Reply to: Switching to Mac

[threaded]

Just remembered there was some issue in the VMWare fusion thing about going from an AMD processor - Medion to the Intel Xeon - Mac. There was some playing about to get it going right, but can't remember. Maybe do a google for a tech note somewhere.

[b0redom]

If you're working for a large corporate, you may find that they have a reduced deal with Apple. I got 6% off working for a large Japanese electronics company, and 6% off working for a large US company. All you need to do is flash your ID badge in store, and give you an immediate discount.

This also applies to ipods etc....

[NickFitz]

Medion
youtube.com/watch?v=ar8bXYS-eKQ

Apple
youtube.com/watch?v=ar8bXYS-eKQ

VMWare utility
youtube.com/watch?v=ar8bXYS-eKQ

You are lonelygirl15 and I claim my £5.

[threaded]

Ok, I'm looking at replacing my personal PC, an aging Medion 2ghz box running XP. Apart from simply replacing it with another PC I'm also thinking of changing to a Mac. For those who have Mac's or have made the switch what are the agruments in favour that justify the additional cost?

I need it for the usual office functions plus some games ( WoW and Counter Strike mainly ).

I'm looking at a 24" Imac that comes in at £1459 on the Apple Store.

Is there any software recommended over and above that supplied with it? ( apart from Office, also looking at Open Office for Mac )

Funnily enough, I swapped from probably that self same Medion model to an Apple. I got myself one of them Apple G5 8 core jobbies and it came with a VMWare utility that copied the XP to an image I can run on the Apple. Not everything works obviously, the Apple doesn't have the card readers and what not, but most stuff does.

[Cowboy Bob]

Late to the thread but I'll chime in in favour of Macs too. I bought my first Mac about a year ago now (MacBook, Core 2 Duo, 2Gb RAM) and I'd never go back now. It does absolutely everything I require, much faster and snappier than it used to in Windows. It's also a thing of beauty (I have a black one) and always gets comments when I get it out of its case in a work situation.

I don't bother with Parallels - there's no Windows software that I need that I haven't managed to replace with native software. YMMV in this area though.

[scooterscot]

I'm assuming that Mac OS isn't the same sort of resource hog as Vista?

Are you mad? My CPU usage is below 5% most of the time unless I'm processing video or something. The system is silent like the grave I never hear it, applications just appear.

I agree with NickFitz it's about the little things that make is stand out from windows. You can work on a mac all day and produce work to show for it while not getting frustrated over updates, hard drive grinding away doing knows what... it's all about the little things.

[OrangeHopper]

I have used Macs since the early 90s and I've not used a PC in the house since.

Why not buy a cheaper one and see what you think. I am using a Mini (LG 19' monitor, HP keyboard and Logitech mouse) now and have one of the new 20' iMac downstairs for the faimily. Think I may have that round the wrong way.

I've not experienced the crashes reported above.

[NickFitz]

I'm assuming that Mac OS isn't the same sort of resource hog as Vista?

It's not uncommon for me to find myself using my year-old MacBook (2 Gig RAM) with:

• Safari
• Firefox
• Opera
• Eclipse IDE
• Parallels VM: WinXP SP2 allocated 512M of RAM
• Mail
• iCal
• iTunes
• iPhoto
• iDVD (encoding and burning)
• Transmit FTP client
• Adium chat client
• Chicken of the VNC (allowing me to use my old PowerMac G4 without having to get up and walk to the desk)
• Apache web server (comes with the OS) running several PHP4 apps (comes with the OS) connecting to a mySQL database, and maybe an instance of Tomcat running a couple of Java Servlet apps

and I only realise just how many apps I have open when I absent-mindedly open another Parallels VM which also has 512M allocated to it and switching between stuff becomes a bit slow. This usually comes about because I never log out, just shut the lid when done and open it again when I need it. With 60+ days of uptime*, you can end up opening a lot of apps and just forgetting to close them again.

Of course that's only a laptop; you can expect a desktop machine to do better than that.

* There's usually a system update requiring a restart every couple of months or so, so I don't often get past 60 days uptime - although I was over 100 days once when I'd forgotten to approve the restart-after-update for a month or so

[daviejones]

I'm assuming that Mac OS isn't the same sort of resource hog as Vista?

Sh*t no...not even close...

[DaveB]

I'm looking at the 2.8ghz 24" iMac with 2Gb of Ram. Not sure if I will be running bootcamp/parallels etc atm cos I will still have the old PC, at least initially, untill I get everything up and "Macified". I'm assuming that Mac OS isn't the same sort of resource hog as Vista?

[NickFitz]

I would say Parallels too, I have a 20" iMac that I bought earlier this year, and run everything in OS X with the exception of Outlook 2007 that I run in Parallels.

Don't buy a memory upgrade from Apple though, they charge an extortionate amount of money for their RAM. Go for the standard memory and then buy a 4Gb upgrade from Crucial or another reputable RAM manufacturer. Provided you want that much RAM of course!

I can definitely recommend Crucial. When I got my MacBook last year I ordered a RAM upgrade from their UK site at around 4:30 in the evening; at 8:00 the next morning my order arrived in the post.

Of course, postal strikes may interfere with this process at the moment...

[NickFitz]

I've had a Macbook pro and an Imac for a year or so now and to be honest, Macs are not that much more stable than Vista. Safari crashes on me on both machines too often for my liking and in terms of useabilty, I don;t think Mac OS X is any more usable than Vista or XP.

As somebody who's been using Macs since the early 90s and OS X since 10.1, and also used all versions of Windows since 3.11, I have to say that the Mac wins hands down in the usability stakes. It's not the big things - there's only so many ways the core features of a GUI can work, after all - but the small details that make the difference.

To take one example, consider a submenu. As one moves the mouse sideways across the main menu towards the submenu, there is a tendency to also move it downwards slightly, partly because of the way the human arm works, and partly because one is almost certainly not heading for the top item of the submenu, and therefore aims down slightly towards the thing one wants.

Realising this through user testing when the Mac was first being designed in the early 80s, the Mac engineers worked out a technique whereby the active region within which the submenu will stay open isn't rectangular but cone-like; this allows the pointer to move down slightly as it heads to the right, even to the extent of going into the next menu item down, without closing the submenu. This greatly increases one's chance of hitting the submenu correctly, rather than having it close, and maybe having a submenu from the next menu item open instead. (It also doesn't interfere with the case when you paused but then started heading for the next item - that will still respond straight away, as you are heading pretty much straight down.) The extent of this region downwards is also dependant on the speed with which one moves the mouse; a little experimentation will allow you to see just how effective it is in making the menus easier to use.

On Windows they identified the same problem, but instead used a very short time delay before activating the item below the one you were initially on. This is much clunkier: it is more likely to lose the menu you wanted, or to fail to open the item below that you were really aiming at quite as soon as you expect. Although happening at an almost subliminal level, this leads to a slightly frustrating sense of lag in the responsiveness of the UI, and causes a gradual buildup of minor irritation during the course of a session using the OS.

This has been a problem in Windows in all versions, and despite tweaks over the years, it's still there and still not-quite-good-enough in Vista.

It's this kind of thing that people mean when they describe Mac OS as having better usability than Windows: a dialog box behaves virtually the same way in both systems, but you can use a Mac for a long session and still feel relaxed, while the same period on Windows will build up a slight undercurrent of tension as all those little things niggle away.

As for crashes: I hardly ever see anything crashing on my Macs, although I have to say that Win XP SP2 is also extremely stable in my experience. I've found that most people who have crashes on their Macs turn out to be using things like Quicksilver, which supposedly enhance the usability of the system in various ways; as these things have to plug into the OS at a very low level, and use APIs that aren't documented or supported by Apple, they easily make the system unstable and can become even more unreliable when minor OS updates are installed. I'd never bother installing something like that; the supposed benefits (which I can't actually see myself) aren't worth the price of making your system unstable by randomly interfering with its normal mode of operation.

YMMV and so forth

[Moscow Mule]

I would say Parallels too, I have a 20" iMac that I bought earlier this year, and run everything in OS X with the exception of Outlook 2007 that I run in Parallels.

Don't buy a memory upgrade from Apple though, they charge an extortionate amount of money for their RAM. Go for the standard memory and then buy a 4Gb upgrade from Crucial or another reputable RAM manufacturer. Provided you want that much RAM of course!

Oh yes - MORE RAM!!!!!!!!!

On a more serious note, if you've any intention of running more than one instance of Parallels or Vista under parallels at all, seriously consider maxing out the RAM.

[Pete Cullen]

I would say Parallels too, I have a 20" iMac that I bought earlier this year, and run everything in OS X with the exception of Outlook 2007 that I run in Parallels.

Don't buy a memory upgrade from Apple though, they charge an extortionate amount of money for their RAM. Go for the standard memory and then buy a 4Gb upgrade from Crucial or another reputable RAM manufacturer. Provided you want that much RAM of course!

[Peter Loew]

Apple also offer student discounts. Now if you know a student or have access to a university all you have to do is go order your mac from within the university domain to get your discount...

I got 15% off my Macbook Pro...

P