Forums | MacLife

There are plenty of other forums and venues for get-with-the-program-apple rants.

What did you end up with for hardware?

There are two types of mac users:

- the pirates
- the navy

Only the navy could stand staying at Apple discussion board.

I used to have three Macs in my apartment. A Mac Pro, a Mac mini, and a MacBook.

Now I am down to just two - a unibody MacBook 2.4 WITHOUT Firewire and a Core 2 Duo 1.8 Mac mini.

The mini is running Windows XP. Standalone. Without OS X on the drive at all. My 11 year old daughter desperately wants to have the Mac OS as her primary OS but is torn. She plays Sims 2 which won't run under OS X. So for now she is running Windows XP. The drive is only 80GB so I didn't bother to put both operating systems on there. I've been thinking about upgrading her mini to a more "modern" one. I'll let her dual boot if I do that for sure.

The MacBook goes mostly unused. I want to be able to use it for video editing but unfortunately it doesn't have Firewire on it and so I'm unable to import any miniDV footage from my two miniDV cameras. Maybe it is time for me to upgrade cameras? I would still have all this footage left to deal with though.

My primary computer now is a Dell Studio XPS 9000 with a 24" Dell LED LCD. It is currently running Windows 7.

I also have two HP laptops that are so standard in hardware configuration (almost identical) that Windows 7 recognizes all devices with internal drivers. No outside software needed after installation. Now THAT is a rare thing for Windows! ;-)

The reason for telling you all this is that I guess I have become a sort of reverse switcher. Having come from the Windows world back in 2000 to the land of Apple, I find myself migrating back to Windows after having experienced and dealt with OS X for almost 8 years. Windows 7 is just the icing on the switchers' cake.

I love OS X. I do. I just don't love the hardware nor its prices. Sure the premium is mostly covered by the software that is included. I agree with that line of thinking. But the fact remains that you can't specify what hardware you want to run the software on outside of the predefined models. Only Apple can do that. That is my major beef.

Software could be argued as another area of issues but with Parallels and Fusion, with the exception of gaming, you can run most software on your Mac without incident. So the argument would mostly be moot.

Overall, I can't really put a finger on how or why I have ended up back in the clutches of Microsoft. Maybe it was only natural since I do play games, like to tinker with programming for Windows, and wanted to specify my own hardware configuration without breaking the bank.

I can tell you this. Windows 7 was a huge push on my purchase of my new desktop and of my 2 laptops.

It really is that nice and streamlined. It is by far the best version of Windows to date. That may not be saying much to hardcore Mac users but for those wondering, it is definitely worth running in virtual mode or via Boot Camp when Apple finalizes the drivers for it.

Students can get it for $30 too. It's a steal at that price. For Microsoft Windows anyways.

I think it's great every time I hear of a switcher coming to the Mac world. I just hope that moving focus back to Windows (and staying in the grips of Steve Jobs at the same time) can be viewed positively too.

I love Apple. I have just been loving Windows a tad bit more this past year.

smcracraft congrats on switching. You will love OS X and the Mac world. I know I do. It's almost like joining a brother/sisterhood. Just don't drink too much of the Kool-Aid or you will be proselytizing in the streets.

Last edited by Random User (2009-10-24 3:41 am)

Seems subliminal

For some of us it's a fight to get anything done on Windows, always has been. It's not that way for everyone but...

A lot of people say the same thing when switching to OS X.

It all depends on which GUI you are most used to in my experience.

Here is why I switched: I always had a hard time using a computer. Didn't matter if I was using XP or Vista. Then my dad bought a Mac. On the way home I was very skeptical. If I had a hard time using windows then I thought  the mac would've been impossible. We arrived at home set it up and in a week I was the computer and mac expert of the house. I fell in love with that piece of technology. It even helped me understand windows better. What I couldn't do in a lifetime of windows I did in a weeks worth of mac.

Last edited by gd (2009-10-25 3:14 am)

knobtwirler wrote:

Luckily, I've never owned a PC. And, those that I know that do, all seem to be having a hard time with them.

Sounds exactly like me.

I was caught off guard today when one of my ultra-PC friends called me a "Mactard" when he saw my MBP. Then I lol'd. Hard.

sturner wrote:

I just smile when someone says they are having problems with viruses, trojans, et. al., and when they tell me that their virus checker is interfering with their computer's operation, or that it's so much slower now.

Then I tell them that's one of the prices you pay with Windows OS. When they ask me if I hate that too, I tell them I wouldn't know about those problems, I use a Mac.

That usually makes them think.

The most resource-intensive thing most people do regularly is a virus scan.

If it wasn't for all those viruses, computers wouldn't have to be 1) fast enough to run virus scans, or 2) fast enough to still barely work when completely hosed with malware.

We'd probably all still be using single-core CPUs.

Have you hugged a script kiddie today?

Random User wrote:

I used to have three Macs in my apartment. A Mac Pro, a Mac mini, and a MacBook.

Now I am down to just two - a unibody MacBook 2.4 WITHOUT Firewire and a Core 2 Duo 1.8 Mac mini.

The mini is running Windows XP. Standalone. Without OS X on the drive at all. My 11 year old daughter desperately wants to have the Mac OS as her primary OS but is torn. She plays Sims 2 which won't run under OS X. So for now she is running Windows XP. The drive is only 80GB so I didn't bother to put both operating systems on there. I've been thinking about upgrading her mini to a more "modern" one. I'll let her dual boot if I do that for sure.

The MacBook goes mostly unused. I want to be able to use it for video editing but unfortunately it doesn't have Firewire on it and so I'm unable to import any miniDV footage from my two miniDV cameras. Maybe it is time for me to upgrade cameras? I would still have all this footage left to deal with though.

My primary computer now is a Dell Studio XPS 9000 with a 24" Dell LED LCD. It is currently running Windows 7.

I also have two HP laptops that are so standard in hardware configuration (almost identical) that Windows 7 recognizes all devices with internal drivers. No outside software needed after installation. Now THAT is a rare thing for Windows! ;-)

The reason for telling you all this is that I guess I have become a sort of reverse switcher. Having come from the Windows world back in 2000 to the land of Apple, I find myself migrating back to Windows after having experienced and dealt with OS X for almost 8 years. Windows 7 is just the icing on the switchers' cake.

I love OS X. I do. I just don't love the hardware nor its prices. Sure the premium is mostly covered by the software that is included. I agree with that line of thinking. But the fact remains that you can't specify what hardware you want to run the software on outside of the predefined models. Only Apple can do that. That is my major beef.

Software could be argued as another area of issues but with Parallels and Fusion, with the exception of gaming, you can run most software on your Mac without incident. So the argument would mostly be moot.

Overall, I can't really put a finger on how or why I have ended up back in the clutches of Microsoft. Maybe it was only natural since I do play games, like to tinker with programming for Windows, and wanted to specify my own hardware configuration without breaking the bank.

I can tell you this. Windows 7 was a huge push on my purchase of my new desktop and of my 2 laptops.

It really is that nice and streamlined. It is by far the best version of Windows to date. That may not be saying much to hardcore Mac users but for those wondering, it is definitely worth running in virtual mode or via Boot Camp when Apple finalizes the drivers for it.

Students can get it for $30 too. It's a steal at that price. For Microsoft Windows anyways.

I think it's great every time I hear of a switcher coming to the Mac world. I just hope that moving focus back to Windows (and staying in the grips of Steve Jobs at the same time) can be viewed positively too.

I love Apple. I have just been loving Windows a tad bit more this past year.

smcracraft congrats on switching. You will love OS X and the Mac world. I know I do. It's almost like joining a brother/sisterhood. Just don't drink too much of the Kool-Aid or you will be proselytizing in the streets.

Have you considered changing your PC to Hackintosh and Snow Leopard?

One of the guys at the local iPhone developers club did it and it impresses!

So no more Apple hardware prices but keep the main Apple advantage: the software...

I am considering it for a quad-core Dell with 4gb and 1TB.

The thing that is holding me back is not the process/method for the conversion
but whether the disks themselves (four of them in the Dell) will be accessible from
the Mac OS X / Hackintosh after the convert... they have critical data and uploading
all of them somewhere on a network for download back to the Mac OS X Hackintosh
fills me with ennui.

ScifiterX wrote:

For some of us it's a fight to get anything done on Windows, always has been. It's not that way for everyone but...

Windows seems highly dangerous as a platform
on which to build a career or effort because of
a) viruses b) bizarre interface issues in Microsoft
Office including bugs that take months to surface
and hundreds of people to confirm and department
after department to investigate c) meanwhile Charles
Simonyi is off paying $15 million to go off into orbit
for the third time or somesuch and d) Windows Vista
(what an awful example) and e) Windows 7 which
is one big rumor.

Who would want that mess?

Seems highly dangerous!!!

--Stuart

Doing an upgrade from XP SP3 to Win 7 is a royal pain. Seems some people, myself included are having a hard time of it. No pop the DVD in and run the install. Oh no, it is a killer.