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Should I go Mac and never go back?
Venkman90
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I hope starting a new thread for this is ok, I didn't see an obvious one and thought the Mac thread might be biased.
Anyway, my current Windows XP Acer Laptop is 2 years old and due an upgrade, along with my phone contract being up in April therefore the possibility of an iphone over my current Blackberry exists too, so I have been exploring the idea of:
A Macbook (aliminium) with 4g of ram
An iphone 3g on O2
An ipod shuffle (I currently have an old model nano)
The reason I am leaning this way is I can't stand the idea of Vista, a bloated resource hog by all accounts, I hate most laptop design out there right now, chunky plasticy things that they are and my mate just got an iphone and says he is ditching his blackberry for it as he gets a sort of "push email" or whatever via the iphone.
My main uses are:
Random net browsing
Light gaming (WoW on and off, Diablo 3 when it hits)
Amatuer image editing
I am not very tech savvy and hate having to mess about with spybot, avg etc...so the user freindly nature of the mac seems right up my alley, is it worth the extra £300-400? Is the iphone as durable as it looks?
(I realise I am just asking people to justify a decision I have already made in my head...but thats what forums are for is it not?)
Anyway, my current Windows XP Acer Laptop is 2 years old and due an upgrade, along with my phone contract being up in April therefore the possibility of an iphone over my current Blackberry exists too, so I have been exploring the idea of:
A Macbook (aliminium) with 4g of ram
An iphone 3g on O2
An ipod shuffle (I currently have an old model nano)
The reason I am leaning this way is I can't stand the idea of Vista, a bloated resource hog by all accounts, I hate most laptop design out there right now, chunky plasticy things that they are and my mate just got an iphone and says he is ditching his blackberry for it as he gets a sort of "push email" or whatever via the iphone.
My main uses are:
Random net browsing
Light gaming (WoW on and off, Diablo 3 when it hits)
Amatuer image editing
I am not very tech savvy and hate having to mess about with spybot, avg etc...so the user freindly nature of the mac seems right up my alley, is it worth the extra £300-400? Is the iphone as durable as it looks?
(I realise I am just asking people to justify a decision I have already made in my head...but thats what forums are for is it not?)
Venkman90 on
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The Macbook and Macbook Pro are beautiful, solid machines with some really nice hardware. The Pro will serve you better for games but unless you really want the bigger screen and more performance, it's hard for me to suggest it to you over the Macbook. We don't know how the current Macbooks will fare with Diablo 3, since it's so far down the road.
Have you ever used Mac OS X? It's biggest benefits are the iLife pack-in software, a level of polish on the OS that Microsoft can't seem to pull off, and a different way of working with windows and applications (Dock+Expose vs Taskbar) that some people love and some people hate. It's possible you could hate it.
The iPhone is a good Blackberry replacement. It's durable but that glass screen can break.
Bottom line if the limited amount of Mac software meets your needs and you don't mind pay go right ahead and switch. Just make sure you're properly informed about what you're doing and not relying on here say.
As for iPhone, if you don't use the keyboard a lot, iPhone's the way to go. If you really need a good keyboard on the phone, the iPhone is not a good option.
Nor is there a "limited rnage of software" for Macs. Outside of native games, there a re very few apps that don't have Mac equivalent, and even then there are at least 3 ways to run Windows apps - virtualisation, emulation (WinE) and Boot Camp.
I love typing on my iPhone. I might actually be a bit faster on it than I am on a proper keyboard, or certainly about the same.
The new macBooks rock my boxers, as the kids say. I#ve written at great length about my love for this machine, so search my posts in Moe's to read a bit
But yeah, you should check up and make sure a Mac is the right way for you before you purchase. Going by the OP though, one would be perfect for you. Even the bottom spec AluMB is powerful enough for the games you mentioned (I have one, and I can run HL2 Ep 2 at native res, all at high specs. Yesa that is the most recent PC game I own, though I have a copy of Bioshock i haven#t installed yet)
I think it can be worth paying for build quality, but also I find most windows users will tell you they have to do a format and a clean install every now and then just to keep things moving fast due to all the crap that builds up, does this process exist with Mac's these days or do they stay reasonably clean of junk?
But if you do, then cool, whatever.
I've also had shit luck with stability on macs. The mac at work crashes if you look at it funny, the macs at school never ran enough of the software installed to even have the chance of crashing... and my PCs have always been rock solid. But mileage MUST vary. Marketing can't be that powerful, right? ...Right?
So just do what you want. Mac, PC, it's all cool.
Try OSX, do you like it? - Get a Mac
Try Vista, do you like it? - Get a PC
(Because it sounds like you've never used it and are going on the uninformed hate of the internet - but I could be wrong)
Do you have the extra $ to buy a Mac? - Get a Mac
Would you prefer to put that extra $ in some extra power or software? - Get a PC
Do you want a machine you can dual-boot between OSX and Windows? - Get a Mac
Do you not care about dual-booting? - Get either
Is all the software you need to use available on OSX, and can you afford to rebuy it all? - Get a Mac
Or do you want to use what you already have? - Get a PC
Answer these questions and don't look back.
Find someplace you can use them both, try them out, decide. We can't really provide you with anything that is a major reason to go with one or the other. The iPhone will work with both, the Blackberry will work with both.
There is no real reason to run AV on either platform, unless you are on a college campus and are open to other people who are stupid, or if you're stupid and will infect your own machine. (I'm not saying you're stupid, but I've been virus free for going on 9 years now without ever running a virus scan)
There's no real reason to have to format/reinstall OSX or Vista to "keep it running smoothly" unless you like to load up your machine with bloat-ware or crap that will slow your machine down even after uninstalling it. I used XP for years without having to reformat due to bloat, and I've been running Vista since SP1 was released (March?) and haven't had a single issue.
This is not true. We don't mean Spyware or a million tray icons. We're talking registry cruft, improperly applied updates, etc. Over time, Windows XP inevitably gets bogged down. If it's been 2 years since you last installed Windows, you use the machine every day, keep up with updates, and regularly try and install programs or games, reinstalling Windows now would give you a shocking performance boost.
I would be in that bracket
I am not stupid per se, in many years I have had one trojan that Malwarebyters rooted out.
I just have no clue how to maintain things running smoothly long term, WoW for example, the frame rate has gotten worse and worse in the last 2 years and it isn't the stealth upgrades imho it's my machine, it's just getting chuggy. I guess it could be crap I have installed but who knows, getting rid of things from XP seems hard enough.
Oh and petty as hell, but itunes in windows is horrible
God dammit I am a victim of marketing aren't I
Ah right, does vista have these issues? could I say get a vista machine today and not have to worry about re-installing in 2 years? does os-x?
Going by what I've seen Vista needs far more maintenance than OS X, though less than XP.
(I clear it out every now and then because it's mostly clearly labelled)
I haven't been using Vista for a full year yet, but no, I haven't noticed anything that would cause these issues.
The biggest reason I could see for a reinstall is if YOU want to start fresh. If you have files you've downloaded from the internet for years and can't find them all to clear out some HDD space (which is getting cheaper and cheaper anyway and less of an issue) so you want to just start clean again.
Advantages over Windows: doesn't need nearly as much constant goddamn vigilance to keep it free of bullshit, as someone else already mentioned.
Advantages over a Mac: less than half the cost of the cheapest MacBook.
Sometimes that extra time / money is worth it. A noitebook is one of those times.
Disadvantages vs either: Doing any kind of modern gaming on a netbook is lulztastic.
I realize you love the thing and want to make babies with your Eee but they're not for everyone damnit.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
OS X does not. I don't know if Vista does or not. I don't have enough firsthand experience to know for sure.
I see Vaio's as the main competitor for my money, that or one of the new Asus N range (the N50 maybe), aesthetics do play some part, aliminium case would be nice.
Hm? I used to have an enormous eleven-pound "gamers' laptop", before I ditched it for my Eee. It was a terrible mistake of a purchase. Doing any kind of modern gaming on any kind of portable computer is lulztastic. Get a desktop if you want to do any kind of modern gaming.
This is the best advice, really, if games are a concern.
While laptops and MacBooks can play most games, it's still no desktop replacement, and while they may play most games now, as more and more games release with requirements like Crysis, the list of games your laptop won't play will just continue to grow since you can't upgrade the graphics card. My laptop is only 1.5 years old but the graphics card just can't handle even NWN2 or Viva Pinata. (though I didn't buy it for that either)
The Dell XPS line is pretty good too if you want a higher-powered laptop.
This depends on how you use the machine. Registry "cruft" doesn't spontaneously spawn itself into existence and glom onto Windows machines, it comes as a result of stuff getting installed/uninstalled on your system. If crap didn't constantly get installed/uninstalled/updated then the system would continue to work without slowdown until you hit hardware failure.
Someone sends you a media file you cannot play, so you download and install 3 proprietary media players and codecs trying to get the thing to play. You buy a new camera and pop in the software media to install the utility the manual says you need to fetch the images/video off the camera, 15 minutes later there's 9 new applications installed and 4 new systray icons you have no idea what are there for. Repeat with that snazzy new Multi-function printer/scanner you got. Soon your laptop/desktop that was pretty top-of-the-line 6 months ago is crawling and you don't know why.
Compare that with a system from work in which you aren't allowed to install anything, that fucker will last years before any noticeable slowdown, because shit don't get installed other than virus pattern updates and O.S. patches.
I'm not saying you shouldn't install stuff on your computer, do what you want, running software is what a computer is for. But there's no time-related tendency for a Windows machine to "get slower" all on its own.
I think the way software is run on Apples makes it a bit easier to try stuff out and discard without adversely affecting the system. You can just just unmount and delete that DMG and never move it to your applications directory. There's no Registry that needs to be cleanly updated to add/remove programs in OSX like there is in Windows.
I would, but I don't want to have to lug a desktop about if I move and that could be on the cards soon
Yes, but the difference is that on a Macbook/9400M or similarly-specced PC laptop it's at least plausible to play games like WoW, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, even some Source engine games - which is what he's after. He's not asking for something that can play Crysis or even Fallout 3.
Notebooks are fine for "light gaming."
Netbooks are fine for "light gaming from four or five years ago."
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I had forgotten that the new Macbooks are no longer running on Intel Indegraded.
Still, the Asus N10J has a GeForce 9300M and is snazzy-looking and tiny, and still costs half as much as an aluminum Macbook.
THIS is why when you get something new, you find the driver-only install file and use that. I hate bundled software I don't need with my drivers.
The new MacBooks (or is it Pro only?) have dual video processors right? One integrated and one separate? Though you have to reboot to use the separate one? Or something? I dunno, I just remember hearing stuff when they were launched. It's a 9400M, so any PC with a similar chip (and specs) is going to perform about the same for games if that's a concern for you.
And yeah, you're not going to get away from Antivirus by running a Mac.
Keep your codecs minimal, your services and startup list trimmed, avoid hardware that needs proprietary software, clean your registry (there's a million programs out there to help if you need it), uninstall stuff you don't use.... it's simple to keep Windows in good shape if you understand the basic concepts of computer use.
If you don't, sure, use macs.
Keep an eye on the program auto-starts, make sure you have an AV app that doesn't kill performance, defrag and replace any failing hardware.
Items sitting on disk or in the registry are not going to pop out like the boogeyman and start chewing up CPU cycles on your computer.
I've fixed chronic boot/shutdown lockups on multiple computers via registry cleaning. It may not affect speed/stability once up and running, but it is definitely not snake oil for keeping your PC in good shape.
This is coming from a former mac user who had an iBook all through college. And was set to run Linux only until I got my hands on a Vista beta. I'm now of the mindset that Macs are mostly over priced. When I bought mine, it was a competitive price. The prices have changed little, still around 1K for a mac laptop, but the prices of every other Windows/Linux laptop have now decreased a ton.
The iPhone is a piece of shit. I fucking hate it. I really wanted to like it I was looking forward to it, my fiance has it and likes it. I almost bought one when I was looking for a phone. Now, I think it sucks. I don't expect a ton of people here to agree with me. I think it has a shit interface, and very limited options. I absolutely loathe every time I have to use my fiance's iPhone to check the web or do anything.
In conclusion: get a Vista laptop - the interface will be an easier transition since you're used to XP. It's stable and fast, and looks nice. You get the whole host of Windows programs to use on it as well. Buy an iPhone if you want, it's perfectly compatible with Windows, though I implore you to use a friends at length before you buy, my opinion completely switched once I actually used one. Apple would have to do a lot of things to even get me considering an iPhone.
Also, why would you want the shuffle if you have an iPhone? Seems to be redundant.
EDIT: A reverse-switching story. My fiance used an iBook in college too. She was 100% Apple with tech products. She now uses only Vista, and has never had a problem with, or regretted the switch.
I came from a massive monster of a laptop.
Never, ever, ever pick up a "Desktop replacement" laptop. Ever. Ever ever.
That being said, if you prefer the things Mac has going for it, get a mac. If you don't see any reason to go to mac other than "Apple told me Vista was bad".
Also, unless you're going to be moving every two weeks or something, don't get a computer that you'll regret buying in 6 months so that you don't have to take a desktop with you. I've moved three times since I built my system, it's not a big deal at all.
The common logic for registry cleaning is that installing and uninstalling programs can leave behind orphan registry entries that "gunk up" the registry. However parts of the registry are paged into memory on demand, so these entries do not take up extra memory, just a little extra hard drive space. Furthermore, the registry is structured in such a way that extra keys do not affect access or write time. Going in and trying to yank out these orphaned entries is only asking for trouble. Registry cleaners can mis-identify needed entries, or yank some entries and leave some dependencies stranded, so there's real danger to it.
More likely the program you ran used the registry to disable some active programs/drivers that were giving you issues. Or was run as part of a bigger cleanup effort. I can definitely tell you that your shudown/boot problems were not caused by some unused registry entries from a game you uninstalled.
It's possible that certain programs that call themselves "registry cleaners" are actually just using the registry to make useful system changes, but by no means should you simply suggest that someone run any "registry cleaner" to make their system faster.
I have decided my 360 negates the need for much gaming so as long as it runs WoW then I am all good, I am going for a Vista laptop, probably a Vaio, Dell or Asus N series and will think about the phone later. I guess having read the desktop thread I can re-skin Vista anyway to make it a little easier on my eye.