Joined the dark side.... Just picked up a MacBook

[mondeo]

Originally Posted by davidhowland14

that's the problem with your statement.

What, exactly, is wrong with Windows? It's stable, easy to use, and far better supported than Macs. I love how Apple doubled their market share with the introduction with Windows hardware compatibility.

Or, as I bring up later, install Linux. Still the same price.

[BeanoNYC]

Originally Posted by mondeo

What, exactly, is wrong with Windows? It's stable, easy to use, and far better supported than Macs. I love how Apple doubled their market share with the introduction with Windows hardware compatibility.

Or, as I bring up later, install Linux. Still the same price.

The guy starts a thread because he's excited about his new mac and you go and piss in his cheerios....come on, don't be a Debbie Downer. What anti-virus program do you run on your pc?

[dmc]

Originally Posted by mondeo

What, exactly, is wrong with Windows? It's stable, easy to use, and far better supported than Macs. I love how Apple doubled their market share with the introduction with Windows hardware compatibility.

Or, as I bring up later, install Linux. Still the same price.

My MAC is way more stable then my windows builds.. In fact it's more stable then my Redhat build..
MAC may have less software available... But what it has is great and fits perfect..
MAC also has a UNIX OS so I can use my scripting talents... Already have written some shells to maintain ITunes stuff..

I haven't fired up the windows side of my MAC - so far I don't need it... And don't intend to..
I have Office and XWindows server so i can do anything on it for work..

I like it..

[ckofer]

Can't we just turn this into a ski gear battle?

Skis can be the pc's
Snowboards can be the mac's
Tele gear will be the Linux (the free aspect will be realized when set up well for backcountry)

Now all the skiers can tell the others they're not really enjoying their sports.

I've been using Macintosh since 1988 (really) just because it works well for me. The stability of OS X has been great and I just smile when some creepy little program tries to drop an .exe file on it. What has become nice for everybody is that $1500 will get you a very productive computer-regardless of the platform. The price difference between the Mac world and the PC world used to be much larger. I suppose that it depends what you use the computer for. If I was gamer then I would see it differently.

[knuckledragger]

I was just looking at laptops Saturday. It seems to me that I can get just as good of a computer (after I get the XP downgrade) for about $900 less. Apples are too expensive for what you get!

[wa-loaf]

Originally Posted by knuckledragger

I was just looking at laptops Saturday. It seems to me that I can get just as good of a computer (after I get the XP downgrade) for about $900 less. Apples are too expensive for what you get!

Don't know where you are looking, but prices aren't that out of wack. Laptop prices are pretty close to their PC counterparts in price. iMacs are all-in-ones and carry a slight premium over a similarly specd desktop. Mac Pros are exactly that, you shouldn't be buying them as an email web surfing machine.

[mondeo]

Originally Posted by BeanoNYC

The guy starts a thread because he's excited about his new mac and you go and piss in his cheerios....come on, don't be a Debbie Downer. What anti-virus program do you run on your pc?

Don't mean to degrade the original statement, I just get frustrated with anti-Windows Apple fanboys that treat Mac ads as gospel. If you like Mac better than Windows, fine. I'm happy it works for you. But that doesn't mean it's the superior system.

BitDefender, by the way. As a backup for my built-in Common Sense software.

Originally Posted by ckofer

What has become nice for everybody is that $1500 will get you a very productive computer-regardless of the platform.

Agreed. All systems have their strong points.

Originally Posted by wa-loaf

Don't know where you are looking, but prices aren't that out of wack. Laptop prices are pretty close to their PC counterparts in price. iMacs are all-in-ones and carry a slight premium over a similarly specd desktop. Mac Pros are exactly that, you shouldn't be buying them as an email web surfing machine.

Depends on what your criteria are for a laptop. $300 was the differential for as close as I could match Dell to Apple for the low-end Mac, not sure what it goes to at the higher end. The Air is a niche market that doesn't have a Windows counterpart. My sticking point is dedicated graphics, though; I don't particularly care what the processor speed is in a laptop. You can get dedicated graphics in a Windows laptop for less than $900, on a Mac you need to get to the MacBook Pro, at $2K for dedicated graphics. Maybe it isn't as important on a Mac, or maybe integrated graphics have become a lot better in the last couple years, but it's my criteria for the floor of what I'm willing to get. Again, that's just me. Incidentally, I was reading something earlier today about how Mac has an operating margin of around 19%, Dell is at 6%. Not sure on the exact number, but the magnitude of the difference should be about right.

As you may have been able to figure out, I'm not quite the target audience for either Apple or Microsoft. From here on out I build my own desktops, configured toward the high end (8GB of RAM and dual video cards, but still under $1K for my new PC.) I'm a gamer (beyond solitaire, at least) and engineer, so the solution is obvious: dual boot Windows and Linux. I tried just going Linux, but it was just too much work to get everything working just right that was meant for Windows. At the same time, there is software that I'm intending on using that is only available for Linux, namely OpenFOAM. I'll be getting a new laptop sometime this summer, probably, for use on ski weekends next year. Waiting for the AMD Turion Ultra system to come out, which promises some pretty nifty power saving features.

Honestly, I don't mean to threadjack, and to each his own. But that means allowing me to be happy with Windows, too.

[dmc]

Go to an Apple store...
Check one out... See if you like it.. If you do - buy it...

[kcyanks1]

Originally Posted by mondeo

Which brings me to my final statement about Apple: if not for the common misperception of Linux as a non-user friendly, text driven operating system, I don't think Apple would sell any computers, whatsoever. Linux is now at the point where a basic user (web browsing, email, general productivity, multimedia,) would probably be more than happy with a Linux system. Any further beyond that, and it begins to be a pain, but that's the point where you start getting compatibility issues in Mac, too. Games, things like TV tuner cards, and other non-standard but still fairly common applications, etc. So in the end, I don't see the benefit of Apple over a Linux system other than a few Apple-developed programs, and Linux is free.

FWIW, I built my new computer last December, and ran until mid-March with Linux only. It does work, even with printer and file sharing with Windows computers on the same network; never tried linking it with my XBox (as a media server,) but from what I know, it does work.

I use Linux exclusively at home. Both Windows and Mac are the dark side. Mac OS might be less buggy, but Mac might be even more into DRM and vendor lock-in than Microsoft. Linux works and is free, both in terms of freedom and cost. I have no interest in someone else controlling my computer.

[knuckledragger]

I agree with kcyanks1, I have really been thinking about a Linux machine. I need to try open office before I make the big switch.