Pc Help

I'm thinking of buying a Mac for my next pc..

any recommendations as i know nothing about the Macs..

Cheers

 

Them Big ones are lovely

 

lol

tvat

 

RE: lol

</p>

Soz feller. Couldn't resist!
</p>

 

Choice of Mac mini if you have your own screen etc already.

Mac Book - For and entry level laptop

Mac Book Air for the ultra thing uber cool laptop (no built in optical driver though and small ish hard disk)

Mac Book Pro - For the top end laptops. Very nice but a nice price.

iMac - The one with the built in screen. Costs around a grand for the smaller screen one. I've bought one recently to do some iPhone Development on and I must admit its growing on me. Still find my way round the PC better and with I still prefer my Sony Voio with Windows 7 on.

Mac Pro - THe big tower thing with tonnes of processing power - Super Power User Use really and you are looking at around £2k.

You can get a discount buying new if you go through the education link on the UK store. They don't seem to check.

They really hold their value second hand as well.

 

Touch PCs

With Windows 7 will make a splash in the next 12 - 18months. HP already have quite a nice 22" screen all in one touch PC for around the same price as an iMac. I would go for one of those if i didn't need to do the iPhone Dev.

 

Cheers mate

big help.. now to do some searching..

 

RE: Cheers mate

There's some cool multi touch tablet's out now as well. Quite fancy selling my sony latop and getting one...

 

gally is the iphone dev your job or something you like doing.

 

Do you think touch will catch on?

I just can't see it. I can see the point on mobile devices but on desktops it strikes me as a bit gimmicky, at least for the forseeable. I just can't see what the present-day average PC user will gain that would be so earth-shattering - so you can press a web link instead of clicking your mouse pointer on it - whoopee.

Back to the OP's question:
Macs are too expensive for what they are. If you want to find out about them go to the Apple shop. The staff actually know their **** and will demonstrate your choices with aplomb. However, the OS is quite different from Windows and so if coming from a Windows background, expect a learning curve - not everything will be intuitive. They are secure and robust and those who have them swear by them. I just haven't seen anything that I might need a computer to do that warrants parting with Mac money.

 

Hmmmm

now you have given me food for thought..

 

In the long run having a Mac might work out cheaper

There's no buying stuff like masses of extra RAM or having to get a new Graphics Card every couple of years to get software to work, and they hardly ever go wrong, I've been a Mac operator for 14 years and I've never really had a problem with all the macs I've used, my first Mac was a Macintosh II. PCs are forever going wrong, i use a PC at home so I can gage the difference in problems users have.

Mac operating sortware has always been superior, and for many years they it was light years ahead of Microsoft, maybe Windows 7 will change this as I've heard some good things.

 

My PC never goes wrong

But then I run a secure and stable OS on it.

Windows 7 will improve the lot of Windows users and has a much lower memory footprint than Vista - the need for masses of RAM is reduced( though it's only about £10-15 a GB anyway!). However, I can't see 7 being a stalwart like XP was - I think MS have learned from that and in future will make more frequent releases in future, mothballing 7 within 3-4 years I'd fancy.

Whilst I am not convinced by the "Mac could work out cheaper" argument, I do urge people to choose an OS. There is more to computing than Windows and the competition will only prosper if people bother to look into it, rather than just buy a bog-standard PC with bundled Windows.

 

RE: Do you think touch will catch on?

Agree with everything you say about Macs.

Yes touch will catch on because it will be more than just clicking like you do with a mouse. THre are plenty of gestures in windows 7 already. Take a look at:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8wvar_windows-7-touch-gestures_tech


Whilst it will be more useful to start with on laptops and tablet pcs, the traditinal pc will adapt to make touch a more comfortable way to use technology. Imagine removing the mouse and keyboard and having another touch screen flush with the desk. This is where it is going. Take a look at Mircosoft Surface. This is available now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP5y7yp06n0

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/Pages/Experience/Videos.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pojPBPFV-Y&feature=related

I'm thinking about jumping ship into this technology so I've been doign a bit of research of late

 

Macs just work.

But you could probably buy three pcs for the cost of one mac so I'm not sure the cheaper argument is true.

 

You can buy 3 Ford Fiestas for the price of a Jaguar

The lifetime of a Mac is much longer in my experience, look at the amount of Pc repair people out there, I know there's more people with PCs but I wouldn't know where to take a Mac to repair. I've never needed one repairing and I've used stacks over the years.

 

I've had a few Macs over the years

Starting with Quadras/Performas, an old Powerbook Duo and then an iMac.

My opinion is that they used to be a good choice but things have moved on. I'll admit I'm slightly tainted by my iMac experience because it was one of the flakiest operating systems I've come across (although I'm told OS9 was a low point). But I predict you'll be doing something and you'll think, "hmm I need a little application to do such and such..." so you'll go onto the net and find loads of programs... nearly all for Windows. It just doesn't have the depth of software available. Then as mentioned above, you'll find yourself frustrated by the unfamilar layout. They've tried to make it simple but in doing so have made it less accessible if you need to do some tinkering. Then there's the silly one button mouse (or have they changed that now?) presumably designed so livestock and other fingerless beings can operate it.

Microsoft are a pain in the arse but the grass isn't greener on t'other side. It's expensive exclusive ornamental grass and there's less of it. I'd only jump if you have definite reasons to ditch Windows but it sounds like you don't.

 

Having just taken the plunge and changed..

I can't ever envisgae a time when I'd revert to a PC. Macs are just so much better, the difference between a Bentley and a Skoda, Barcelona and Barns... (no, don't do that one), on one level they will do the same job, but one does it with grace and style, the other with effort and not a small amount of hope that it will last from A to B. PC's were tolerable up to XP, Vista dumbed them down so much that it became an ordeal turning it on (&quot;are you sure you want to carry out this operation?&quot.</p>

You often hear of people changing from PC to Macs but it's exremely rare to hear of people going the other way.</p>

 

I was thinking about replacing my last PC laptop with a Mac and didn't bother in the end.

Regret it now.

 

Get the best of both worlds

An I Mac duo or quad with Windows XP or Vista installed. Run it as a Mac OS or as a PC Windows share files 'thimple'