Windows or Mac

[SexyCityEddie]

choose your pick.. and explain pls...

i need to know the pros and cons...

installers is the problem for Mac while Virus for windows...

what else???

[tortus32]

I think Macs are better for graphic programs such as PhotoShop and such.
I've been a professional graphic designer for over 17 years, and I've yet to work at any company that uses PC's in ther art/graphics department.

I also love that I'm pretty much impervious to any viruses going around.

Bill

[Cleo]

I haven't crashed or had to do any maintenance other then software upgrades in years. I never ever shut down my Mac, it just works.

Here is a good article on the Mac experience written by a switcher.
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232

[SexyCityEddie]

thanks...

and whats good in mac is that it doesnt depreciate that quick.. right??

is there a lot of forums for mac and apple users that will give us guides on where to download free softwares online????

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by SexyCityEddie

is there a lot of forums for mac and apple users that will give us guides on where to download free softwares online????

http://www.macworld.com/news/todays_summary/
http://www.macnn.com/
http://www.macosxhints.com/
http://www.macsurfer.com/
http://www.macintouch.com/index.shtml
http://www.macfixit.com/
http://www.versiontracker.com/
http://www.macslash.org/
http://apple.slashdot.org/
http://www.macrumors.com/
http://www.appleinsider.com/
http://thinksecret.com/
http://forums.macnn.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=90
http://discussions.info.apple.com/

For buying hardware,
http://eshop.macsales.com/
http://www.macmall.com/
http://www.cdwg.com/shop/hubs/defaul...dware/mac.html
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...ts/AppleStore/
http://www.smalldog.com/

[tortus32]

Just do a google search for Mac Users.

Here's something I found:
http://www.batnet.com/wombat/links/maclinks.html

Bill

[Toby]

Macs are good machines, but I prefer PC's for three reasons. Price, software availability, and the fact that about 95% of my target audience are also using PC's.

[digifan]

Mac for sure.. Cleo I am impressed

[dsangon]

Windows of course

[cd34]

I must admit that I haven't used a mac other than some cursory play in front of one. Since it is basically a BSD variant running Xwindows with Mac's stylish interface, I think it is a pretty good choice.

Personally, I use Linux as my desktop machine simply as I have a portable development machine. I can run all of the applications that I need to do any development, and, Linux itself has been pretty good for me. It is not as polished as Mac OS/X, but, on the same hardware, it appears faster than XP is. There's a ton of software out there for it and with Wine, Crossover Office or VMWare you can retain the ability to run Windows if you need to. You can also set up a dual boot system so you can switch between the two.

Gimp is supposedly very similar to Photoshop. OpenOffice.org is like Microsoft Office (less the 'accessdb' portion -- if you need that, you need to buy StarOffice. OpenOffice & StarOffice also run on Windows & Mac), there is GNUCash which is very much like Quicken, Firefox (which runs on multiple platforms), etc.

Unless you're a bit technical, except for Xandros or one of the Retail/Consumer Linux versions out there, Linux can be a slight hinderance for people that are used to working in a certain way. There is a certain pleasure in knowing that 99% of the viruses out there can't really do much -- although if you are running IE in crossover Office, and IE is compromised, Linux/Crossover certainly won't stop the spyware from running.

[Agent]

I'm gonna be moving to the Mac/PC combo soon. I'm getting a Mac for the desktop and am going to convert this PC into a server. I'll probably load Ubantu or FreeBSD on the server and keep all my data on it. Connect the two wirelessly. Right now money is holding me back and I dont want to jump ship and waste all this PC hardware (3200 Athlon XP, Radeon 9700 Pro, etc).

[ClickBuster]

Everything depends on how you're using your PC. If you're a power user that uses tons of commercial software and time saving is your goal - go Mac. If you need a flexible multimedia environment that you can run anything on it - go Windows, just because there's software to run everything on Windows, thus that's not the same for all other OS or it requires more time than one would afford.

I personally, if I had the time to switch, would use Linux, but wasting time on tunning up an OS is not the best choice right now. I need to move so much data, backup, prepare software, etc, etc... it's not worthy. Although it's the best OS for me, since I can use a good scripting environment.

-- Andrew

[Certifiedbitch]

if i were to choose, prefer MAC because it's a good machine and they are really advanced when it comes to softwares compared to Windows.

[Rocco]

I really don't care - have been working on macs and pcs ever since... just get what's available

[Mr. Blue]

Depends on what you're using it for really. My personal choice is PC...its just a better value in the long run. It's:

A. Cheaper to purchase and way cheaper if you build your own.

B. Software...almost anything you need to do in a windows environment you can find dozens of programs to do the same task. Some freeware, some cheap shareware, some expensive, but you have more options.

C. Once you buy a Mac, you're pretty much stuck with it. If you buy a PC you can try different operating systems for different tasks. Linux, BSD, Windows, etc. (Mac does have a working version of OSX that will work on PC's but they don't want to release it as they like having the ability to overcharge for hardware).

D. Scalability of hardware. Once a Mac gets old you bury it. PC's you can easily upgrade mobo, processors, etc.

Mac's do run photoshop better...but it depends on how heavily you're going to need it for graphics. Website design and even some high end work, etc, windows can handle it. The only area where you might need a mac over pc is if you're editing absofuckingluty huge image files.

[alvarez]

linux

[SirMoby]

Without knowing your needs the question is not easy to answer.

Macs have an integrated design where the operating system is designed by the same people that design the hardware.

Windows offers a huge selection of software. I odn't know many Mac people that don't run some sort of emulation in order to use Windows based software.

If the Mac has all the native software that you will ever use then it may be a good choice. If you're going to be sharing a lot of files with Windows customers and using emulation mode a lot then Windows may be better for you.

The Mac design may be sweet but the market is mostly Windows for a lot of good reasons.

[Cleo]

I personally don't know any Mac users that run Windows stuff in emulation on their Macs. You can using VirtualPC but being that it is emulation it is really slow. For the same price as VitualPC you can just buy a really cheap PC box.

Macs run Mac OS X these days. They can also run all the older Mac Classic software in the Classic environment and Linux software in the X11 environment. Both of these are not emulators and are just as fast as the Mac OS X environment. Also you can just open up Terminal for those *nix people who "don't understand why the mouse was invented when it just takes your hand off of the perfectly good input device known as the keyboard."

For non lovers of the unix command line like myself you can use Fink to install unix applications like Gimp and Open Office.
http://fink.sourceforge.net/
http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/about/#screenshots
http://gimp.org/screenshots/macosx_screenshot1.png

Macs also come with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and all much of the other common *nix stuff that you find on your web server installed and ready to run right out of the box.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Cleo

Macs also come with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and all much of the other common *nix stuff that you find on your web server installed and ready to run right out of the box.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/

That's probably my favorite "bonus" right now. It's great to have a fully functional development server on a laptop when I need one.

One thing I can add is that I've been a Mac user since the 1984 Superbowl commercial, and while I've helped a ton of people switch to the Mac platform, I don't personally know anyone who's done more than add a Windows machine for compatability testing needs.

I'm not saying no one switches the other way. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) I'm just saying I don't personally know any.

Simon

[juggernaut]

there are good points an bad points on both OS. this arguement has gone for years. Me I perfer MS over Mac because thats just me. Mac has really good stable systems but they cost you and the software is not all there and repair if needed is not as easy to find. MS with xp has been really stable. I think once longhorn is out the OS will just get more rock solid. they are truly making leaps and bounds in their security issues. as far as macs are concerned i remember not long ago, about 1 year a virus did come out that affected mac users and symantecs made a boat load off of it. to many mac users felt they were safe. but in fact all it takes is one bright little AHole to write the code and mac is just as effected as MS or Linux. only reason more viruses on MS is simple. people have more access to an ms box and thus write the code for it. also ms is so intergrated with explorer IE office uses explorer, desktop uses it, there networking touches a part of it etc etc. and worse yet everything is placed in one central place. IE the registry (which is a nightmare in itself when it comes to os code) linux did it right in making everything a text file based. this way if a user does not have access permissions to a certain file then the virus can not spread like on windows. that problem with MS comes from the explorer kernal. anyway im going crazy with this and will leave it. lol.

[Lunatic]

Macs sound pretty cool, I'd be willing to try one out someday, but how is the software availabilty now? Are most PC applications available for Mac now? That's about the only thing I'd be concerned about for myself.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Lunatic

how is the software availabilty now? Are most PC applications available for Mac now?

Much of the design software was writen for the Mac first.

Apple's page on 3rd party software
http://guide.apple.com/index.lasso

Couple of places that I buy software from. Amazon has been having good prices lately too.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/...e/category.asp
http://www.clubmac.com/clubmac/shop/...e/category.asp


Here is something that will move all your PC files to a Mac for you.
http://www.apple.com/switch/howto/move2mac/

[cd34]

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

You could always run this if you are on an X86 architecture.

[amber438]

A friend of mine gave me her 15 inch Powerbook G4 (she got a new smaller one)
and I've been playing with it for the past few days.
It's actually kinda cool..Saw my network immediately, and I was able to load some of my shared folders as volumes within 5 minutes of connecting to the network. Figured out how to install remote desktop to control my big pc and have been playing with that and assorted other things. I kinda like it and will probably use it for reviews and such, as it's only a 550 cpu but not before I get some kind of trojan or anti virus program set up..unless I have no need for them?
It has Tiger installed as well as office 2004. I'm looking into adobe stuff but it only has a 20 gig hard drive so I'd have to upgrade both hard drive and memory to run those efficiently. and that's a bit expensive unless one goes the ebay way.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by amber438

I get some kind of trojan or anti virus program set up..unless I have no need for them?

There isn't any Mac OS X viruses. The virus software itself does cause problems so way run it? I personally do not run any kind of anti virus software and don't know anyone that does.

If you are a really paranoid about it just create a non admin account and login under it. I have a non admin account on my machine for when a friend uses it so that they can't fuckup anything or see my info.