Laptops: Mac and Windows

No one is ramming anything down your throat! If you want a PC buy a PC and enjoy it.

I only joined this thread to advise RdS to buy a machine with a good extended warranty, regardless whether it is a PC or Mac. That, whether he chooses to use it or not, is by far the best advise so far on this thread. For once I know exactly what I'm talking about - I'm an ex-IT manager / network contractor who has worked for some huge multi-national companies and I’ve used PCs from back when the original 8088 chip was current! Rolling out huge quantities of laptops in a tough business environment is nothing new to me. Trust me, the last thing that matters is a slightly faster CPU!

RdS had already included a Mac in his shortlist, all my recommendations were targeted to his original question – as a home user with no need to run either games or certain specific business applications I’d personally recommend a Mac. It is a simpler, more reliable and more secure platform. That’s my advice, anyone is free to take it or leave it!

Tony.

 

Dear Paul

It was never my intention to bash PCs! I do hate Windows, though. The idea of reformatting my HD every 3-4 months is horrible, and I keep 'Automatic Recovering' my PCs. And mind you: I do not play around with installing new programs or with games.

Dear Tony:

Thank you: I needed someone with your kind of experience. I think I will follow your advice and go for a Mac portable.

The only problem is the one that Paul mentioned: the over heating and perhaps fan problems.

 

As far as I’m aware that was addressed a good while back with a firmware update. To be fair to Apple when they do screw up (which like any company they do) they sort it out. The Macbook has been around for a fair while now, the teething problems will be long sorted out by now. I never advise being an early adopter of anything new IT related – choose stuff that is proven and never trust software with a zero in the version number!

The whole point of buying a computer with an extended warranty, be it a PC or Mac, is to prevent things like this being a problem. The company is contractually obliged to keep your computer running throughout the warranty period. This obviously covers things like overheating or any other fault, even if it only becomes evident late into the contract.

Have a good shop around but don’t be drawn into raw specification races - tried and tested technology from a respected manufacturer with a good extended warranty is what you want, i.e. look at the big PC names too. Whichever platform you choose don’t skimp on RAM - 1Gb is a sensible amount for both Windows and OS X.

Tony.

 

This has never been necessary. Automatic recovery is also problematic in itself. What is it you're doing to these machines to cause this?

A good installation of windows can and will work well for years. OEMs even put good installations on their machines out the box, but THEN load them down with vast amounts of junk. Remove said junk, turn off autoupdate, turn off auto recovery, turn off rollback, etc, etc, etc and hey presto, it's stable, it's fast, etc.

The problem is that most people don't understand how to do these things, how to manage processes, etc and many people don't want to know that. That's where OSX scores over windows.

However, I'm keeping a close eye on the progress of 64 bit ubuntu for core 2.

 

That’s it in a nutshell. Most of the people who get really defensive about Windows are what I’d categorise as expert or power users, and, like myself, can run a Windows system without the slightest issue.

Given my past career I am inevitably the one whose phone rings, day or night, when a friend’s relationship with their computer becomes somewhat stressed. I have a roughly equal number of friends with Macs and PCs. It is the PC users that phone me up, almost always as a result of installing some new software or hardware that either does not work or breaks something that previously did work.

People need to understand that there are many users who simply want a tool to do a job. They are computer literate, i.e. they can use the word processor, spreadsheet, email, web browser etc, but they are not IT guys and have no great desire to learn how to use RegEdit.exe or check .DLL file versions to try and fix things. Often these users are not the first to adopt new virus definitions or OS fixes, so frequently they get whatever the Windows virus of the day is. This is one area where OS X or Linux kills Windows, zero real world viruses is hugely better than tens of thousands. I have on occasion had to completely flatten people’s PC’s due to virus infestation. A huge waste of everyone’s time, and something that never, ever happens with a Mac.

One final point for RdS: I know I’m stating the bleedin’ obvious, but go and try whatever you are interested in the shop yourself. Ergonomics are very, very important, especially when it comes to keyboards, trackpads and screens. The current trend for ultra thin laptops is stupid thinking IMHO – the trade off for that one time “Oooh, isn’t it thin” reaction when opening the box is almost always a naff keyboard. Definitely have a good long type on the Macbook as it does have a pretty weird keyboard – the keys have very flat key tops that take a little time to get used to. I had a go with one in a shop and rather liked it (certainly better than the preceding iBook IMHO) but it may not be to everyone’s taste.


Tony.

 

Tony - I even went so far as to buy a tshirt that said "No, I will not fix your computer".

 

Let me give you my perspective. It important that we all give perspectives and opinions that count, they will count because we have experience of them. Paul has managed somehow to get himself all wound up on this thread. Most odd. He likes PCs and thats great, I like them too I have it on my mac (A mac lappy will quite happily run XP as well as OSX)

I would recommend, based on my own personal experience, and from setting up macs for a lot of people (I now count 13 people 'a lot' ) that you get a mac.

PC people get far to easily side tracked by minimal spec increases on a PC side, such as an extra 10gigs on a harddrive or what ever. This is not what gives you a fantastic computer experience.

What does is plugging a camera in, a program loading (iPhoto) asking you if you want to import them. You click yes, they import. You click on iDVD and the photos you imported in iPhoto are there (along with that 2 hours of digital video you did of the kids birthday) you create a DVD. Within iDVD you have all the music from iTunes ready to put over your DVD or you could have edited out your digital video in iMovie, added effects and text then imported it into iDVD. Or fuckit, use garage band to create your own music in Gargage band with hundreds of instruments from Quicktimes built in midi, or plug a guitar and record your own.

You might need to do a blog because your music is so damn cool, and get it out there on the web using iWeb.

All this software is part of the mac, its not to be underestimated, it all work together as a whole package or as single units, all media from each one is available to the others. This is all part of the lappy you buy.

I purchased a DELL on behalf of two friends, apart from Microsoft Works all it came with was some antivirsus software, presumably so they didn't have so many phone calls.

No viruses for Mac
No Trojan Horses for mac
No key loggers for mac

Paul can argue its because they are a smaller OS. The argument is flawed in that its still a fact. I have ran macs since 1986, and never to this day had a virus and I have had broadband since 2001 and never had antivirus software or a firewall on.

This is why I love macs. You get tonnes of usefull software that means stuff to you and your family and you are safe with them. Job done.

 

garyi - paul's point about over-representation of the mac viewpoint is valid however.

And personally, I find the computer thinking it knows what I want to do when I plug something in terminally irritating. If I want to do something, I will tell the computer when and how, not the other way around.

 

Then turn it off, it will ask you if you wish this feature or not.

A mac can be as easy or complicated as you wish it to be.

 

Its not just minimal increases though. When I was looking i honestly considered a Mac, but when a machine £50 cheaper sported a larger screen, a hard drive almost twice the size, twice the amount of memory, and a DVD writer (all very well saying you can do this and that to create a DVD - not when you dont have one you dont!), then it made my decision a no brainer, regardless of how good Mac people think their OS is.

Not that I would want to do that, but i can plug a camera into the PC just the same and its extremely easy to get my pictures off it.

I dont need to have the computer treat me like a numpty to do exactly what i need with those images. I dont find PC's to be hard work at all in the vast majority of cases.

As always, its each to their own, I'm happy that you are happy, but the undeniable fact for me is PC laptops offer more bang for your buck, provided you can accept that you arent always going to have your hand held all of the time.

I had a read of that xvsxp site and i found many things that were less than satisfactory about the OS on that. Neither is perfect, it just seems to me that there is a certain smugness about the way some Mac owners go on. For example, when I was asking on another forum about PC laptops, I still had zealots going on about why I needed a Mac, even though I said SEVERAL times I didnt want one.

Dont get me wrong, if I had loads of money, I would definitely have one, if for no other reason that it just makes a change and they are undeniably good looking machines. But for someone on a budget, PC's are a no brainer. For someone who just wants to get a job done, PC's are just as good.

 

FFS, Paul you come over on this particular thread as the person with a problem.

I have had a busy day, the little'n is being a pain going down and I am tired.

You like PCs, well done, however the thread starter did not ask 'Paul what is your preferred computer', he asked everyone, you need to except that 'everyone' in the confines of this forum includes mac users, who on balance feel that a 300 quid PC laptop by and large will be a pile of shit.

Knowing how volatile you tend to be I shall leave it there, I have given my perfectly valid experience of macs, with the software that is bundled.

 

Funnily enough neither do I. I’d argue OS X actually has by far the less patronising interface – XP installs with a Teletubbies wall paper, calls everything ‘My Computer’, ‘My Documents’ etc, tries to select what you see on the start menu etc - it's Win 2K hiding behind a Fisher Price Activity Centre interface.

OS X does come bundled with iLife, which is to be honest genuinely useful stuff – for many less demanding users it could be all they will need with regards to web publishing, image management, video and music editing etc. Ok, it’s not going to compete with Photoshop or Dreamweaver, but for free in the box it is bloody good. Garage Band is exceptionally good IMHO.

OK, once you get beyond the basics of either system they are both capable, though again I’d argue that OS X’s full featured UNIX core and bundled development environment goes that little bit further. Those who accuse Mac’s of being simplistic machines may be surprised to know each and every one ships with a full C++ compiler plus all the old UNIX favs like emacs, vi etc!

I’m far from convinced that is true – you save a few bucks buying a PC but loose them again when selling. Total cost of ownership is actually probably less with a Mac as they eBay really well even when quite old – your 50 quid cheaper PC will be pretty much worthless in three years, the Mac will probably pull back 1/3 – ½ of retail cost. Being a cheapskate by nature it’s one of the reasons I switched. That and the fact PCs remind me of work!

Tony.

 

Thats one thing i reckon i can definitely agree with !!

 

Having lived with both an iBook (1.4GHz 1GB RAM) and a HP laptop (1.8Ghz Centrino and 512MB RAM) I would have to say that while OSX is a nicer system to use, the Mac IS slower, despite some claims that as the CPU works differently it doesn't need to many Ghz etc..

The only downside of the PC is Windoze, but it does give you a wider choice of programs to run. As Isaac says, if you turn off auto update (makes my machine fuk up a lot!) and all the silly apps most packaged PCs come with it will run pretty well.

BUT... if you have the money get one of the Intel based Macs and have the best of both worlds Don’t they start at about £700? A good PC laptop will be about £550 so its not too bad really.

 

I can't comment on say a 1.4 ibooks vs a 1.4 PC as I have not used a 1.4 PC, so to establish if the mac Hz was faster I may never know.

What I can confirm is the intel chips are super, and I am using the standard core duos, so god knows what the core 2s are like.

Fact is, XP from a 'feel' point of view seems slower mostly because it wants to tell me a whole load of shit at the beginning in the style of bubbles bottom right. Most frustrating. As for applications, I have found in my experience that on XP they load up quicker than mac, but on mac they run a lot more stably.

But the new core2s will and without doubt put apple well on par with new PCs, spec for spec there is not a terrific amount in it, and you have to factor in the tonnes of software for mac. You simply do not get this with PCs.

 

Do you mean software that comes with it? 'cos there is definitely more software available for windows than OSX. Though I guess with the new Apples running both Windows and OSX there is more available for those than any other machine.

 

You dont have to put up with "teletubbies" on XP. To be honest, although somewhat bland, i personally think the XP "classic" interface is efficient and rapid to use.

I'll be interested to see what Vista has to offer mind.

 

Prior to my two Macs (1.33 iBook and 1.2 Mini) I had a Toshiba Tecra 9100 laptop which had a 1.7 P4. 512Mb in the Mini and Tosh, 768 in the iBook. Speed varies with application – MS Office much faster on the PC, music apps much faster on the Mac (Cubase was utterly useless on the Tecra due to MIDI latency). Photoshop was pretty much the same on each and Quake / Quake II surprisingly faster on the Mac. Nothing in it with regard to boot up or the vast majority of apps. It’s swings and roundabouts IMHO, but if you use serious music apps definitely buy a Mac!

Of course - I was comparing the fresh out of the box experience, and if anything I’d say XP was more dumbed down. It is simple to stop OS X starting say iPhoto when you plug in a digital camera etc.

Tony.

 

XP gets on my nerves a bit with all the stuff it has in as stock. Like "please dont go in this folder, you may knack something", and "lets hide the icons on the desktop or taskbar". The worst one though is "Personalized menus". I dont think i've ever come across ANYONE who likes those.

Once you turn all the cack off, it isnt that bad really.

 

OS X is just the same. I'm astonished by how successful Apple have been in making UNIX a user-friendly experience - all the UNIX is still there for the playing with, but most of the userbase is blissfully unaware of it's existence! I suspect you would really like it to be honest.

Tony.