My 5 year old PC is coming to the end of its days and needs replacing.
I was intending to get another PC or high spec Laptop for home use (internet / music / kids stuff/ etc) but someone has suggested a Mac.
My last 2 PC's both suffered from virus's, despite having up to date virus protection and have been told Mac's dont suffer in the same way.

So any opinions on Mac vs PC ? The kids use it a lot & are used to using Word/Powerpoint etc - would they be able to with a Mac?

Cheers

R.

 

Intel based MAC and dual boot with windows.

 

An MS Office trial is included with Mac's.

 

Out of interest, what virus protection were you using? I've been using PCs for 15+ years, and have never had a virus infection...

As for Mac vs PC, it all depends on what software you run and whether you like the look&feel of OSX vs Vista/XP. It's really a personal choice thing as both are equally capable machines.

 

mac all the way

 

mac all the way - unless you want to play games.

 

>both are equally capable machines

Just one's more capable of ruining your day than the other, and the other is less capable at playing games.

 

My dual Xeon Mac Pro is a great machine. Also runs Parallels if you need to run another OS (Windows, Linux etc.)

If you want to play games - console?

The software (not demo) that comes with Macs is pretty good. iTunes obviously ... iMovie/iDVD for home movies, GarageBand for music, etc. Apple make a Word processor called Pages and a Powerpoint type thing called KeyNote which are inexpensive and seem fairly elegant.

 

Not at all true if you have a properly configured PC and don't install tonnes of substandard software on it. There is also more software than just games which you can get on the PC which you can't on the Mac. It all depends on what you want to do with it...

 

With the advent of the Intel based Macintosh computers I'd have to say Mac all the way. As you can dual boot it with XP/Vista you have the best of both worlds. A PC when you want it to be, a Mac when you want it to be.

If you throw Parallels Desktop for Macintosh (a Virtual Machine solution) into the mix as well, then you can virtually run XP/Vista when you're also running OS X. If you combine using Boot Camp (the dual boot solution) and Parallels (as I have done) then you use the same "disk" for your dual boot and virtual machine.

Obviously, being a mac fan, I'd try to persuade people to just stick with Mac OS X, and migrate yourself from XP, but if you can have both on the same machine, it makes it so much more flexible.

 

Iain's right, a properly set up pc with decent software on it is more than a match for a mac.

but macs are pretty and the virus thing is an important factor these days.

go get a mac.

 

I don't find it flexible, I find it annoying. I always find that when I'm in one OS the thing I want to use is in the other one, so I have to shut down, lose where I was at in the software, move to the other OS, do whatever I need to do, shut down, boot other OS again, get back to what I was doing before etc... It's not a very efficient way of working.

 

isn't that what parallels is for? it's basically vmware isn't it?

 

Yep, but the problem with that is you are running two operating systems at the same time, (one being run under emulation) and thus the software runs much slower than running natively.

 

My two pence worth is...

If you are confident with using a PC and have never used a Mac then stick with the PC unless you have time to cope with frustration. I am not saying Mac are bad just that if you have alot of work to do then you could get pretty anoyed having to learn something new.

If you are confident with Macs then stick with em unless you are a real game head in which case a PC may be worth getting again.

Also PCs are pretty cheap these days but i cannot comment on Macs. Have they followed suit?

 

im running vista on virtual pc 2007 & 2003 server on virtual server 2007 on my xp pc

 

And....? What point are you trying to make?

I run Vista / XP / 2000 / Server 2k3 etc in virtual machines as well. They all work fine, but they also all run far slower than running on the hardware itself...

 

I'm not being argumentative, but can you give an example of the scenario above.

 

If it's the case that dual booting is a pain, just stick with one os - the one that's dependant on the cpu/ram requirement.

 

For example if I was using photoshop (which works better on the mac than on the pc) and lightwave (which works better on the pc than on the mac). I'd be creating textures / uv maps etc using photoshop on the mac, flipping to the pc to do a test render, flip back to the mac to tweak the textures, flip back to the pc again etc...

or...

I'm on the pc doing some work, but find I need to access information which is held in an email which I downloaded using the mac....

I've hit these sort of scenarios hundreds of times, not only between the mac and pc, but if I've got a dual boot between xp/vista ot xp/2000 etc. It's just annoying and I try and avoid it whenever possible.

 

Yes although I have to say I use my 24" imac daily and have parallels running continuously and whilst its never going to be as quick as native its very good, in fact hardly noticeable. I run sql server and vs.net just fine but then I have 2gb of ram and assign 1gb to the VM. In fact parallels runs far better than wmare (IMHO) which I am suffering with at the site Im working at today.

It is horses for courses, like most purchases its emotional, I didnt need an imac I just wanted one and the fact I could run xp was a big bonus. I think the amount of bundled software on the mac is far better but that said there is alot more freeware available for the PC.

Gary

 

Can't work out why I keep thinking of this bloke..

 

There was one of those "I'm a mac, I'm a pc" ads on the tube that had been defaced.

The PC "I run MS Office" one had been defaced to read

PC: I suck corporate ****!

and of course they left the Mac bit to say: I do too!

made me chuckle!