Is this a rather worrying trend (my friends and HIFI seperates)

Why buy a mac?

I use PCs at work but as I use a PS2 for gaming have a Mac at home because:

1. If the OS falls apart (once in past 4 years!) just reinstall and all your progs and data are still there (no registry etc)

2. there's not a lot of malware about which affects Macs - most is easily got rid of

3. MS Office is fine on the Mac and I send Excel / Word and PP files back and forth between work PCs and home with no problems.

I concede that lack of a Mac version of Access can be a pain but I'm not overfond of it anyways.

Neil

 

Neil:
1, Windows XP can do this, you don't have to wipe the drive to reinstall it, you run a repair install and bang your back up and running.
2, fair point, but that's just down to the small (preseved) useage of mac so hackers can't be bothered to write virus, worms, etc for it, wouldn't effect enough people.
3.MS Office is fine on the mac if your prepared to pay the £300 price tag for it, don't use office at home I use Openoffice, for FREE!
As for lack of Access, check out Openoffice 2, its supposed to have an Access like app. (I'm sure Open office is availible for the mac?).

igary: (nice one dom I like that): hehe :lol: Well I'm not so impressed with Windows either, but I like the idea of the pc, being able to get bits from anywhere without paying a premium for them, still trying to migrate over to Linux though but am being overwhelmed by choice and can't make my mind up!

AT: £65 for headphone, heck man that is a lot! :lol: think the most I've spent was £15 but then I am tight, (think the term is ducks .....)

Tenson: I see their point, I know where they're coming from then, I have a couple of mates who have very good setups, I could never affort to match them, doesn't stop me trying though! but in the real world you just need to get the best for your available cash, my setup has been neglected these past few years since the house is eating all my money! Can't beleive you mate rips the CD straight to mp3, why does he not just play the cd straight from the drive! :lol: MP3, great portable idea, has no place in the living room! IMHO!

 

Ahh well he says he like to be able to have play lists etc and doesn't want to get the CDs scratched! He does have A LOT of music so to have it all on the computer uncompressed would be tricky.

 

thats the way to be - you'd come over as an arrogant giut otherwise...but you wouldn't believe the amount of people who are like that tho...

 

Well, Photoshop (Adobe), and all the Macromedia stuff works properly on a Mac, unlike on PCs, as the windows behave PROPERLY on a Mac, rather than on the piss-poor port they did for Windows.

Since I've been using Dreamweaver for 6 years, and used to have to use Macs as well as PCs in the old team, I can definitely speak from experience.

The built-in games on the Mac OS are crap though - at least Windoze eXcruciating Pain still comes with Solitaire - he he!

BTW - I'm sticking with PCs for home, but often wander how much easier my life'd be with a Mac running basic apps for net and music (when I get off my ass to learn the music software that is!)

 

Be diffrent use unbuntu,and its FREE . After intally trying it on a spare machine i finally made the change after xp managed to loose my modem drivers,not once but on every boot up :banghead: So far so good,theres olny a couple of bits of software i miss,2 are rather specilist so i might give wine a go.

 

Separates are not always the best.
My Grandad had a Siemens Radiogram. A skillfully made beautiful piece of elegant furniture. Six feet wide with eight speakers!
Everyone including myself thought the sound was great!

 

Auntie Ants uses a top of the range dual processor powermac G5 jobbie for her Graphic design work. They are very expensive, but open up the sides of one and you can sort of see why. Rolls Royce versus the Morris Marina build quality that is the insides of your standard piece of crap PC.

I've been a Windows user since the dark days of Windows 3.0 (what's that 15 years?) ... its always been shite. And I have to say OSX is a delight to use. Its slick rather than the creaky shoddiness that is Windows. Its never crashed (whereas as my old bag of bones PC has a good day if it doesn't belly up at least once)

... only problem is, for comparable performance at the top end a Mac probably comes in at three times the price ... but then you can buy a lot of Morris Marinas for the price of a Roller.

 

Not really. I still listen to, and very much enjoy many MP3's. Thats the problem with this forum, people think you are stupid if you listen to MP3's, but I am not the one obsessing about sound quality constantly

Frankly, the delivery medium does not matter to me, the only thing that matters is the end result, which is my entertainment.

 

You can get Beyers for a quid at poundshop! I'm there!

The small matter of their warranty not being valid if they dont, as well as negatively affecting the resale value might influence their decision in that one

 

Don't get me wrong there is nothing with MP3's as far as finding out about new music goes. I find it very sad however that after all the effort going into geting a good recording and making the music, people just don't care about hearing it at it's best!

 

What did you say about tarring everyone with the same brush?

 

Never said anyone was stupid? I was saying that MP3's have their place, they are great for portable devices and downloading new music from the web, but I like to listen to music and get the full benifit from it.
Like buying a car, would you buy a sports car and then have speed limited to 30mph, for me that's what mp3 (wmv and all that) does.
Listen to mp3 all you like and there is no problem with that, just that your not hearing the full potential of the music.

 

Lee, you'd be surprised just how close you can get. If you get a chance, listen to Julian's system. With and without compression.

 

But what if you have heard the "full" version of it, and discovered you couldnt tell the difference? I am not speaking for everyone, but I OFTEN cannot tell the difference even on expensive kit. I'm sure others can, however i'm sure theres a lot more people that cant, partially because they are not trained to hear the difference (and yes, there is an element of knowing what to look for), and partially because their hifi's might not be up to it - and for all i know, mine isnt either, but as I cant really tell the difference anyway, why would I care about that?

I think perhaps it helps that I have no bias one way or another, unlike some... not that i am implying some people just hate it because everyone else says its crap

So maybe not to your ears, but to mine, it pretty much is the full potential even at MP3 level (not always but very often).

 

That certainly would be interesting, I guess the MP3 (or which ever format) uses a very high bit rate, but there are supposed to be some good formats around, eg Ogg Vorbis, which is a free open source compression format, mates at work keep raving on about it, I've not heard / used it yet.

 

Try encoding a file with Musepack quality 6 or above and try it, see if you can tell the difference. I cant.