New PC/Mac.......which?

[AndyRAC]

Thinking of getting a new Laptop, but not sure what to get. I'm seriously tempted by the new Apple Macbook 13". Anybody 'sell' me one - I know they're superior - but are they easy to get used to. I'm used to iTunes and Safari, but, any advice please.

Thanks.

[veeten]

and cue fousto in,

3... 2... 1... :p :

[MJW]

Apple Mac book Pro is about £1300 - is a very cool computer (Chris Atkinson has one) Seriously thinking of going over to Apple when my current PC packs up.

[Zico]

I borrowed a friends Imac recently.. very well designed if you like white plasticky things but as hard as I tried to like it, my unfamiliarity with the OS made me feel a bit lost trying to use it, so I stayed with what I know and bought a Quad core Q6600 desktop with a decent graphics card (8800GTX) So far I've had no problems with Vista and Im really enjoying this powerfull machine.

[Sleeper]

The only real difference is that Macs arent as likely to brakedown, though they still can, on you and that all the little effects on Vista eat up a huge amount of RAM. Unless your out to make music/videos sort of thing, it doesnt matter too much if you know what you want in it.

[Azumanga Davo]

I borrowed a friends Imac recently...

His legs have never been smoother since... :D

[Roamy]

Thinking of getting a new Laptop, but not sure what to get. I'm seriously tempted by the new Apple Macbook 13". Anybody 'sell' me one - I know they're superior - but are they easy to get used to. I'm used to iTunes and Safari, but, any advice please.

Thanks.

Andy : they are so easy Stevie Wonder had one. get the Apple

[Valve Bounce]

Surely to God!! they must be cheaper somewhere in this world than 1300 bloody quid. :(
How about the Sim Lim Centre in Singapore?

[Roamy]

actually Valve they don't price deal - they are what they are. But quality has its price. I have a old G4/400 that is still working daily (of course I have personally upgraded) Plus here is a prediction : the new 17 inch laptop will be carbon fiber. so there you have Michael fuching DeLL

[AndyRAC]

Andy : they are so easy Stevie Wonder had one. get the Apple

Yeah, so I believe - went to an Apple store yesterday, you can book an appointment to be shown everything. Though I already have iTunes & Safari.

Thanks!!

[Mark]

I guess you have to ask yourself, what are you getting for the extra money? And it it worth it?

[Daniel]

The only real difference is that Macs arent as likely to brakedown, though they still can, on you and that all the little effects on Vista eat up a huge amount of RAM. Unless your out to make music/videos sort of thing, it doesnt matter too much if you know what you want in it.

Vista eats up a huge amount of RAM because of prefetch which makes your PC launch apps faster :) RAM is dead cheap these days anyway. I have 4gb and my next PC will probably have double that and perhaps even some more :)

[Sleeper]

Vista eats up a huge amount of RAM because of prefetch which makes your PC launch apps faster :) RAM is dead cheap these days anyway. I have 4gb and my next PC will probably have double that and perhaps even some more :)
Not sure what this prefetch thing is but I know that my college's tech guy saved 700mb of RAM on a computer with Vista when he turned off all of those little niceties that it has. My computer at home doesnt even have 700mb of RAM!

[BDunnell]

For what it's worth, I used to use Macs at work, so bought a MacBook early last year to ensure compatability - now I have a PC at work, but have kept the MacBook. I find the Mac OS a bit more 'intuitive' in terms of some of the commands, but have got used to the PC as well and quite like it.

My concern about the MacBook would be the build quality. I would hope that it's been improved over the previous model, as I have had to have the screen replaced (and not because of the logic board problem that is apparently a well-known fault - mine was just buggered) and now part of the plastic bit in front of the keys is coming away, also a fault others I know have experienced. In summary, lovely OS, iffy build.

[AndyRAC]

The new Macbook is made from a solid aluminium block - it certainly looks good.

[Andrewmcm]

I used to be a PC zealot, but I was given a Macbook Pro for work and now I'm a convert. And for one simple reason - Macs just work. Everything works how it should do with minimal faffing around with lots of 3rd-party software.

The new Macbooks (Pro and normal) are of very good build quality and are of quite a high spec - in fairness they are quite expensive but their battery life is superb (around 5 hours) and they're quite light and small compared to the big-name PC laptops.

[Andrewmcm]

Vista eats up a huge amount of RAM because of prefetch which makes your PC launch apps faster :) RAM is dead cheap these days anyway. I have 4gb and my next PC will probably have double that and perhaps even some more :)

I hope you are using Vista 64-bit otherwise anything above 3GB or RAM is absolutely useless.

[Andrewmcm]

3GB of RAM of course. Stupid fingers!

[Daniel]

I hope you are using Vista 64-bit otherwise anything above 3GB or RAM is absolutely useless.

Of course :) I'm somewhat offended someone has even asked :p

[Daniel]

Not sure what this prefetch thing is but I know that my college's tech guy saved 700mb of RAM on a computer with Vista when he turned off all of those little niceties that it has. My computer at home doesnt even have 700mb of RAM!

"Saved" RAM eh?

In ye olde days the more RAM you had free the better your PC would generally perform. But what Vista does is load your most commonly used programs into the RAM which means that when you want to load a program it loads quicker becuase it's already in your RAM which is faster than your loading the program from your hard drive (which is slow) into your RAM which is fast. I'm at work now but when I typed that post before my PC was probably using 3gb of RAM of so just caching commonly used files. 3gb with just itunes, a couple of IE7 windows and Messenger open might sound crazy but it works oh so well and is ever so punchy when it comes to performance.

RAM is cheap these days. There is absolutely no reason to have any less than 4gb in your PC. You might not need it but it's bloody cheap and your PC will run that much better for it.

[Andrewmcm]

RAM is cheap these days. There is absolutely no reason to have any less than 4gb in your PC. You might not need it but it's bloody cheap and your PC will run that much better for it.

Again, that is only of any use if you're running 64-bit Vista or have a PC that has up-to-date 64-bit ready components in it. Windows addresses memory in such a way that regular Vista users won't see any benefit of having any extra RAM above around 3GB. See http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx for details. Snow Leopard will be fully 64-bit and will support as much RAM as you can shove into a Mac.

If you want to convert to a Mac but still have legacy Windows programs that you need to use you can buy virtualisation software that allows you to run a virtual Windows machine inside the Mac. VMWare Fusion and Parallels being the main examples of this type of software.

[Dave B]

I used to be a PC zealot, but I was given a Macbook Pro for work and now I'm a convert. And for one simple reason - Macs just work. Everything works how it should do with minimal faffing around with lots of 3rd-party software.
I'm going to do my best not to sound like a PC-fanboi, but wil probably fail miserably! Anyway, here goes...

"Macs just work"? So do PCs. There's a lot of rubbish talked about Vista's unreliability, incompatibilty, bloat and speed, almost all of which are RTFM issues.

In my opinion Microsoft dropped a ball in releasing it slightly too early - there were some glitches that SP1 solved - and a lot of hardware manufacturers bundled it on wholly unsuitably-specced machines.

Add this to the perceived annoyance of UAC by people who didn't understand it, and the frustratingly slow indexing of files (once only) and you can perhaps appreciate why Vista quickly gained a poor reputation.

On a halfway sensible machine Vista zipps along happily. I'm running 32-bit Home Premium on a Dell laptop with a mere 2GB RAM (sorry Daniel!) and it's lightning fast.

"Faffing about with 3rd party software"? All of my old hardware worked instantly with no driver updates; the one and only piece of software which didn't was so creaking and old that I'd have replaced it anyway (an MP3 editor, since you ask). I understand that there were a few early issues with incompatible hardware but that's down to lazy manufacturers, not Microsoft.

Anyway, it's horses for courses. If a Mac does what you want it to, and you can find the software which fits your needs, then go for it. Likewise a PC. I honestly don't know why the subject so often creates such polarisation! :D

[Andrewmcm]

Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I still use PCs a lot and find them useful for most things. Almost all of my work is done on supercomputers, so I need native Unix shells and X-windows - PCs do that kind of thing quite badly so Macs fit the bill on that score. Of course I could always buy a PC laptop and put Linux on it, but I'm too lazy to mess around with different Linux distributions...!

[Daniel]

Again, that is only of any use if you're running 64-bit Vista or have a PC that has up-to-date 64-bit ready components in it. Windows addresses memory in such a way that regular Vista users won't see any benefit of having any extra RAM above around 3GB. See http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx for details. Snow Leopard will be fully 64-bit and will support as much RAM as you can shove into a Mac.

If you want to convert to a Mac but still have legacy Windows programs that you need to use you can buy virtualisation software that allows you to run a virtual Windows machine inside the Mac. VMWare Fusion and Parallels being the main examples of this type of software.

If I want legacy support I'll buy a 486 running Windows 3.1 :)

Most if not all PC's on sale these days will support 64 bit from a hardware perspective anyway. I'm most annoyed that Windows 7 isn't 64 bit only. It really is silly and will only result in headaches for people in the future

[Daniel]

I'm going to do my best not to sound like a PC-fanboi, but wil probably fail miserably! Anyway, here goes...

"Macs just work"? So do PCs. There's a lot of rubbish talked about Vista's unreliability, incompatibilty, bloat and speed, almost all of which are RTFM issues.

In my opinion Microsoft dropped a ball in releasing it slightly too early - there were some glitches that SP1 solved - and a lot of hardware manufacturers bundled it on wholly unsuitably-specced machines.

Add this to the perceived annoyance of UAC by people who didn't understand it, and the frustratingly slow indexing of files (once only) and you can perhaps appreciate why Vista quickly gained a poor reputation.

On a halfway sensible machine Vista zipps along happily. I'm running 32-bit Home Premium on a Dell laptop with a mere 2GB RAM (sorry Daniel!) and it's lightning fast.

"Faffing about with 3rd party software"? All of my old hardware worked instantly with no driver updates; the one and only piece of software which didn't was so creaking and old that I'd have replaced it anyway (an MP3 editor, since you ask). I understand that there were a few early issues with incompatible hardware but that's down to lazy manufacturers, not Microsoft.

Anyway, it's horses for courses. If a Mac does what you want it to, and you can find the software which fits your needs, then go for it. Likewise a PC. I honestly don't know why the subject so often creates such polarisation! :D

Well said. Windows PC's do just work. Apart from one strange issue with the onboard wireless on Caroline's PC which is more to do with the choice of chipset than Vista both of our PC's work flawlessly and were far far far cheaper than the Mac equivalents.

Before I installed Vista 64 on my PC I just downloaded all the drivers and after I did my install all I did was plug my flash drive in, install the drivers, do some updates and I was firing on all cylinders.


On a halfway sensible machine Vista zipps along happily. I'm running 32-bit Home Premium on a Dell laptop with a mere 2GB RAM (sorry Daniel!) and it's lightning fast.

2gb of RAM?!?!?!?! JUST 2gb of RAM?!?!?!?!?! :angryfire It's people like you who are what's wrong with Britain in this day and age! To be fair Caroline's PC only has 2gb of RAM in it too but I did build it about a year and a half when memory was still a bit more expensive :)

I'm really hanging out for Solid State Drives getting cheaper. Can't wait till I can throw a cheap and fast drive in my PC. If you're happy with a Mac then good but a Windows PC/Laptop if specced properly will do the same job and be just as reliable if not moreso for less money and will be more versatile which is a big thing for me. With a little extra money spent on your case and monitor it can look as nice as a Mac too.

I saw a Macbook air the other day and it just felt flimsy and somewhat pointless to be honest. Why would I need something so pointlessly thin?

[Sleeper]

"Saved" RAM eh?

In ye olde days the more RAM you had free the better your PC would generally perform. But what Vista does is load your most commonly used programs into the RAM which means that when you want to load a program it loads quicker becuase it's already in your RAM which is faster than your loading the program from your hard drive (which is slow) into your RAM which is fast. I'm at work now but when I typed that post before my PC was probably using 3gb of RAM of so just caching commonly used files. 3gb with just itunes, a couple of IE7 windows and Messenger open might sound crazy but it works oh so well and is ever so punchy when it comes to performance.

RAM is cheap these days. There is absolutely no reason to have any less than 4gb in your PC. You might not need it but it's bloody cheap and your PC will run that much better for it.

Saved as in saved from running pointless cosmetic touches on the desktop, after all who needs a bloody shadow behind the icons.

You say RAM is cheap these days but that depends on your idea of cheap, it might be too much for me, and I'd be surprised if I could fit 4gig into my PC which was a very cheap one over a year ago.

[Daniel]

Saved as in saved from running pointless cosmetic touches on the desktop, after all who needs a bloody shadow behind the icons.

You say RAM is cheap these days but that depends on your idea of cheap, it might be too much for me, and I'd be surprised if I could fit 4gig into my PC which was a very cheap one over a year ago.


Saved as in saved from running pointless cosmetic touches on the desktop, after all who needs a bloody shadow behind the icons.

You say RAM is cheap these days but that depends on your idea of cheap, it might be too much for me, and I'd be surprised if I could fit 4gig into my PC which was a very cheap one over a year ago.

*sigh*

If you've bought a desktop in the last 2 years I'd be very surprised if you couldn't put 4gb of DDR2 in it.

You don't seem to grasp the fact that "saving" RAM does nothing positive for the performance of your PC. In fact switch aero off and switch off prefetch and all that happens is your applications will load slower, Vista won't look as good as it could and you can tell impressionable people who will take your word for it :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfetch#SuperFetch
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed,1532-6.html

Superfetch kicks butt :)

[veeten]

Personally, I'll wait for Windows 7. Past experience with Vista (from Beta & RTDs to Home Premium/Business) has brought me to this point.

In some ways, it reminds me of Millenium Edition (ME), except that this took 6 years to develop, only to become the resources hog stemming from the basic problem: too much code.

7 will be to Vista what XP was to 2000/ME; the product that should've came forth in the first place, but was pushed aside for loftier reasons.

[Daniel]

Personally, I'll wait for Windows 7. Past experience with Vista (from Beta & RTDs to Home Premium/Business) has brought me to this point.

In some ways, it reminds me of Millenium Edition (ME), except that this took 6 years to develop, only to become the resources hog stemming from the basic problem: too much code.

7 will be to Vista what XP was to 2000/ME; the product that should've came forth in the first place, but was pushed aside for loftier reasons.

Ah come on :p

I really don't think Windows 7 will be any better in terms of resources and speed as most of the early reports are bad. I would love to beta test it but I don't have a spare hard drive to chuck it on.
http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Benchmarks+Show+Windows+7+PreBeta+to+be+Blo ated+With+Compatibility+Issues/article13405.htm

There is one key difference between Vista and ME. Vista works for me, perhaps it could have been better but it works. ME on the other hand does not work at all. Everytime I've sat down in front of a PC with ME it has broke in some way shape or form.

One would hope that Windows 7 is better than Vista but I doubt there will be any major changes and the main things people are critical of (the interface and RAM hungriness) will stay.

[veeten]

I really don't think Windows 7 will be any better in terms of resources and speed as most of the early reports are bad. I would love to beta test it but I don't have a spare hard drive to chuck it on.
http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Benchmarks+Show+Windows+7+PreBeta+to+be+Blo ated+With+Compatibility+Issues/article13405.htm


http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-manager/?p=635&tag=nl.e106

remember this is a pre-beta, which is not the same as a full functioning OS.

[airshifter]

Personally, I'll wait for Windows 7. Past experience with Vista (from Beta & RTDs to Home Premium/Business) has brought me to this point.

In some ways, it reminds me of Millenium Edition (ME), except that this took 6 years to develop, only to become the resources hog stemming from the basic problem: too much code.

7 will be to Vista what XP was to 2000/ME; the product that should've came forth in the first place, but was pushed aside for loftier reasons.

Bloated code is exactly why it needs the prefetch. So even though memory is cheap, thank the once against tossed together software for creating a need for more or faster hardware.

[Daniel]

Bloated code is exactly why it needs the prefetch. So even though memory is cheap, thank the once against tossed together software for creating a need for more or faster hardware.
And the n00b of the day award goes to...... airshifter for not realising that crappy slow hard drives which have increased in performance at a snails pace in the last 10 years are the reason why Prefetch/Superfetch is around. Back years ago hard drives didn't really have that much trouble keeping up to speed with the RAM but now RAM is waaaay faster than any hard drive out on the market at the moment so prefetch takes advantage of the time your PC is sitting idle and preloads your commonly used programs into the RAM so they can load quickly when you need them.

No matter what OS you run your computer would benefit from Prefetch.

If OSX is so damned good then why doesn't it support the millions upon millions of different bits of hardware Vista and XP do? Why can't I go and build myself a computer with off the shelf components and run OSX? Why am I forced to use such a small cross section of the available hardware out there? Why oh why? :bigcry:

Tune in tomorrow when Daniel shows yet another person's ill conceived, illogical and poorly thought out posts for what they are .... which is total crapola :)

[christophulus]

If you're set on a laptop then a Mac might not be too bad an idea.. depends on how knowledgeable you are with computers. In my experience a Windows laptop needs a lot of optimising and general TLC to stay speedy, not to mention the large amount of crap that comes pre-installed.

As for a desktop - well, nothing beats the frustration, despair yet eventual joy of building your own... with Vista 64 and 4GB of RAM of course :p :

[airshifter]

And the n00b of the day award goes to...... airshifter for not realising that crappy slow hard drives which have increased in performance at a snails pace in the last 10 years are the reason why Prefetch/Superfetch is around. Back years ago hard drives didn't really have that much trouble keeping up to speed with the RAM but now RAM is waaaay faster than any hard drive out on the market at the moment so prefetch takes advantage of the time your PC is sitting idle and preloads your commonly used programs into the RAM so they can load quickly when you need them.

No matter what OS you run your computer would benefit from Prefetch.

If OSX is so damned good then why doesn't it support the millions upon millions of different bits of hardware Vista and XP do? Why can't I go and build myself a computer with off the shelf components and run OSX? Why am I forced to use such a small cross section of the available hardware out there? Why oh why? :bigcry:

Tune in tomorrow when Daniel shows yet another person's ill conceived, illogical and poorly thought out posts for what they are .... which is total crapola :)

Noob of the day. If not for the fact that I've been around computers since they hit the consumer market, you might have a point.

But which takes longer to load, a small efficient program or bloatware? Prefetch exists because the software is crap bloatware.

I haven't mentioned OSX myself, just the shortcomings of Microbloat. You might want to bring that argument up with someone making it.

Tune in tomorrow to learn how one persons experience with real, efficient software proved to him that multitasking environments, true performance, and hosts of other windows features were had well back into the DOS days, with resources all kept at a minimum.

You may be able to fool some of the younger people or those inexperienced in such things. Neither your claimed superior information or your crappy attitude will convince me that facts I know as true are outweighed by someone that loves Microsoft despite their flaws.

[Andrewmcm]

I do tend to agree with airshifter - if any OS is efficient it should be able to do things quickly without the need for caching. Small programs load into memory faster than big ones so minimising the fluff in a program will make it quicker. I'm not sure that this is something that Microsoft have done very well since the release of Windows 95.

Daniel, Apple have been very clever in keeping their hardware supply strictly internal to that provided by the company - they can optimise all their software to work on specific sets of hardware without having to worry about compatibility issues with hardware from 3rd-party vendors. The very reason OS X works so well is because it doesn't support millions and millions of different types of hardware... ;) Of course that means that they can charge a premium for their computers, but it does mean that any software bought for the machines will work straight out of the box.

[Daniel]

I do tend to agree with airshifter - if any OS is efficient it should be able to do things quickly without the need for caching. Small programs load into memory faster than big ones so minimising the fluff in a program will make it quicker. I'm not sure that this is something that Microsoft have done very well since the release of Windows 95.

I have a very long post at home written out at home to answer this. Will post it when I get home :p



Daniel, Apple have been very clever in keeping their hardware supply strictly internal to that provided by the company - they can optimise all their software to work on specific sets of hardware without having to worry about compatibility issues with hardware from 3rd-party vendors. The very reason OS X works so well is because it doesn't support millions and millions of different types of hardware... ;) Of course that means that they can charge a premium for their computers, but it does mean that any software bought for the machines will work straight out of the box.


This is all true but we're starting to talk about different things. There's a big distinction to be made between OS and platform. Apple has complete control from platform to OS, Microsoft doesn't. That's why there are crap PC's and good PC's. This however is not Microsoft's fault though. You would be better of comparing Mac's with Dell's, HP's and so on. If you build a Mac on crap hardware it'll suffer the same issues that a badly thought out Windows PC. Apples and oranges :)

[veeten]

This is all true but we're starting to talk about different things. There's a big distinction to be made between OS and platform. Apple has complete control from platform to OS, Microsoft doesn't. That's why there are crap PC's and good PC's. This however is not Microsoft's fault though. You would be better of comparing Mac's with Dell's, HP's and so on. If you build a Mac on crap hardware it'll suffer the same issues that a badly thought out Windows PC. Apples and oranges :)

Actually, Daniel, it is Microsoft at fault, and, specifically, for the reasons that we've been stating: software bloat.

In your comparison of Macs with HPs and Dells, the difference is that OS-X is specifically tailored to the hardware installed. HP, Gateway & Dell are stuck with an 'all or nothing' approach with Windows installs, meaning that for an HP or Dell that has an Intell build sheet (M-board, Processor, chipset, onboard graphics/sound) you also get drivers and programs that are totally unecessesary, outside of the 'features pack' that manufacturers like to include.

[Garry Walker]

Macs MUST be AVOIDED.

[Dave B]

Macs MUST be AVOIDED.
Is that a late entry for Constructive Post of the Year? :dozey: