Guest flatfour Posted January 10, 2007 Share #1 Â Posted January 10, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) A friend who knows I spend too much time on computers and have son with a computer business asked me this week whether he should replace his PC with a Mac. My son said no instantly . His reason was that he had so much trouble with business customers who have some Macs trying to run all their software which is designed for PCs. But for a private person is a Mac a good idea ? My only experience with a Mac ceased about a year ago when our Chairman switched from Mac to PC. I had endless trouble with Excell and Word documents and receiving his pictures. The friend does a fair amount of photography and uses Photoshop but it will also be used by his wife for church matters which involves a lot of committee papers being circulated. . What advantages does the Apple have over say a good current PC ? People who have Macs do seem to like them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted January 10, 2007 Posted January 10, 2007 Hi Guest flatfour, Take a look here Should he buy a Mac or a PC ?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
jlancasterd Posted January 10, 2007 Share #2 Â Posted January 10, 2007 A friend who knows I spend too much time on computers and have son with a computer business asked me this week whether he should replace his PC with a Mac. My son said no instantly . His reason was that he had so much trouble with business customers who have some Macs trying to run all their software which is designed for PCs. But for a private person is a Mac a good idea ? My only experience with a Mac ceased about a year ago when our Chairman switched from Mac to PC. I had endless trouble with Excell and Word documents and receiving his pictures. The friend does a fair amount of photography and uses Photoshop but it will also be used by his wife for church matters which involves a lot of committee papers being circulated. . What advantages does the Apple have over say a good current PC ? People who have Macs do seem to like them. Â Hi Anthony. Â This is a question that has to be answered on an individual basis and the answer depends entirely on what the individual wants to do with his machine. I switched from PC to a MAC because I do a lot of image processing and wanted a machine designed for that purpose. I was also getting very frustrated by constant crashes with Windows on my old PC. I edit a railway society magazine (the Ffestiniog Railway Magazine) and needed something I could rely on - there were several occasions during 2005 when I was without the PC for up to a week in the run-up to press date. Our printer also uses MACs so there is greater compatibility. Â My MAC G5 is excellent for image processing using PhotoShop CS2. It is also much better than a PC for word processing as I use Nisus Writer Express, which is cheap ($40 as a download), reliable and easy to learn. It will also read Word files and output files that can be read by Word. Unlike Word it doesn't treat you like an idiot and continually try to second-guess you. Â I'd have to have a very good reason to go back to using a PC in preference to a MAC. My only reservation is that I probably wouldn't want to try using a MAC if I had a lot of spreadsheet work to do. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrc Posted January 10, 2007 Share #3 Â Posted January 10, 2007 Compatability is most of the problem. I switched from PCs to Mac a couple of years ago because I liked the simplicity of them -- I'm not a computer guy, and I wanted something I could use like a toaster: push the button, and it does what you want. So far things have been okay, mostly because I only do about three things on the MAC: browse the web, use Word, and and use photo software, mostly Lightroom and Photoshop. But most new software is written for PCs, and sometimes, it never gets to Mac. Or if it does, it's an obsolete version, like Word for Mac.) With the new Intel chips, you can boot up in Windows, which solves some of that problem, but only at substantial extra expense (Windows does not come with the Mac, so you have to buy a whole additional OS.) There are also some translation programs, but those run slower, sometimes don't work right, and also add another complicating level of software. Â You also only have whatever flavor of machine Steve Jobs thinks you should have; and he doesn't think you should have stripped-down ultra-lightweight laptops like those you can get from Sony or Toshiba. He also doesn't think you should have laptop screens as good as Sony's. Â Macs look good and OSX is great. They are very simple to use. If those are your priorities, get one. If you want a wide variety of machine design, and access to more software, and usually, less expense, then a PC might be better. IMHO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andybarton Posted January 10, 2007 Share #4 Â Posted January 10, 2007 This isn't the place to get into a PC/Mac bashing discussion, btw. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelikan1931 Posted January 11, 2007 Share #5 Â Posted January 11, 2007 give mac a try, now boot camp/parallel, you can run windows and os x in a single package, and mac keeps its value better than a pc, relatively speaking of course. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill W Posted January 11, 2007 Share #6 Â Posted January 11, 2007 After many years with a PC, I switched to a Mac G4 several years ago. I did not miss the my PC from day one. My wife still had a PC and we constantly had issues with viruses, freeze ups, shut down. We gave her PC away and bought one of the new iMac flat screens. I now have a happy wiffe. She says "why did you not buy this for me a long time ago". It is simple to operate, she loves the iPhoto and Safari. I now have a G5 and we have a Powermac. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted January 11, 2007 Share #7 Â Posted January 11, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) My theory on this - If you are on a Mac tell him to get a PC. If you are on a PC, tell him to get a Mac. By being on different platforms, you can always plead ignorance when he calls for help. So I guess in your case you should advise him to get a Mac. I learned this lesson about twenty years ago when a lot of my friends thought I could be their computer guru. Â On a serious note, keep in mind that Windows Vista is coming out at the end of this month, so why not have him wait until then before deciding? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andit Posted January 11, 2007 Share #8 Â Posted January 11, 2007 Out of personal experience I would say go for Mac. I switched from a pc to a mac when they started using intel processors. In, must be about 9 months now, I have never been able to get this machine to hang (use a 17" MacBook Pro), and I torture this machine with extreme intensive programs. Â Compatibility is not a problem. I have Microsoft Office for mac, and have had no bad experiences with large spreadsheets, word documents or powerpoint presentations which I have sent to pc users over the net or which I have received. Â Even though it's not perfect yet, Aperture is brilliant, and for this alone it is worth switching to mac. If you really need to run Windows, paralells works 100% - what is great is that you can have windows running simultaneously to osx. Â Hope this helps you along. Andreas Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest flatfour Posted January 11, 2007 Share #9 Â Posted January 11, 2007 Andy - I hope this isn't Mac/PC bashing but my friend has a Leica CL and gets me. occasionally to do a large print for him, so I think it's a valid place for info. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
prk60091 Posted January 11, 2007 Share #10 Â Posted January 11, 2007 once you've gone mac you won't go back i am a recovering windows user Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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