[LadyStardust]

There have been a few threads recently in this Forum about Macs so I'm hoping there are some knowledgeable souls out there!

Okay, here's my dilemma.

I have a three year old Dell desktop with a lovely 19" monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse and to date have been very happy with it. The hard disk is 160GB and is only just over half full and I've got 3GB of RAM. I use the computer mainly for email (Office 2003), Photoshop CS3, internet browsing, MS Office documents and I also back up my Sony Clie PDA to it regularly using Palm Desktop. However, despite the amount of memory, it's pretty slow and takes ages to boot up and get going now.

The hard disk is on its way out and nearly every day the PC eventually blue screens, accompanied by a horrible "my ball bearings are wearing out" clicking sound from the innards of the machine. So I've recently invested in a 1TB Western Digital external hard disk and have installed a free copy of Allway Sync on there to back up stuff I'm working on at the moment (I have a Pixalo Photo World photo book in progress, for example) and essential broadband modem drivers etc. In December I did full backups to DVD of everything so am pretty happy that I'm covered on the data front if the hard disk suddenly goes.

So... as my husband is just about to pay his golf fees for the year, he's given me the go ahead to get whatever I need to replace my workstation (wey hey!) - within reason. In addition, he could make use of the monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers as he's recently landed a home based job and should be getting a docking station for his laptop.

I have seen a Dell Inspiron base unit on Tesco.com for £399 - Dell Inspiron 530 PC Base Unit - Tesco.Direct. I don't think it has a soundcard but I should be able to scavenge my current one and port it across. It has a 500GB hard disk and 3GB of RAM. Pretty good value, although I don't think the graphics card is up to much.

BUT... I am thinking about going down the Mac route. I use my computer nearly every day and enjoy it, so perhaps I should opt for change and plunge into becoming a Mac user. I can get a basic iMac (through work) for £750 but would probably need to upgrade the 1GB memory to at least 2GB, but would do that separately as it's cheaper to do. It has a 250GB hard disk, which, to be honest, is till plenty really. The next version up has a better graphics card, 320GB HDD and a faster processor but that would cost about £900. Getting quite expensive here...

I'm a bit concerned about compatability issues, and may have to use Bootcamp to dual boot to Windows XP in order to sync the PDA to Palm Desktop, but I haven't investigated whether a Mac version is available yet. However, I looked at the promotional video for Leopard OS last night and it blew my mind. Time Machine looks awesome and would be ideal for use with the external HDD.

Any comments on what you think I should do would be hugely appreciated.

Thank you.

[LadyStardust]

Hi all. Since posting this thread I have found a few Mac -vs- PC threads from last month. Sorry, I didn't mean to start that debate all over again...

I think I may be erring towards the Dell base unit as I don't think I can go through the pain of learning how to use a new OS, plus there will be compatability issues I'm sure.

Go on... someone persuade me otherwise!

Thanks.

Lucy

[WOODY]

LADYSTARDUST, I HAVE JUST BECOME A MAC CONVERT. I HAVE BOUGHT A MACBOOK
PRO. THE MAC OS LEOPARD IS ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC.

I HAVE DECIDED NOT TO USE BOOTCAMP, AS I FEEL I DON'T WANT TO USE WINDOWS
AS WELL. THE GOOD THING ABOUT THOUGH IS IF YOU DO RUN WINDOWS WITH IT,
AND YOU GET A VIRUS IN WINDOWS, YOU JUST DROP WINDOWS IN TO THE TRASH CAN
AND START AGAIN.

I THINK IF YOU HAVE A LOT OF WINDOWS SOFTWARE, THEN MAYBE IT IS NOT A GOOD
IDEA TO GO FOR A MAC. IN MY CASE I HAVE NOT, SO IT WAS NOT AN ISSUE FOR ME.

SO FAR THE MAC DOES EVERYTHING IT SAYS ON THE TIN, TAKES SOME GETTING USED
TO, BUT PERSONALLY I FIND IT EASIER TO USE THAN WINDOWS.

IT STARTS UP STRAIGHT AWAY, DOES NOT FREEZE, DOES NOT CRASH. SECURITY
ISSUE NOT SO MUCH OF A PROBLEM. OBVIOUSLY I CANNOT COMMENT ON IT LONG
TERM AS I HAVE ONLY HAD MINE A COUPLE OF WEEKS. SO FAR I AM REALLY
ENJOYING THE EXPERIENCE . I THINK THE ONLY THING THEY DO NOT HAVE IN THEIR
FAVOUR IS THE PRICE.

SORRY I CANNOT GO MORE IN TO THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF IT, BUT MAYBE SOME
OTHERS ON HERE, WHO HAVE USED MACS FOR LONGER WILL BE ABLE TO GIVE YOU
MORE INFORMATION.

[LadyStardust]

Thanks Woody, I appreciate your thoughts. I have read some reviews on Amazon of people who've bought the iMac and everyone seems to be in love with their kit! I can't say that I've ever said I've loved a Windows PC. Yes, they've been good but they are functional more than anything...

Oooh, you only live once eh? Well, I'm going along to PC World later to have a play with an iMac and see it in the flesh.

Could be the turning point!

Thanks again.

Lucy

[Chris H]

LadyStardust

If I where given the choice of an Imac or a Dell, even though I'm not a MAC lover ( lack of experiance ) I'd save up and buy the mac and relearn everything.

I'm afraid through experience I'm not a lover of Dells through very bad experience in my job. They tend to be the least reliable and one of the worst to set up when they do go wrong.

Maybe a change of brand might be a alternative

[marcinklysewicz]

go for mac if you can. wherever you go and read you'll find that mac is more stable (no crashes) and very well optimised for any kind of work. most of professionsals are using mac computers - for photo editing, film editing, 3d animation, music creation and so on. don't worry about specification - for your work any computer will do. and i'm serious (maybe i'll write some topic about computers ).

[LadyStardust]

Oooh thanks all for your further comments.

Am now at the point where I am working down a list of apps that I use and seeing how/if they will easily port across and/or whether there are Mac versions for them. It's actually looking quite good. Only my old Sony Clie and it's Palm Desktop software plus eWallet encryption software might require me to install either XP or Vista onto a partition, so that can't be bad. Apparently, it's very simple to do as well.

Am getting butterflies with excitement!

Will keep you updated.

Thanks again.

[Chris H]

wherever you go and read you'll find that mac is more stable (no crashes) and very well optimised for any kind of work

Marcin thats a very wide comment to make.

I have a number of computers that all run windows XP and have spent time with Vista.

None of my machines crash, in fact the one I retired from duty in August last year ran 365 days a year for 6 years except for the odd hour when it was shut down for a service, and never fell over.

PC's tend to fall over because we have a wider veriety of software applications that in their complexity can cause problems. Beleive me if there was the same support for Mac's they would suffer just the same.

You say that Macs are very well optimised for ANY kind of work, and I have to say thats just not possible.

Without doubt Mac's are superb machines and should be held in high esteem, however they are not the end to all applications.

Not only are they vastly overpriced, they tend not to have the upgrade paths that PC's have and will become out of date just the same.

My only reasoning to buy a Mac if I where to be given the choice would be that it was the only machine that would run an application I wanted to run, and a PC wouldn't.

As to the choice between a Dell and a Mac the a Mac would win hands down purely because I've spent years ( 30+ ) in the computer game and I've had more than my fair share of hassle with Dells.

C-Man formally know as Computerman

[silkstone]

If you've not used an iMac, take a long hard look at one before you make the decision, and decide if you could live with the reflective screen. Also check for any tonal gradation from top to bottom or side to side, depending on which screen size you go for.

[PeteT]

Originally Posted by LadyStardust

Only my old Sony Clie and it's Palm Desktop software plus eWallet encryption software might require me to install either XP or Vista onto a partition,

Data Guardian (koingo software) is a great Mac native replacement for eWallet and only a tenner !

[Lone Buggin]

First, check out mac-forums.

I have a 15" MBP, and I absolutely love it. It has a matte screen, no worries on reflections. At first glance you might suffer sticker shock, but when you build a dell to match the specs of the mac, and the included software, the mac actually comes out cheaper.

Currently, there are no viruses in the wild for OSX, and only 1 trojan. But to actually get infected with this trojan, you would have had to choke down a bottle of stupid pills for breakfast. Your mac cannot be infected with a windows virus (unless your using bootcamp, then the windows partition can get infected..but that's not really mac anymore, is it?), but it can act as a carrier to pass on infected files, so I use clamxav to scan anything going out or coming in.

People say that there isn't alot of software available for macs, and they point out how much software is available for windows.. but how much of what's out there is actually worth using? Macs have a smaller market share, so yeah, less software is produced. The software that is available is quality stuff though.

As an aside, I love PC's. Fixing them keeps food on the table.

[marcinklysewicz]

C-Man i'll defend my opinion . i'm musician - a composer (check my website) - and i've seen few professional studios. all equiped with mac as the main computer, PC's where just for support (keeping some plug-ins running that where not available for MAC). opinion about mac was always - same software running on PC and MAC - using lot's of resources on PC when on MAC much less and without any problem (for example when using advanced plug-ins for reverb effects). i was producing sound for 3d animations and some documental movies - they were prepared on MAC computers. and again - stability and optimalization (again for same job using less computer resources).
question - that computer working 365 days - tell us what it was doing? did you install some new software every month? or maybe it was your server? of course even when you use your computer for really hard work (3d rendering) every day it could work without crash for a long time. i'm not saing that when you use PC and windows you'll see bluescreen.
i'm using IBM ThinkPad T40 - i'm not installing any new updates for drivers - nothing. and you know why? because it works fine without any single crash for last 2 years. and with 1GB of RAM it's working faster then my second laptop Toshiba Satelite P100-429 with 3GB of RAM. and when i say faster i'm serious. i have that feeling that my Toshiba don't really know what to do with those 3GB's of RAM. i'm trying to keep my laptops in good condition - defragmentation, hard drive surface scans, defragmentation of registry files, fixes for register (non existing shortcuts and so on). still - IBM is faster. why - i guess because it's IBM . and the same reason is why i would like to buy MAC and i recommend MAC more then DELL.

i don't have MAC. but only because i already have all software for PC and i don't have enough money to buy MAC.

Lone Buggin alredy pointed on viruses and trojans for MAC - there are almost none so your computer safety is obvious even without any anti-virus subscription. another thing is - if you don't see some software that you use on your PC available for MAC - look again and you'll find some program doing the same maybe even for free.

[Chris H]

Marcin

As I said there is a lot to be said for Mac's and they are great kit but for the average person they are overpriced for what they do.

When a Mac is reduced in price even to the point of being 10% more expensive than a pc then maybe average Joe should consider them.

My pc that ran for 6 years almost none stop was running everything for my day to day needs. It was also running a number crunching program doing high level calculations 24/7 365, for a project that was almost the same as a distributed power project. It ran almost 100% processing power almost 100% of the time.

Whilst I see your point as being a professional user doing graphics and music, for which I have no doubts tha Mac is a better machine it does not bely the fact that I deal with customers who run on average 6,000 pc's 24/7 365 in shops running tilling systems.

We rarely see crashes but do see wear and tear failure, mainly in Dell pc's unfortunately.

I would still say that for average Joe who wants their machine to do a bit of everything as my latest PC does that Macs are too expensive.

I think this is one topic nobody will ever agree on just like Nikon fans will never like Canons and visa versa.