Another one thinking of switching to Mac. But confused.
Posted by: JWM on 15 October 2008
I'm another fed-up Windose user (the security p.i.t.a.) thinking of switching to a Mac, probably a Mini. But am mightily confused, and a bit scared (it took me years to master Windows from my preferred quill pen and abacus). When it comes to technology,
this is me (Mel Smith, not Rowan Atkinson).
In terms of actual performance (speed, capacity etc) of a PC vs Mac, is a Mac's quoted specification a direct parallel to a PC's, to achieve equivalent actual performance?
Staring at the gobbledegook label on the front, my PC seems to be: 2.93GHz, Pentium 4 Processor 515, 160Gb Hard Drive, 512Mb dual channel memory - whatever that all means...
Putting the security benefits to one side for the mo (yada yada) to get a Mac of at least similar performance, what spec do I need to look at?
Non-computer buff Mac users - is Mac easy to learn after Windows? I need to use a computer for my work and I am pretty much a one man band. I haven't got the spare time to be able to devote to a complex conversion course!
Also, am I right in understanding that there's a Mac version of Office? I can't lose all my past files.
Sorry to be such a pathetic novice.
Thanks,
James
Posted on: 15 October 2008 by Tony Lockhart
As the 'other one' I'd say that even the basic Mini will leave your PC standing processor-wise. They're all dual core now, minimum of twice your RAM, 160GB HD is an option.
Tony
Posted on: 15 October 2008 by nicnaim
James,
Office for Mac is available as a standard package. Much cheaper if someone in the house qualifies for the student edition. You can also run standard Windows software if you run Parallels on the Mac. I have to use a PC for some work applications, so I have a separate PC, but given the choice I would always prefer to use a Mac.
It does take a while to get used to a Mac, but once you get it, it is hard to go back to a PC. The Missing Manuals range of instruction manuals for macs is worth investing in.
We have two Macs and two PC's in the house, but there is always a longer queue for the Mac's.
I doubt that longer term you will not regret the switch.
Regards
Nic
Posted on: 16 October 2008 by Guido Fawkes
Nope - not going to switch from my Amiga to a Mac.
The Mac is an excellent computer and if you run NeoOffice then you can forget IBM and MS ever existed.
Parallels is great as you can run Amiga OS using Amiga Forever in a window on the Mac. Though I like the Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator (UAE).
What's a PC?
ATB Rotf
Posted on: 16 October 2008 by jon h
quote:
Originally posted by nicnaim:
James,
Office for Mac is available as a standard package. Much cheaper if someone in the house qualifies for the student edition.
Its a pity that office for mac is a steaming pile of poo. A true embarrasment. And you dont need to have a student in the house -- it is now licensed as "home and student edition" at 99 quid for 3 installs. At 33 quid per machine, thats about all its worth.
OpenOffice for Mac has just shipped. Probably much nicer. And free too.
Posted on: 16 October 2008 by northpole
James
We use only PC's at work. At home I have an iMac - not the latest one, but still a great value package which takes up very little space ie the same as a flat panel monitor.
MS Office for Macs and PCs is cross compatible as far as I am aware. Certainly for the fairly basic Word and Excel documents I use I have had no problems pinging documents by e-mail to and from work to home. Memory stick ditto.
The only difference between the Office packages is that the Mac equivalent of Outlook is called Entourage.
I should note that I don't have the latest versions of Office for either PC or Mac but imagine that if anything they will now be more alike than ever.
Touch wood I haven't had a single problem in well over a year's daily use.
The logic of the file structure in Mac is very simple and a doddle to get used to.
Thoroughly recommend one to you.
Peter
PS If you do opt for one, don't pay Apple for additional RAM - Crucial or any of the other providers cost a fraction for RAM modules which are a breeze to install.
Posted on: 16 October 2008 by Roy T
James, you may well be able to give your pc a new lease of life (with the functions you need) by moving to a flavour of Linux. If this tickles your fancy the first step is to cut an
Ubuntu LiveCD and see it will work with your existing hardware. If you like what you see then you can install it for free and then make use of
a whole load of stuff for free.
Mac's cost money, this idea costs you nothing to try.
Posted on: 16 October 2008 by PAW
James, buy a mac. I have had 2 MACs so far an emac - unfortunately the CRT went after 5 years and that was a good excuse to buy an intel I-Mac. No problems, no viruses virtually no spam it doesn't crash. It's very easy to use and the interface looks great and is very user freinfdly and intuitive. I am not a techy at all. I use mine mainly for editing my photos using photoshop, when the children let me on!
Posted on: 16 October 2008 by Guido Fawkes
quote:
MS Office for Macs and PCs is cross compatible as far as I am aware.
Afraid not - there are some major issues if you have any form of macros and some graphics don't move easily - your are much better off with NeoOffice on the Mac, it's free and its much better and, ironically, doesn't have the same incompatibility problems with MS Office on a PC.
It is also able to read documents created on an Amiga, which I think is essential
quote:
no problems, no viruses, virtually no spam, it doesn't crash. It's very easy to use and the interface looks great and is very user friendly and intuitive
Sounds just like an Amiga - its interface is even called Intuition.
ATB Rotf
Posted on: 17 October 2008 by nicnaim
Jon,
When I bought my copy 4 or 5 years ago, there was a big price difference between the two versions, thanks for the update I had not checked current price. Not sure what problems you have had, but I have had no bother with mine. My Dad uses the OpenOffice on his iMac and swears by it.
Regards
Nic
quote:
Originally posted by jon honeyball:
quote:
Originally posted by nicnaim:
James,
Office for Mac is available as a standard package. Much cheaper if someone in the house qualifies for the student edition.
Its a pity that office for mac is a steaming pile of poo. A true embarrasment. And you dont need to have a student in the house -- it is now licensed as "home and student edition" at 99 quid for 3 installs. At 33 quid per machine, thats about all its worth.
OpenOffice for Mac has just shipped. Probably much nicer. And free too.
Posted on: 17 October 2008 by JWM
This is all helpful stuff.
After 4 months, I have finally succeeded in re-installing XP Service Pack 3 onto my PC, having been advised by the MS website to uninstall it and reinstall it after a virus stealthily flew in under my considerable radar and corrupted a load of files.
Yes, for 4 months it wouldn't reinstall. And even now I still have some problems, even though I use two reputable registry repair products.
So although the PC is now working a bit better, this is why I have the temptation towards Mac. I think I'll wait until XP is no longer a supported product (Spring 2009) and then serious consider the move, subject to funds.
Thanks, guys.
James
Posted on: 17 October 2008 by Kevin-W
James
If you switch to a Mac, you'll never have to download a Windoze Service pack again!
Nor will you have took at that bloody paperclip or that annoying dog!
Posted on: 17 October 2008 by winkyincanada
quote:
Originally posted by Kevin-W:
James
If you switch to a Mac, you'll never have to download a Windoze Service pack again!
Nor will you have took at that bloody paperclip or that annoying dog!
I am a bit surprised at the number of OSX/Quicktime/iTunes updates that come out, though.
The stupid dog and paperclip (which are easy to turn off) are MS Office artefacts. Are they not present in the Mac version?
I still love the Mac. I'm still smug.
Posted on: 22 October 2008 by Wolf2
in the early 90s in grad school I'd taken classes for months to learn drafting and DOS on PCs. I could never find my old files. I learned a Mac on my own in days. yes it's different, but just so easy. If you do anything with multimedia it's a no brainer.
I haven't seen my Mac Tech in years. Last time he was over he just had to download an update and installed it for me in 5 minutes. No charge. He said in his PC offices he'd have had to wipe everything off and start all over.
Tho I did work for a guy on his Windows machine 4 years ago, my multimedia projects just wouldn't work. I had to buy some conversion software to make them Windows media movies and his machines just weren't set up for that. Very frustrating, I gave him my files and let him hire a PC friend. And I was always hitting on the wrong button and had to find my way back.
I taught my 80 year old mother how to do email and surf the web in a few visits on her new mac 6 years ago, still has it and NO VIRUSES. or is that viri?
Posted on: 22 October 2008 by winkyincanada
Wolfie,
It's an interesting and good point about your mother's success with the Mac. My parents are always getting themselves into trouble with Win-doh!s. A Mac might be a good Xmas pressie.
Cheers,
Winky
Posted on: 23 October 2008 by bwolke
If I were you I'd stick with my current hardware and install Linux. Linux is free and it has an office suite included (open office).
My 74 year old grandmother is running linux so you probably can too.
One of the biggest benefits of Linux is that is does not need the latest hardware in order to run smoothly. 256 mb ram is minimum and 512 mb ram is recommended.
You can try it for free and if you don't like it which i doubt you can always look for a Mac.
Regards
Bas Wolke
Posted on: 23 October 2008 by garyi
Plus you get the benefit of it looking like an early 90s operating system. Yea.
Posted on: 23 October 2008 by Guido Fawkes
Bas
If you get a Mac and run VM-Ware or Parallels then you can always run Linux in a Window, but more importantly you can run Amiga OS, which is much nicer than Linux.
BTW my favourite user interface of all time looks like this
$
All you need to do is type
$ vi mydoc
And you are away with a great word processor, all you need is a little bit of nroff and you can make beautiful documents that Word users can only dream of.
vi stands for very intuitive and is everybody's first choice visual editor.
ATB Rotf
Posted on: 23 October 2008 by PJT
quote:
Originally posted by ROTF:
All you need to do is type
$ vi mydoc
And you are away with a great word processor, all you need is a little bit of nroff and you can make beautiful documents that Word users can only dream of.
vi stands for very intuitive and is everybody's first choice visual editor.
ATB Rotf
Sorry ROTF, but vi is the biggest steaming pile of poo editor available - gimme edt ( on OpenVMS) any time
Posted on: 24 October 2008 by Guido Fawkes
PJT - you jest, I used to write all my documents with vi, it is the tour de force of editors - you can do so much with it - I hardly ever used edt on OpenVMS, but VMS was a nice system until they moved it on WNT (horrible). I liked VMS and Phase IV networking.
Sill good news for JWM is just open a Terminal window on the MAC and type vi <filename> and you're straight in to the world of visual editing - no swearing at the screen, James, it doesn't help - it supposed to beep every time you type something.
BTW whatever happened to edlin.
ATB Rotf
Posted on: 24 October 2008 by BigH47
quote:
BTW whatever happened to edlin.
He went out of business due to the recession (slowdown).
