good a solution as an internal SSD. And the iMac will still contain the slower drive anyway; if that has all the files store don it, it will still cause the bottleneck.

No USB3 I’m afraid, only USB2

No your iMac has USB3. Thunderbolt is faster though. I think LaCie do Thunderbolt external drives.

My current set up is a time machine backing up to 1TB seagate drive, a 2TB seagate drive to back up my photos and a 4TB NAS as a total back up of the Mac so I’m covered with regard to restoring files. My concern is doing something stupid whilst replacing the drive! I’m about to start looking at tutorials now

So you've got stuff covered, good. Are all those drives at the same physical location? Having said that, I need an off-site backup myself.

Then it's quite easy really, once you've got the bonnet up. Installing a new SSD is pretty straightforward, if you follow a YT vid. Then get yer original install USB thingy (is it a USB thingy? Must be; no DVD drive on those iMacs, no?). Hold down alt on startup, then follow instructions. Once an OS is installed, you can backup from your TM volume. Bosh. Well, a little more involved than that, but not difficult.

I need a new Mac. Gonna wait a bit and see what the new one will be like (probs gonna come in Sept/Oct or praps a bit later). Apple are doing their own chips now, moving away from Intel, so that will be interesting in terms of what softwares will run on it. I was hoping the new one would have been released already, but, things. But moving from this ancient Mac Pro, with 2k max graphics and only a 1920x1200 screen, to something a bit more up to date, will be exciting.
 
Apple are doing their own chips now, moving away from Intel, so that will be interesting in terms of what softwares will run on it.

Interesting, are they going to be Apple branded CPU's?
 
Interesting, are they going to be Apple branded CPU's?

Yes, apparently.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/22/21295475/apple-mac-processors-arm-silicon-chips-wwdc-2020

It's the logical progression for Apple, to move towards greater hardware and software integration, which has always been Apple's strength. Making their own chips means they can concentrate on optimisation, rather than having to make Intel's stuff work for them. The 'phones and iPads have been using Apple chips for years now, so this is the next step. Hence why I'm waiting to see what the new iMac will be like. If it offers an even better UE, then I'm all for it. I bought my first Apple iMac (G3 DV+) in 2000, and I've always liked that 'walled garden' philosophy; it's more expensive, but it all works a lot better than the alternative 'open' platforms. It is 'exclusive' though; the price excludes a lot of potential users tbh. But who really wants a crappy £200 Windows laptop that has loads of bugs, never quite works properly, and dies within a couple of years? Not me.
 
No USB3 I’m afraid, only USB2

Nah - iMacs have had USB 3 for years :) It will probably be the slower of the 2 versions but should still far outperform the internal.

The internal HDD/Fusion drive may be what's causing the issue. An external SSD won't solve that. You CAN run it as the boot disc, butI'm not sure if that will be as good a solution as an internal SSD. And the iMac will still contain the slower drive anyway; if that has all the files store don it, it will still cause the bottleneck.

Maybe so. But there's no reason you can't copy all the data off the internal. Also, it should be easily fast enough for serving data. It just seems it can't cope with the OS. I've noticed tht fusion drives seem to get slower as they get fuller. I suspect they can no longer manage the fast portion as efficiently.

It's the logical progression for Apple, to move towards greater hardware and software integration, which has always been Apple's strength. Making their own chips means they can concentrate on optimisation, rather than having to make Intel's stuff work for them.

Or......they are confirming what everybody has know for years - that they really don't care about desktop users :) They love their iOS and will only be truly happy when an iMac is basically a big phone.
 
Nah - iMacs have had USB 3 for years :) It will probably be the slower of the 2 versions but should still far outperform the internal.
Only if you use an SSD. The internal disc connection is SATA3, which is still a bit faster than USB3. Stick a SSD in the iMac, and you have the best performance.


Maybe so. But there's no reason you can't copy all the data off the internal. Also, it should be easily fast enough for serving data. It just seems it can't cope with the OS. I've noticed tht fusion drives seem to get slower as they get fuller. I suspect they can no longer manage the fast portion as efficiently.
The OS will be fine; it'll be all the other 'updates' crap that will be slowing it down, so all the other updates for other software, such as the Office stuff. But yes, it may just be reaching capacity, and/or just getting worn out.


Or......they are confirming what everybody has know for years - that they really don't care about desktop users :) They love their iOS and will only be truly happy when an iMac is basically a big phone.

Apple's market has always been 'normal' people instead of 'nerds'. IE, people who don't want to learn how to use a computer, in order to be able to use a computer. But that's still a healthy chunk of potential computer users, from yer email and surfing only types, to full on video and audio production. Apple has never targeted the 'business' sector, because that's already covered pretty much. Many high end companies use bespoke systems anyway. Having said that; Apple's products do suit the small business very well, as they are easy to use and reliable. Office iMac, POS iPads, integration with 'phones for when you're not in the office/shop, etc. Very effective. But Apple have looked at how most 'normal' folk actually use computers, and concentrated on designing products around that. For Apple to cater for the 'custom PC' type market, they'd have to make everything compatible with all sorts of 3rd party hardware and software, and then you just end up with an 'open' platform like Windows. That's not Apple's philosophy. Create a walled garden, make it work really well, don't worry about compatibility with all sorts of crappy hardware and software, and you end up with a far better UE. As for 'desktops'; apart from me, who actually uses a 'static' computer any more? :LOL: Desktops are dead*....

*They're not actually dead.
 
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I don't know if it helps or not, I'm no computer wiz, i have the below.

Most thing run smooth as butter, even 4k editing video isn't all that bad, but excel and word etc still take a lifetime to open, my whole system will boot up from cold in about 15-20 seconds, but it will take anywhere from 10-30 seconds to open excel or word.

Screenshot 2020-06-23 at 13.26.14.png
 
Most thing run smooth as butter, even 4k editing video isn't all that bad, but excel and word etc still take a lifetime to open, my whole system will boot up from cold in about 15-20 seconds, but it will take anywhere from 10-30 seconds to open excel or word.
Aha! You see? It's the Microsoft Apps. Probs deliberate to spite you for using a Mac...
 
Aha! You see? It's the Microsoft Apps. Probs deliberate to spite you for using a Mac...
yep i firmly believe that :)
 
yep i firmly believe that :)
:LOL::ROFLMAO:

No it's true! They secretly 'update' your apps with code that makes them run more and more slowly, so you get fed up, then buy a PC. But ha! I'm onto you, Microsoft.

Just out of interest; to the OP or anyone else- why would you use Office over Apple's own apps? I much prefer the latter (but then, I almost never use Excel/Numbers, and I can't even remember the 3rd one. PowerPoint/Keynote? Who even uses PP these days???!); I can't fault Pages tbh. I haven't even got an Office suite installed, currently. Praps that's why this ld Mac keeps chugging along, working fine...
 
:LOL::ROFLMAO:

No it's true! They secretly 'update' your apps with code that makes them run more and more slowly, so you get fed up, then buy a PC. But ha! I'm onto you, Microsoft.

Just out of interest; to the OP or anyone else- why would you use Office over Apple's own apps? I much prefer the latter (but then, I almost never use Excel/Numbers, and I can't even remember the 3rd one. PowerPoint/Keynote? Who even uses PP these days???!); I can't fault Pages tbh. I haven't even got an Office suite installed, currently. Praps that's why this ld Mac keeps chugging along, working fine...

Don't use any, just use Google apps for free and in the cloud.

Macs are dreadful though, bloody awful screens for colour accuracy god knows why anyone gets them for editing on without them doing a matte finish version.
 
The Apple apps are brilliant, very capable, and Keynote particularly. It shoves PowerSpray into the corner of a concrete basement, lit by a 40w light bulb, wetting itself.

Their weakness is the Hoover mentality. People think that Office is the standard, and ask for Office compatibility. It’s not compatible...
 
Macs are dreadful though, bloody awful screens for colour accuracy
When I calibrate mine with i1 Display2 it's very difficult (for me at least) to see the difference from the standard apple profile.

I too only use the Apple works suite of Pages and Numbers, I'm sure for heavy use there will be some compatibility issues with Microsoft office, but unless your sharing files who cares, and you can export in compatible formats if needed.

Oh mines a late 2009 iMac still running fine (after I oven baked the graphics card )
 
I too only use the Apple works suite of Pages and Numbers, I'm sure for heavy use there will be some compatibility issues with Microsoft office, but unless your sharing files who cares, and you can export in compatible formats if needed.

When I bought my Macbook I took a memory stick with typical word documents, excel spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations into the Applestore so I could evaluate the Apple office suite. I needed a business machine that had to be completely compatible with Microsoft office - near enough wasn't good enough because I would be sending documents and data to customers. IIRC the word equivalent mangled formatting but was still usable. The excel equivalent couldn't display the graphs that were part of the data file. The presentation software also mangled formatting. Office ran (still runs) fine on the mac.

In the end it doesn't matter whether a non-microsoft package is better or not, because if the industry you are in requires documents in a specific format then that's what you have to produce. No-one you present work to will care that your software is better in some way than theirs if they struggle to use your files, and no-one will give you repeat business if you insist you're right and they are wrong to use office.

TBH at that time Libreoffice was better at handling office documents, and was also possibly a better office suite. If you don't have to send documents to anyone else then obviously you can use whatever suite you prefer.
 
When I bought my Macbook I took a memory stick with typical word documents, excel spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations into the Applestore so I could evaluate the Apple office suite. I needed a business machine that had to be completely compatible with Microsoft office - near enough wasn't good enough because I would be sending documents and data to customers. IIRC the word equivalent mangled formatting but was still usable. The excel equivalent couldn't display the graphs that were part of the data file. The presentation software also mangled formatting. Office ran (still runs) fine on the mac.

100% this. Pages is gorgeous and reasonably competent. Numbers is gorgeous and for simple stuff works adequately. But hit it with some hard questions and ask it to chart the output and Excel leaves it in the dust.

It's also worth noting the the Mac version of Excel is a *long* way behind the PC version. No PowerPivot, very limited VBA and enough key binding differences to mess with your head every 3-5 minutes. Every time I use Google Sheets I'm impressed at the stuff they keep adding to it. But if you want compatibility and full functionality then you want Excel and probably Excel running under Win10.
 
I too only use the Apple works suite of Pages and Numbers, I'm sure for heavy use there will be some compatibility issues with Microsoft office, but unless your sharing files who cares, and you can export in compatible formats if needed.
Innit doh. Fortunately, I don't have to work with Office, and for me, Pages does an adequate job when I need it. I can export a perfectly workable Windows compatible file if necessary. I've never had any Windows/Office users come back to me complaining the document I sent doesn't work. As for 'compatibility'; the idea of needing to work with Microsoft Office to the level other posters describes, well, I'd lose the will to live. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have never had to do so. I can always pay someone else to do all that, if I really need to.

But there it is; if you want a machine to just run Office, buy a cheap crap PC. It's all you'll need. But many of us use our computers for other things as well. That's something I think some people forget. There is a life beyond Microsoft...

So; any other Mac users experiencing problems with Office software? I haven't actually used any Office apps for a while, but I do remember them being very slow to open.
 
When I calibrate mine with i1 Display2 it's very difficult (for me at least) to see the difference from the standard apple profile.
Don't feed the troll...

The only time I ever had an 'issue' with a client regarding colour accuracy, was when I did some graphics in Illustrator. I'd carefully specified a light neutral grey as a background for something. The client insisted it was a light green. Because that's how he saw it on his crap, uncalibrated screen. It could only have been a light grey, regardless of monitor calibration, cos it was of equal numerical value in the colour picker box, in both CMYK and RGB. It could not possibly have been anything else. Took several others to point out his monitor was way off....
 
Yes, apparently.

But who really wants a crappy £200 Windows laptop that has loads of bugs, never quite works properly, and dies within a couple of years? Not me.

Any cheap laptop is not going to be the best hence the wide range of specs and prices.
They ALL work for the purpose they were designed for, it's hardly rockett science knowing that a £200 laptop will run more demanding apps and games.
Apple are not perfect as they've also had software bugs as well.
I'd agree that MS have made some mistakes over the years and I can't even remember the last time I saw a BSOD on a Windows computer.
I personally prefer the open platforms of PCs as it allows the user to choose their components rather that being restriced like Apple.
I've not seen a compatabilty issues with components and drivers for years with an MS OS based computer.
I also like the flexibilty of how things are done rather than the Apple view 'do it our way or don't do it at all'.
 
I personally prefer the open platforms of PCs as it allows the user to choose their components rather that being restriced like Apple.
But most people aren't at all interested in that. We just want our computers to work well enough for us to do what we want. Fortunately, Apple have chosen all the best components for us already. :)


I've not seen a compatibility issues with components and drivers for years with an MS OS based computer.
The 2 PC laptops in this house (my partner has to use one for work) won't work nicely with our NAS. I have a little laptop (her old one) which I use just for converting my Nikon Z6 RAW files to .dng, cos my MacPro is too ancient to take a version of Lightroom* that can work with them. If I try to use the NAS, to upload the converted files, it then disappears from the MacPro, and my ipad, and any other Macs that I've used to access it. I have to restart the NAS. Every. Single. Time. Never have a single issue just using the Macs/iPad. Oh and the PCs cant connect with the wireless Epson printer, so any files to print have to be sent to my Mac first. Other issues I can't be arsed explaining.

*That's more an Adobe issue; the Mac is powerful enough to process the files, but Adobe haven't included Z6 RAW capability in legacy LR versions. And no more updates for LR for this version.

I also like the flexibilty of how things are done rather than the Apple view 'do it our way or don't do it at all'.
But in this case, a dictatorship is more effective than a democracy. Apple stuff 'just works' because of this system. I agree it does 'lock you in', somewhat, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, for me.
 
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So, having looked at the YouTube vids there’s no way I’d attempt this myself. The screen is glued on. I know my limitations. So now I’m getting quotes for a firm to do it. Best so far is £350 inc 1TB SSD
 
People think that Office is the standard, and ask for Office compatibility. It’s not compatible...
I use LibreOffice on Linux, Mac and Windows, Given the cost (it's free!) it's a marvellous package. And did I mention that it's free? :naughty:
 
So, having looked at the YouTube vids there’s no way I’d attempt this myself. The screen is glued on. I know my limitations. So now I’m getting quotes for a firm to do it. Best so far is £350 inc 1TB SSD

Just looked at that, and WOW they made it much more difficult than the previous iMac. I have a 2009 27" and just had to take the graphics card out, was dubious at first but not really a problem , but no way would I attempt your with the glued in screen.
 
I use LibreOffice on Linux, Mac and Windows, Given the cost (it's free!) it's a marvellous package. And did I mention that it's free? :naughty:

Libreoffice is excellent if you don't need compatibility with businesses, and if you want to (mostly) retain formatting then a document can be saved as a pdf. In many ways it's like GIMP is to photoshop: it can do many of the things you might want, but will do it differently.
 
Libreoffice is excellent if you don't need compatibility with businesses.
Word and Excel are just fine with Libre/Open Office, I've passed dozens of documents over to colleagues when I had to use my own computers for whatever reason and I don't think anyone ever had a problem or even noticed. Powerpoint does have issues with Impress unless you stick to vanilla images and typefaces. Swapping databases is a whole different matter!
 
Word and Excel are just fine with Libre/Open Office, I've passed dozens of documents over to colleagues when I had to use my own computers for whatever reason and I don't think anyone ever had a problem or even noticed. Powerpoint does have issues with Impress unless you stick to vanilla images and typefaces. Swapping databases is a whole different matter!

Perhaps things have improved recently, or maybe for internal consumption exact matching was less important than the information conveyed?
 
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