Switching to Mac?

Microsoft word processing.

Macs are tedious, get her a dell.

Nothing wrong with Macs.

I have a mac mini at home and also Windoze XP.

XP is clunky and unintuitive in comparison to using the Mac.

There's a number of Mac word processing packages around or if you really are a glutton for punishment, M$ Office for Mac.

Best bet is to at least go into an Apple shop and have a chat with them and don't accept the mantra that Mac or Windoze is best.

Like Hi-Fi, go for what suits you!

Steve.

Mac is all right,I used to use a Mac when I was at university.If your gf just want net and word processor,go for a Mac.

Nuno your great you really are.

If your girlfriend also wants to produce her own music, adjust photos and publish them to her own website, edit in High Definition her digital video and create high quality DVDs from them, all from within the package of OSX then yes get a mac, oh and it surfs the web and writes letters too.

If she wants to attempt to surf the web and collect email then deal with viruses, worms, trojans and worse yet anti virus software she should get a PC.

'Just want net and word', I like you Nuno.

I have never had a PC in my house, and never will. Get her a Mac, give it 6 months and you will have a mac as the main house machine as well, my bet to you, today.

My new MacBook pro arrived today and I lurve it already- beautiful object.

Now just get DarwinPort working and I'll be away ...

Another nice thig about macs in the living room is they are QUIET, no jet engine sounding fans.

cheers

Ian

I think I'l go for the mac. I thought garyi's first post re the dell was serious for a minute!

Erm, no.

Haha.

My new acquisition....



Now, how can anybody not love one of these?

Cheers,

Jon

PS: My 4000th post btw, I think :-) - sorry "*"

quote:

1) What word processing software do people generally use on their macs?

Welcome to the world of Open Source software!
Get Abiword for WP:
AbiWord

Don't bother with Word. It doesn't do anything that any other (free) WP can't do.

If there is no huge rush I'd be tempted to wait for the Intel iBooks to appear.

I'm not sure when that will be do I guess that's the only drawback - it could be a month, could be six.

iMAC G5 here too. Replaced a PC and I wouldn't go back to one.

Jon - try putting your dock on the LHS of your screen......

Leave Jon alone you old technology type you!

Watch out:now that Mac use Intel processors the software must be redesigned!

quote:

Originally posted by Nuno Baptista:
Watch out:now that Mac use Intel processors the software must be redesigned!

Like Microsoft don't change theirs ?

quote:

Watch out:now that Mac use Intel processors the software must be redesigned!

I think he means recompiled to run on x86 from ppc. This isn't the same as 'redesigned' and isn't a real issue unless you run Adobe apps.

quote:

Originally posted by Simon Perry:
Hi,
Some questions:
1) What word processing software do people generally use on their macs?

I use Pages (which is part of iWork and is very easy to use and integrates well with other iWork/iLife programs), I also have the free NeoOffice (Open Office for OSX) and I have Microsoft Office (courtsey of work) but I find Word very clumsy - almost as tedious to use as the dreadful PC version. AbiWord is free and quite reasonable.

quote:

2) For those who made the switch from PC to Mac, did they find it easy to adapt to the Mac. I have never tried one and don't want to saddle my girlfriend with anything too tedious.

I didn't switch from a PC to a Mac as I used Apple computers before the IBM PC came along - I also had a Commodore Amiga when the PC first came out (I thought the PC was a joke and nobody would use such a poorly designed OS - only goes to show how wrong you can be). The present Mac is very easy to use and much better thought out than Windoze - it is usually one click on a Mac vs god knows how many (lots) on a PC. The Mac is not very good at running viruses, spyware and other malicious code: one area in which Microsoft excels.

I'm biased - I sometimes have to use a PC at work because some clot has written software that is not portable. There isn't a single occasion when I prefer a PC running Windoze to a Mac - now a PC running AmigaOS and WordPerfect 4.1 now that's a different matter.

Please stop knocking PCs.

I’m not trying to pick a fight here but as a professional photographer here are some facts, not personal musings.

When running Capture One to process large digital files (17mb Raw from a Canon 1DS Mk2) the PC (Pentium 3.4 Ghz, 1 Ghz Ram) processes each file in 19 seconds.

My PowerMac G5 (Dual 2 Ghz, 1 Ghz Ram also) takes 42 seconds.

I won’t bore you with any more detail but every process, action, command or whatever that I implement in Photoshop CS2 is also much quicker on the PC than on the Mac. That’s why I do all my work on the PC. If the Mac was faster, I would use it – Time is, after all, money.

Have a look at your own PC machine before criticising.

1/ How clogged up is it with crappy software that comes free on a DVD magazine cover disk?

2/ Have you partitioned your drives so that all programs are on one dedicated drive and all the bits and pieces of personal stuff that is constantly added and deleted is on a separate drive. One of the single most important disciplines for good performance.

3/ Which virus software are you using? Many slow the Windows OS to a crawl.

Yes, my Macs (Powerbook and the G5 above) run rock solidly, they never miss a beat but they just don’t have the number-crunching power. In my business, it’s a serious factor.

I think there is a definite “Kings Clothes” syndrome when it comes to posts here about Mac vs. Windows. Of course Windows has its problems, it can be infuriating at times but I don’t think it deserves the pounding it gets from some throw-away comments. And this “Windoze” crap, what’s that about?

ROTF

What’s your particular problem with Word (PC or Mac?) Putting this as delicately as I can, could it be your ineptitude that makes the program, quote “clumsy, tedious...”

I’m certainly no computer wizz but I seem to be able to get Word XP to do everything I ask of it.

Regards, Ian

Hey Ian, the G5 processor is great and the dual cores are supposed to be very good. But even Apple acknowledged that the G5 processor was not moving along in terms of power quickly enough.

Proof for me of this is in the new intel iMacs. I would imagine the new powermacs will be on par with anything from PCs

But as you say if its mission critical you need to use whats good for you.

Mind you for professional work I would say 1gig of ram on either machine would have to be considered bare minimum.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Mind you for professional work I would say 1gig of ram on either machine would have to be considered bare minimum.

I think that the considered minimum for RAM on any Mac is 1.5gig. I know it made a big difference to my G5.

Still doubt I would go back to a PC.

quote:

Originally posted by ianmacd:
ROTF

What’s your particular problem with Word (PC or Mac?) Putting this as delicately as I can, could it be your ineptitude that makes the program, quote “clumsy, tedious...”

I’m certainly no computer wizz but I seem to be able to get Word XP to do everything I ask of it.

Regards, Ian

Hi Ian

Yes, as a unix programmer, it must be my ineptitude and definitely not the programme designers. I have become adept and changing the font back to Arial when I do a bullet point and word mysterious changes it to Times New Roman. I have found it only takes a couple of minutes to navigate through all the styles it creates on the fly when I just need a few. I particular like it when company's send me a word document and I can turn on the track changes and see what they really thought of me before the final edit. I also really like waiting for it to reformat all the graphics between a PC and a Mac as I find the flashing bar that says converting metafile particularly appealing. It is much quicker to open a PC Word document in Pages than it is in Mac Word. However, I really like Word Macros - one of the few ways to run malicious code on a Mac.

Now in Word Perfect if there is something not quite right then you press F4 and reveal codes lets you put it right very quickly; handy even if you don't use it too often. Word Perfect on an Amiga is very fast - even on an old 486 computer. Oh and the WordPerfect grammar checker works - it's superb. Shame you can't run WP on a Mac these days (well you can using the Amiga emulator, but that's a pain).

But here is the real thing for me - AbiWord and NeoOffice are free and both do everything most folks need to do with a Word Processor. You can make a donation to the projects, of course. So why pay Bill Grates £400 when you can have Pages for £65 (it might even come bundled with some Macs) and you can get AbiWord and NeoOffice for free.

I don't do photography so I've no dispute over you finding a PC faster than a Mac with your chosen app - but for the apps I use the Mac wins hands down (my developers kit was free, not £1500). Apple is probably the best software house in the world - the guys at Apple really know what they are talking about - the guys from Grates lot barely give you the time of day (even though I once got a commendation from them for finding errors in their IP stack and sent it in with suggested corrections - mind you that's before they became big and arrogant).

I have yet to find a customer that I've asked to try a Mac that wants to return to a PC. My customers' range from experienced IT people to people who are a little scared of technology. I get no financial reward for promoting the Mac, other than I want my customers to be happy with the total service we give and ask us back for more. If they want to use a PC then fine, we can cope - they are the customer, but I can't recommend it. So my advice is driven by the fact I believe using a Microsoft free Mac is a great way to do computing. My aging parents have experienced a PC and a Mac - there's no PC in the house now and they use their iMac (still OS9) everyday to write and receive emails and produce documents: my father likes writing articles for a local cricket magazine (not bad at 80 from a man who said after trying a PC, 'it's not for me, I'm a typewriter person').

Well that's my view FWIW

All the best, Rotf.

Very happy user over the years of PDP 11, CBM PET, Amigas, Apple IIs, Macs, Acorn Archimedes, Digital Alpha Sun and Sequent computers.

Well I guess that told me.

OK ROTF, so you have an impeccable computer background. It certainly puts me in the retards class.

I still just don't get why people have to knock Windows Pcs constantly.

And Bill Grates? Come on, give me a break.

Garyi - yes, I must confess I await the new desktop Macs and the Intel chip with eager anticipation. Unfortunately for me, Adobe have recently confirmed that they wont be releasing any native Intel-based Mac versions of Creative Suite until the first half of 2007 which is most upsetting!

Regards, Ian

quote:

Originally posted by ianmacd:
I still just don't get why people have to knock Windows Pcs constantly.

Ian

What was your first venture into hifi ?

Ian whats more is for creative professionals like yourself they will no doubt charge a pretty penny for it!

Its why they have so much money I guess.

If you're stupid then just go out and buy her a Mac. If you're sensible then take her out and let her try both machines and let her pick which one she prefers (even if that preference is only for the way the computer looks).

Both Macs or PC's are perfectly capable of doing the work you describe. Some people (e.g. garyi) prefer the way Macs work, some people (e.g. me) prefer the way PC's work. Unless you had a particular need or issue with one over the other (e.g. the performance problems ian gets with his G5, or that the software you want won't run on one) then there is no need for pre-judgement.

P.S. in our house there are two wireless capable laptops kicking around, one of which is a Mac running OSX and the other is a Toshiba running XP. The Mac gets used by my wife when she needs to (she's a teacher and some of the software they use isn't available for XP) however it's noticeable that for surfing the web and everything else it's always the PC that gets used by everyone in the family (including my wife). The machines would cost about the same new but the PC is much, much faster and has better graphics. When her Mac eventually gets replaced by one with a modern processor in it it'll be interesting to see if that's still the case.

[/QUOTE]

Ian

What was your first venture into hifi ?[/QUOTE]

Hi LTD

I dont understand the reason for your question but to answer it anyway, my first hifi was Linn Kairn, Linn LK100s X 3, Arcam Cd... Does that help?

Ian