New desktop/mac

Uneducated_Rick

Uneducated_Rick

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Ricky
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Yet another new computer what should I get threads.

My laptop is giving up slowly and really needs replacing but now I am in more of a fixed location it makes more sense to get a desktop over a laptop.

Given a lot of users here use Mac, and recommend it, I am contemplating the switch but the price for a 24" iMac is much higher than that of a decent PC and 24" monitor.

I am still just about eligible for Apple Student Discount so would bring it down a bit but was wondering if anyone would recommend a comparable PC and 24" monitor for about £1000 as which is what I estimate the iMac to be after discount.

The iMac spec would be:
2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB memory
640GB hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
 
Can't say I've ever used one for more than a few minutes - where it would be located would probably not receive any harsh light to cause glare
 
Can no-one spec me a comparable PC and decent monitor?

Having a look on Dell at the Inspiron 545 with 21.5" screen. The money saved compared to a mac would buy a decent colour calibrator
 
The thing is Rick its all about personal choice. I have been a PC user since the mid 80's so thats a quarter of a century. I have just switched to Mac and they are great. I did not just switch, I bought a mac mini for a couple of hundred pounds, then an Imac G5 and now a faster intel Imac G5.

Its taken me 5 months to decide to switch......it really is true what they say, macs just work. There is non of that crashing, there are no virus as such. So no there is not a comparison PC and decent monitor, either buy a mac or stick with windows and wonder what life would be like with a mac

stew
 
artona said:
macs just work. There is non of that crashing,
Click to expand...

You're not trying hard enough then...

I see "the application X has unexpectedly quit at least once a day."

Today it happened with Mail & Vienna, so it's not just MS OS's that have app crashes.

To the OP.

Go try a Mac for yourself, Apple Store, PC World, John Lewis all should have them on display ( avoid Dixons though, it's old stock at new prices). Book some time with an Apple personal shopper to really try the thing out.
 
This is about to spiral into a mac verses windows thread like so many others, I can see it now :bang:

What software do you want to run?

That is the important question.

Windows or MacOS would do what you want (I am missing Linux as it does require a little more input from the user and if you had that knowledge then this thread would not have been started).

You could buy a decent Dell desktop with a 2409 Dell monitor, plenty of ram and a decent spec.

You could buy a macbook plus an external monitor and keyboard and have the best of both worlds.

You could buy a macbook pro

You could buy a decent Dell, Sony, Asus or otherwise windows laptop.

Go have a mess at an Apple store and see if you like it more than Windows, have a 1 to 1 session with one of their specialists. Take a look at the iMac, see if you like the screen (most people are more than happy with it). Personally I have a DELL screen on an Apple Mac PRO !!

Either way you should be able to get what you want.

EDIT: Mac mini + Dell 2409 + keyboard + mouse + memory upgrade would come to about your budget so you could look at that option too.
 
I've muddled about with various pc's over the years from £800 to £2k and just recently spent £1200 on an iMac. I feel obliged to stop any would-be pc buyer (that's into photography in one way or another) and say that if you're spending Mac money, then it really should be on a Mac.

A 24" iMac for a grand (student price) is a bargain imo.
 
FWIW, the 20" imac is hopeless for colour accuracy. It's only got one backlight, so you get a very noticeable shift top to bottom - even just by standing up, or tilting the screen.

The 24" is much better. The colours still aren't perfect, but they're much closer.

If you're really worried about colour accuracy, go for a Mac Pro plus a 24" cinema screen. They're lovely. They're also pricey. Up to you!

An alternative would be to get a Dell machine, wipe it, and put Mac OS X on it. It runs on Intel machines, so it should certainly be possible...
 
Apple's monitor calibration is much better than buying a monitor & then buying a calibration kit.
I have an iMac 24" & I love it. I have been using Apple for 20 years & nothing like a mac.
 
cowasaki said:
This is about to spiral into a mac verses windows thread like so many others, I can see it now :bang:
Click to expand...

um why? cant see anything like that in here to be honest. like you say its personal preference at the end of the day. i hate those glossy screens with a passion, even in rooms with little windows they reflect like a pig. personally i'll always debug comments like "macs never crash" because its not true. but ive got nothing against them, i have one on my desk at work and i use it.

LightBlue said:
An alternative would be to get a Dell machine, wipe it, and put Mac OS X on it. It runs on Intel machines, so it should certainly be possible...
Click to expand...

yes you can do that (cue rants from the "you cant break the EULA" lot).

for the PC route id look at the studio XPS range - http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/p...oxps-435mt?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&ref=dthp

ships with vista x64 too. nice and stable.
 
wasper said:
Apple's monitor calibration is much better than buying a monitor & then buying a calibration kit.
I have an iMac 24" & I love it. I have been using Apple for 20 years & nothing like a mac.
Click to expand...

does mac monitor calibration alter dpeending upon the lighting conditions in the room like some calibrators do?
 
LightBlue, neil_g - OS X on a Dell? In heaven's name why?
Just 'cos it's possible, doesn't mean anyone should seriously think about doing it...!
 
Macs are not the be all and end all. I bought a new machine this year which was a PC, hand built Quad Core, 8gb Ram, WD Raptors in Raid 0 and put Vista Business 64 bit on it. Really dont get any troble with it, and it processes my Canon RAW files quickly. When converting them to JPEG it takes less than a second to do it.

I am thinking about getting a mac book pro, not for the OS or anything just for the hardware, they have a good battery life and good performance. If i could get a PC with the same performance and battery life, then i would stick with PC. Right tools for the right job. I have to admit i have a Mac Mini which i have been using recently, however there are little things that annoy me with it, although this maybe more to do with the fact that i know more about Windows than i do about OSX.
 
I think that's correct. If you have lived with either platform for any length of time, a switch is a little bit like learning a new language. You know how to sort things out when they go wrong. Things are where you expect them to be.

And if you have any sort of investment in software, switching makes even less sense.

Buying a mac is rather easy as there is little choice. Buying a PC is much more fraught. You can get a great value machine or you could end up with a half obsolete pile of junk. Do you trust yourself to know the difference?

I really doubt a quick play at an Apple store is enough to make you want to switch. Hopefully someone will be able to recommend a pc for you.

I have had macs for twenty years and rarely get a chance to touch PCs, but they do seem to have got a lot better. In fact, nearly as good ;)

Graham
 
Yes, a lot of it to do is with the hardware. You will not find a low end mac for sale in one of the main computer shops, which means that they will all run the software very well, as if you look at the mac book which is around £749 it has a Core 2 duo along with 2gb of ram.

I work in retail and often have people comming in looking for the cheapest laptop which is normaly around £300 with a Celeron signgle core and 1gb of ram running a fairly resource intensive vista. This is why the PC has the majority stake in the market. Most people cannot afford £750 for a word processor or an internet machine, however when they find that the machine they have bought does not do what they want, they often call it all the names under the sun, come back in and spend £400-500 on a new one.

The other thing aswell which does limit macs to a certain degree is the the software market. Yes main stream applications such as Word, Excel, Photoshop etc are available for both platforms, but tools which i used at Uni for network simulation (Opnet) are only available for a PC. It really depends on how much you have to spend and what you are going to do with it.
 
Crickey if you built your own pc a grand would get you a proper beast!
 
I just went over to Mac after 10 years of PC, a 2.93Ghz iMac :D

I know how to fix most problems when it comes to a PC, and knows how it works so the switch over is a little daunting but i am looking forward to it. I have used a mac for 2 years around about 8 years ago at work so i am familiar with the OS. I will also keep my old PC and install Windows 7 on it too just to run the odd piece of software i need on it.
 
i do agree that macs look awesome and yes it just works, i have been a PC user and i think macs are expensive although when i turn 16 in december its a part time job for me earning £250 a month which means in four months i can afford a mac however i might just carry on with pc's and buy a £750 macbook for a test and if i like it then i will turn to the other side however for power windows is at its high. windows is also easily upgradaeble whereas as macs its out with the old and in with the new. i mainly want a mac for the OS but i hear you can put mac OSX on a pc which i might try out.
 
Creating a "hackintosh" goes against their liscence agreement. If you want to try a mac, why dont you look on auction sites for some second hand stuff. Although mac hardware is changing quite quickly now, simple things such as RAM can be upgraded. The new Mac Book Pros have internal battery technology which is supposed to be better, what you have to ask yourself is that if you are going to spend £749 on a mac, what applciations are you going to use that are going to need a mac only environment. If you are going to be doing a lot of photoshop work then yes maybe you can warrant it, however if you look at spending £749 on a mac with a core 2 duo and 2gb ram, then must also look at other laptops which offer better value for money. A few acers spring to mind.

You do pay for the design, and in a way you are paying more for the software as the hardware is going to be near enough the same as a PC now as they are using the same ram, same hard drives and same processors now.
 
Ditto about buying a cheap old Mac to see if you can get on with that way of working, I bought a G3 iBook for under £100 a while back to see how I got on with OSX/only one mouse button etc, needless to say I've switched...
 
I've just bought a Macbook via the forum, its a 2007 one but Mac OS is incredible, its certainly made up my mind to buy the nice 24" iMac I was playing with in Currys today, as my photography is the most processor intensive thing I will be using it for I'm sure it will be amazing, hopefully by the end of the year when I am buying there will have been an iMac upgrade.
 
mastertrinity said:
i do agree that macs look awesome and yes it just works, i have been a PC user and i think macs are expensive although when i turn 16 in december its a part time job for me earning £250 a month which means in four months i can afford a mac however i might just carry on with pc's and buy a £750 macbook for a test and if i like it then i will turn to the other side however for power windows is at its high. windows is also easily upgradaeble whereas as macs its out with the old and in with the new. i mainly want a mac for the OS but i hear you can put mac OSX on a pc which i might try out.
Click to expand...

When I bought our first mac a tight fisted neighbour who cheats at every everything he can announced he was going to put the operating system onto his pc. It took him three hours to get it looking like a mac and then another 3 DAYS to get it to stay on the screen without crashing.

Thats all I know as I was not interested as it seemed a strange thing to do but then I would never put a Rolls Royce engine into a Ford!!

stew
 
I have been using a 24" iMac for just over two years. I love it but last week the hard drive failed. Luckily I have a complete backup on an external drive. So, yes, they just work, up to the point when they stop working.

I don't have a problem with the monitor being glossy because I've positioned it so that it isn't an issue.

I also have the (now failed) drive partitioned and can run Windows XP Pro too so if I want to use my old Photoshop I still can.
 
I had a customer return to store after purchasing an iMac. He was quite upset by the fact that he couldn't find where on the hard drive his photo's and music files had been put. When I asked why he needed to know, he said it was because he wanted to set his own filing system up. Whilst I demonstrated where the files were and how they were stored I realised that I spend far less time fiddling with files and folders on my Mac, and far more time playing with my photo's and music.

It turned out that he had a collection of photo's on an external hard drive that he had set up under Windows and wanted to continue using this system.
 
artona said:
When I bought our first mac a tight fisted neighbour who cheats at every everything he can announced he was going to put the operating system onto his pc. It took him three hours to get it looking like a mac and then another 3 DAYS to get it to stay on the screen without crashing.
Click to expand...

he didnt know what he was doing then. took me 3 hours to get Tiger running on a VMware session albeit without a working network card ;)
 
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