Another PC or a MAC?

Jimbeam3678

Jimbeam3678

Jimbeam3678

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Joined
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North Yorkshire
First please try and keep the advice constructive:)

My 3 year old RIG's GFX card has gone or is going pop. Screens going green :(

SO its got me thinking should I repair my current RIG , break it up and sell it on MM or buy an IMAC?

Really am in 3 minds here , I've been with PC's for 14 years but have got IPAD and I like the fact it just works etc etc. However looking at the prices of IMAC are making my eyes water :eek:

Have any of you lot changed from PC to IMAC or vice versa and willing to spare 5 minutes of your time to give me your opinions and real life advice. Not just the usual stuff you read from people who may not of even given either format a fair go.

Thanks in advance for anyone who takes 5 minutes to give me some advice :)
 
i have to say mac's are terribly overpriced for the hardware that is in them, but with a mac you are paying for the os really, it all depends on if you want best bang for buck (pc) where you could buy an i5 2500k, decent graphics and everything all for under a grand, or the os that just works (mac) in which case it won't be as much of a performer but the os is much easier to handle and enjoy.

saying this as a hardcore pc fan, it is hard to admit the pro's of a mac :D
 
Depends if you want to fall for the marketing crap to say mac's are better for "this" and more reliable. However both are far from true. Mac's to an extent yes are ok, they work and you can get a job done. But as powelly2010 said they are very overpriced to buy, to upgrade just because Apple believe they are "premium" I worked on various mac's in my old job for 3 years and really didn't like some features and they did keep crashing. But overall i could complete work. But i remember it cost around £70 - 80 for 2GB stick of RAM.
 
valkia said:
Depends if you want to fall for the marketing crap to say mac's are better for "this" and more reliable. However both are far from true. Mac's to an extent yes are ok, they work and you can get a job done. But as powelly2010 said they are very overpriced to buy, to upgrade just because Apple believe they are "premium" I worked on various mac's in my old job for 3 years and really didn't like some features and they did keep crashing. But overall i could complete work. But i remember it cost around £70 - 80 for 2GB stick of RAM.
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couldn't you just stick any old stick of ram in a mac? depending on which ddr it is of course, i do know that the ram is on a riser card though, whats up with that:confused::confused::D
 
What is your intended usage? That is really key.

If you want to play games don't bother with a mac.

If you need to be able to work on ms office documents (particularly excel spreadsheets) that have been originated on a pc, then stick to a pc.

You can always dual boot, and get windows 7 installed on the mac, but if you think you will be doin that regularly then it is surely better buying a pc.

I have a windows 7 desktop (in my sig) and a MacBook pro, and was using an iMac at work until recently. For everyday use windows 7 is fine, I would actually say I prefer it. iMac look very nice, and free your room of clutter. The laptop are very well made and look nice.
 
Depends entirely on your usage.

I sold my PC, Q6600, 4Gb Ram, GTX460, SSD etc. as I didn't play games anymore, replaced with a Mac Mini.

Takes up much much less space! Still more than adequate for my needs, OS X is great for just your everyday stuff and is advanced enough should I want to do anything more, which I don't.

Just weigh up the Pros and Cons of each and see which ticks the most boxes. Nothing wrong with either option, but there are certain things that each system can do better than the other.
 
Possibly offtopic, but a green monitor may well be a faulty cable / socket. I've got an old screen here that has a definite green hint across the entire screen unless I wiggle the cable a bit, then it comes back to normal colours. In that case it's the socket (unfortunately). You might not need a new mac, or a new pc.
 
valkia said:
Depends if you want to fall for the marketing crap to say mac's are better for "this" and more reliable. However both are far from true. Mac's to an extent yes are ok, they work and you can get a job done. But as powelly2010 said they are very overpriced to buy, to upgrade just because Apple believe they are "premium" I worked on various mac's in my old job for 3 years and really didn't like some features and they did keep crashing. But overall i could complete work. But i remember it cost around £70 - 80 for 2GB stick of RAM.
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I've had several Mac over the last 5 years and I think I've had 3 crashes in that time ... so ymmv

powelly2010 said:
couldn't you just stick any old stick of ram in a mac? depending on which ddr it is of course, i do know that the ram is on a riser card though, whats up with that:confused::confused::D
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Anyone who pays Apple prices for memory is a fool. I picked up a 2nd hand (but latest generation) Mac Mini the other day for something I was setting up (new Plex based media centre) and upgraded it from 2GB to it's maximum of 8GB for ~£75 ... Apple wanted ~£400 to do the same upgrade.
 
memyselfandi said:
Anyone who pays Apple prices for memory is a fool. I picked up a 2nd hand (but latest generation) Mac Mini the other day for something I was setting up (new Plex based media centre) and upgraded it from 2GB to it's maximum of 8GB for ~£75 ... Apple wanted ~£400 to do the same upgrade.
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Apples ridiculous prices...

Reminds me of this:
appleix.jpg
 
Waza said:
Why not build a hackintosh instead and you save yourself a lot of money.
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+1 for this. Pay about half the price for the same hardware and aroun £80-90 for the full version of the OS. From there on its only about £30 to upgrade to the latest version of the OS when they release it. There are plenty of guides online for building a hackintosh. Its also not illegal to do so as you are buying a full OS to put on the hardware.
 
godinman said:
^^^ So if I wanted, I could dual-boot iOS on my laptop? Not that I particularly want to..
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Dual booting on a laptop, meh, possibly not, iOS needs a full disk to itself, its selfish like that. On a desktop its possible, or a laptop with 2 hard drives in it.
 
Im unsure that anyone can truly say that Macs have any form of advantage over Windows when it comes to crashes.

I mean, my family PC in the living rom, is on 24/7 runs FAH on all 4 cores, is a Q6600 in a DS4 Motherboard and has 4GB Kingston ram, and since building it up when teh DS4 was the latest machine, so thats a good few years, its never been switched off except for upgrades ( Audigy 2 to XFI, a reinstall due to new HD, that was also XP64 to Win7/64 and my 8800GT to a 250 ) and I have never had a crash of any kind on this PC and its the one the whole family use ( one account though )
Similarly with the PCs in the LAN room, I never see BDODs. None of my kids have EVER seen one in their lives and they all have their own PC and have done since about 5 or 6 years.
 
FatRakoon said:
Im unsure that anyone can truly say that Macs have any form of advantage over Windows when it comes to crashes.

I mean, my family PC in the living rom, is on 24/7 runs FAH on all 4 cores, is a Q6600 in a DS4 Motherboard and has 4GB Kingston ram, and since building it up when teh DS4 was the latest machine, so thats a good few years, its never been switched off except for upgrades ( Audigy 2 to XFI, a reinstall due to new HD, that was also XP64 to Win7/64 and my 8800GT to a 250 ) and I have never had a crash of any kind on this PC and its the one the whole family use ( one account though )
Similarly with the PCs in the LAN room, I never see BDODs. None of my kids have EVER seen one in their lives and they all have their own PC and have done since about 5 or 6 years.
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Arguing about what platform crashes less is frankly pointless. There is to many variables on each platform dependent on exact configuration, driver/firmware/OS versions, running software, exact hardware parts to say that one platform is definitively more stable than another. One person may have more crashes on one platform than another, another may have the opposite experience.

I'd say in the last 20 years I've probably averaged the same number of crashes across the Mac/Windows/Linux ... and it's been hardly any on each of them and in all cases it's questionable whether the crash was caused by the OS which was running, (more likely badly coded software on top of it or hardware related issues)
 
Waza said:
Why not build a hackintosh instead and you save yourself a lot of money.
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I am interested in doing this. Have you used one? Is it possible to ever have a 'hassle free' hackintosh?

Or will I forever be having problems every time I want to upgrade the OS or the hardware?
 
Apple prices are ridiculous. I'll agree that some items they sell are okay, e.g. the iPod touch for £200. But paying £2,000 for a system when it can be done for £700 is just daylight robbery, so what if they look prettier?
 
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