Switching to Mac

[DaveB]

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 )

[daviejones]

Toast Titanium (for burning disks). This is very good. All of the other required apps can be got from any Mac site.

Office 2004 for Mac is very good. I also like iWork 08 and iLife 08.

Everything is just so much easier ont he Mac. It h as style, reliability, stability, functionality...

And...you can use XP in dual boot more for your games so I would get the biggest hard drive you can.

[TheFaQQer]

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 )

VMWare or Bootcamp - then you can install Windows.

[daviejones]

VMWare or Bootcamp - then you can install Windows.

Both are good...I prefer Bootcamp as it runs native without taking any resources from Mac OS X.

[Moscow Mule]

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 )

Do it - I've never looked back. Everything is so much more intuitive than a PC and stuff just works.

You won't need Toast as the OS can handle burning data disks, DVDs and music CDs. If you think you need somethingelse, try Disco.

If you have kids/teacher wife then you can get the education version of MS office for GBP99. I quickly got frustrated with open office.

Also, your new machine will come with a shiny new version of leopard (OSX 10.5)which includes Bootcamp (allows you to boot natively into XP) and loads of other shiny features.

You should also consider Parallels or VMWare if you want to run virtual machines. (Parallels allows you to run your bootcamp partition in a window without having to re-boot).

[TheFaQQer]

Both are good...I prefer Bootcamp as it runs native without taking any resources from Mac OS X.

Does bootcamp just dual boot, though?

A guy I worked with last year had a Mac, with Linux and Windows under VMWare so he could switch between them all without needing to reboot.

[Peter Loew]

Do it - I've never looked back. Everything is so much more intuitive than a PC and stuff just works.

Ditto. I use my Mac at work professionally and is has never let me down. Got Parallels with XP installed for MS Project and that's all I need it for.

Once I find a decent replacement for Project, I am throwing Windows into the trash can

[daviejones]

Does bootcamp just dual boot, though?

A guy I worked with last year had a Mac, with Linux and Windows under VMWare so he could switch between them all without needing to reboot.

Bootcamp is a dual boot option but you can get Parallels (good but the current version I have limits the graphics memory to 38MB so slow for some things) and VMWare (not tried it...)...

[Peter Loew]

Once other thing, if you want to run virtualisation software like Parallels or VMWare, then beef up the RAM to about 4GB - that should do it!

[scooterscot]

Ditto. I use my Mac at work professionally and is has never let me down. Got Parallels with XP installed for MS Project and that's all I need it for.

Once I find a decent replacement for Project, I am throwing Windows into the trash can

I've also got Parallels installed since I only need it for one piece of windows based software (work related). It's shut off from the internet, it works everytime I need it.

I switched to the 24" iMac about 8 months ago, took a couple of months to get used to. Afterwatch you realise how how productivity increases compared to using a PC. Small things that made the differnece for me, widgets, ease of use, no constant updates, the O/S reliability is fantastic, office mac 04 is ease itself. I hate sounding like the advert - but there's a element of truth in that 'it just works'!

You'll not regret. I had delivered with 500gig drive 2gig mem, works a treat.