Taking Sides: Mac vs. PC

The OS is one of the best and most secure around (its based on OpenBSD purportedly the most secure *nix). There have been no recent virus scares on macs no interminable rushed out patches to apply. (there have been patches to apply but they don't appear every week, and the lack of viruses etc for the Mac/BSD must have something to do with the lack of a large installed base but you take your breaks where you can). The OS is clean responsive and it gets faster with every point upgrade.

The OS is easy to use and configure but featuring powerful tools built in. It can run practically any *nix software opening up vast ranges of free opensource software. Apple bundles great software with their machines, an excellent mail client, iChat (a AIM client), the Safari web browser, iTunes which is still the best mp3 jukebix around, iCal (excellent PIM), iSync (to keep the diary, address book etc.your phone, computer, PDA, iPod and .Mac account all perfectly synchronised), iPhoto ( a digital photo library and basic editor), iMovie (video editor), iDVD (for authoring DVDs).

Peripherals are a pleasure to install. Plug in a Digital camera and it will launch iPhoto (or the app of your choice) to off load your photos, most common devices require no drivers even some supposedly pc only hardware (such as my USB sound card) works seamlessly using the built in drivers. Put a blank cd in the drive and it will launch iTunes (Toast in my case).

You can connect with the widest variety of systems, windows, unix, mac all integrated into the finder no extra software or drivers required. Plug in a windows hard drive, it will mount.

Use a mac for a while and you will really never want to go back.

You needn't spend thousands of dollars for this - you can get an iBook on Ebay for around 600, and a nice PC desktop with a decent graphics card for the same price.

But... the one big problem with Macs is again and again the lack of database development tools. 90% of my WORK has been in MS Access, and as yet, there is still no MS Access for Mac.

OK, I'm now working in FoxPro, which I believe is available for Mac, but it's a freaking shit development tool.

Not to mention the vast difference in price between Macs and PCs. New, they may be comparable, but Macs hold their value second hand because people just don't sell them. PC's prices halve within a year. Which makes me more likely to buy a refurbished PC, simply because I can afford one.

Now add these things together... *IF* I am going to blow all of this money on a computer, I bloody well need it to be able to do the things that I need it for - which, come what may, includes MS Access.

(However, I may buy a new MacTop for fun, and get a dirt-cheap desktop PC solely for running work things i.e. Access on.)

i have been wanting to get a mac but every time i come in contact with one it drives me nuts because i have used only pcs for the past 8 years or so, and i'm not at all comfortable with the o.s. i will probably get a new computer in the next year but am not sure which flavor. i have been considering pc most seriously. i really want to build it myself

I can't speak for Kazaa, but I have slsk running quite well

I love Windows as an operating system. I totally know how to work everything on Windows, as well as on the whole PC itself. I'm not at all lost when it comes to the DOS command prompt, because I've had experience with dealing with that. I remember very well working with the DOS shell and thinking that was the coolest thing around. (This would be before I got Windows 3.1, of course.) I love the little arcade game package that came along with my Win98 upgrade disks. Heck, ever since I got Win98, I've thus far to experience one of the Blue Screens of Doom (*knocks on wood*), and that was about three years ago IIRC.

I love my PC. I'm shopping around for a new one, in fact. Ergo, I cast my vote for the PC.

I get sick of rich-kid hipsters gloating about the Macs their parents buy for them, though. Faahhhkk you.

Oh.My.God! I just want a frigging decent, relatively new Powerbook that doesn't cost me more than I pay in tuition! And every single time I think I find a good deal, the auction inevitably gets shut down within about two hours. Or I need to be pre-approved, and *gosh* it seems that they only want me to pay via Western Union (ie send them money and never hear from them again). I hate this. At this point, I think it would take me less time and money to learn how to make one (and all its parts) from absolute scratch.

Ebay scared me. Tho why anyone'd use it to buy pricey stuff like PCs and cars and what have you, I don't know.

though it may take a little while to get used to the LCD screen--any tips on that?

I used to use macs exclusively, but stopped when i had to buy a faster computer that supported VRML about five years ago. Until recently I wouldn't even consider buying a mac again because the OS and the hardware were advancing to quickly that buying one meant you commited to a machine that would be obsolete in two years. But hardware speeds have levelled out it seems and OSX seems like it's gained universal acceptance so it's probably safe to assume a mac would be usefull for maybe up to four years if you bought a good one today.

I just started using OSX at work and still find a lot of the interface funky and counterinuitive but I probably haven't figured out a way to modify it the way I want yet, so I use the windows machine for just about everything.

I would buy a powerbook if i were not broke.

it is nice and fast, but FUCKING HEAVY, and about twice the volume of my mirror-door drive G4.

I'm stuck working with FoxPro right now, and oh the pain. I suppose that runs on Mac, but I wouldn't want to run it on a dog!

Try mlMac or poisoned for kazaa via mac.

If anyone has any tips for some PC utilities which check exactly what the bloody hell is wrong with my OS build and what I can do to make computing life less frequently punctuated with screaming fits, do tell.

Changing to Mac means changing peripherals, doesn't it? Printer, scanner, etc?

As for reliability, my mac has been on for something over 14 days without restarting and the last restart was to update the OS.

Canon never bothered to write a drive for my scanner, but VueScan works quite well and is actually better than the old Photoshop plug-in I had.

Drivers for your sound card, but remember the standard sound on macs is pretty good, the G5s even have digital optical sound i/o as standard. I presume its a PCI card so that would limit you to G4/G5.

Upgrading or expansion, there is a difference. You rarely need to upgrade a computer nowadays other than to add more memory or hard discs, which as easy on a mac as on any other computer. To be sure a lot of products, especially no name ones, have no mac drivers but a lot of devices don't need drivers for OS X, and for other things you'll almost always be able to find something equivalent or better. Think hard about what you will need in addition to what's already there on a mac, you may find you need never add a PCI card to your machine in the whole time you own it. There is a PC card slot on my powerbook that has never had anything in it as there's been nothing to add to my now aged computer.

Junking the PC, despite all the problems, is not a decision I'd take lightly and I'm not in the market for a new Mac at all. (Jerry, are you reading this?)

1) They look very cool and have decent build quality.
2) iTunes

But the following things dissuaded me:

1)Cost: You can buy a decent PC laptop that will give as good performance for less money.
2)Userbase: PC's have a larger userbase. In all kinds of ways (available software, peripheral support, filesharing), this is handy.
3)Linux: 95% of the time I use Red Hat on my dual-boot machine so aside from a nice GUI, OS/X offers me nothing new.

1)Cost: You can buy a decent PC laptop that will give as good performance for less money.
2)Userbase: PC's have a larger userbase. In all kinds of ways (available software, peripheral support, filesharing), this is handy.
3)Linux: 95% of the time I use Red Hat on my dual-boot machine so aside from a nice GUI, OS/X offers me nothing new.

1) cost is an issue, but portability is higher for some of us. I am going to be living abroad soon, and I want to travel as light as possible. (That being said, I do plan on bringing my older PC desktop over if and when it would be convenient.)

2) Umm...not a big deal. I really don't need too much from a machine. I only use a small core of programs, almost all of which exist or have more than sufficient equivalents in Mac.

3) I am interested in starting to learn Linux, but I largely have no interaction with it. A nice GUI with which to play around with *nix on occasion might make me warm up to *nix more, though.

2)No problems with filesharing, I think you'd find it hard to find a programme that didn't have an equivalent or even a Mac version.

3)It's not just the GUI its the excellent hardware software integration, its the simplicity of adding peripherals, it's the elegance, its the loads of little neat stuff which make the OS X user experience so good. OS X is also openBSD based so its about the securest OS around.