Thinking about switching to Mac - Loads of questions

TheMagicPirate

TheMagicPirate

TheMagicPirate

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I'm thinking about replacing my PC and Laptop with an iMac and Mac Book and I have a load of questions (Some hardware if that's OK?)

I'll be replacing my 2.8 Ghz Pentium D, 2GB, nvidia 6600 Xp PC and 1.8 Ghz Celeron, 1GB Vista laptop, with a 20" 2.4 Ghz, 2GB iMac and 13" 2.2 Ghz 2GB MacBook.

I ultimately want all my video files and such to be stored on my iMac (external HDD maybe?) but to be able to pull them across to my macbook via my network easily and vice versa. I also want to be able to stream stuff to my PS3 and 360 from my iMac.

My first question, is that possible?

2) Hardware wise I'm right in thinking that the iMac and MacBook will be much faster than their PC counterparts.

3) I play games on my PC from time to time, what is the Graphics card in the iMac like?

4) I've been told that I can run windows on my iMac should I wish, what kind of performance hit would I get and when might I need to do this?

5) My PC is mainly used for : Internet, Outlook express, MSN, My Phone Explorer, Video editing (I'll be getting Final Cut), MS Office stuff. I assume the Mac has these (or replacment) programs, I guess my question is what can't I do on a Mac?

Is there anything else that might sway me to or from buying a Mac or anything I should know or is particulaly cool?

Sorry for the post being a bit all over the place.
 
TheMagicPirate said:
I'm thinking about replacing my PC and Laptop with an iMac and Mac Book and I have a load of questions (Some hardware if that's OK?)

I'll be replacing my 2.8 Ghz Pentium D, 2GB, nvidia 6600 Xp PC and 1.8 Ghz Celeron, 1GB Vista laptop, with a 20" 2.4 Ghz, 2GB iMac and 13" 2.2 Ghz 2GB MacBook.

I ultimately want all my video files and such to be stored on my iMac (external HDD maybe?) but to be able to pull them across to my macbook via my network easily and vice versa. I also want to be able to stream stuff to my PS3 and 360 from my iMac.

My first question, is that possible?

2) Hardware wise I'm right in thinking that the iMac and MacBook will be much faster than their PC counterparts.

3) I play games on my PC from time to time, what is the Graphics card in the iMac like?

4) I've been told that I can run windows on my iMac should I wish, what kind of performance hit would I get and when might I need to do this?

5) My PC is mainly used for : Internet, Outlook express, MSN, My Phone Explorer, Video editing (I'll be getting Final Cut), MS Office stuff. I assume the Mac has these (or replacment) programs, I guess my question is what can't I do on a Mac?

Is there anything else that might sway me to or from buying a Mac or anything I should know or is particulaly cool?

Sorry for the post being a bit all over the place.
Click to expand...

1) Don't know for sure... but I'm pretty sure that this would be possible.

2) Tough one to answer. A pimped out custom PC build will probably be a 'faster' machine than a Mac. Then you start having arguments about OS X being 'more efficient OS than Windows' so it doesn't need the top-end specs. I'm not going to get into those arguments.

3) No idea.... 10 years I was into all this stuff, playing 3D games, and knowing what was needed. I understand that the top spec iMacs though have a pretty good card for 'PC' Gaming

4) Two ways to run Windows. There's BootCamp in Leopard (OS X 10.5). That allows you to dual boot. That gives you the most performance... effectively turning your Mac into a PC of equivalent hardware spec. That's what you want to do for gaming. The other route is to use Parallels or VMWare (Fusion I think it's called). That allows you to run Windows inside a session of OS X. This will be of more use when you need to run something like a utility programme, though you can always run stuff like MS Office.

5) To summarise this lot
Internet - You have Safari that comes with OS X. Also, you can use Firefox or Camino for example.
Outlook express - Mail (with OS X) or download Thunderbird
MSN - There is a official client, though a lot of people use Adium.
My Phone Explorer - ??
Video editing (I'll be getting Final Cut) - I use Final Cut Express which is rather funky, and great value.
MS Office - Lots of options here and hard to recommend because it depends on how you use Office now.
There's iWork. Keynote (Powerpoint Equivalent) quite frankly is the dogs danglies! Pages (Word equiv) is not as powerful as Word, but very easy to use. Unless you are a hardcode user of Word, then Pages may suite you. Numbers (Excel) is at version 1.0 at the moment. I find it OK for knocking up simple spreadsheets... but again powerusers will be very frustrated.
These apps all can export and import to Office formats.
OK, other choices. You can try running the current Mac version of Office. However, it's Power PC based (it's not designed to run on Intel Machines). It will run using the Rosetta Emulator that comes with OS X though, but I've heard it's not that fast. Who knows when the next release of Office is though.
You also have a choice to run OpenOffice (Unix X11 based software)... or NeoOffice. NeoOffice is basically OpenOffice, but a few versions behind. The reason why it is behind is because it's a native OS X app that conforms better to Mac look-and-feel.
On my machine, I use iWork 08 + NeoOffice for any tricky Office files that iWork can't cope with.
 
1) http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26068, http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20663
2) they will certainly seem a lot smoother - I had a similar PC to yours, and by comparison, my Macbook pro (same stats as your iMac) is blistering.
3) no knowledge of that I'm afraid, but I should imagine you'll get an 8600-8800GT, so you'll definitely notice a difference from your 6600. I actually have a Windows partition especially for gaming as (although it's getting better) it can take ages for games to come to mac, if they ever do (CSS is my vice, and I have windows just for it :o)
4)it depends on how you run it - you can run it as a virtual machine, or as its own partition. obviously, running as its own partition (via bootcamp - bundled with Leopard) is just the same as running on a PC with the spec of your mac - needless to say, above average PC - I run HL2 and CSS on native res (1440x900) and full settings across the board (inc AA) and it runs between 50 and 180fps
5)
internet - Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino, Shiira (to name a few)
outlook - mail.app, thunderbird
MSN - adium, aMSN, mercury, Microsoft MSN
My Phone Explorer - iSync and Address Book - everything else you should be able to explore via bluetooth sync - what phone do you have?
MS Office - 2008 should be out early next year, or there's NeoOffice

"what can't I do on a mac"

contrary to popular belief, there really isn't a lot you can't do. only thing I ever had a problem with was getting my Sony Ericsson M600i to sync, and netbeans don't have a mobile IDE for Mac. that's it.

hope that answers everything.
 
As for streaming stuff to your Xbox360, google Connect360, great app to buy for streaming music, pictures and movies (compatible formats, of course) :)
 
TheMagicPirate said:
My first question, is that possible?
- Yes

2) Hardware wise I'm right in thinking that the iMac and MacBook will be much faster than their PC counterparts.
- No, it's the same hardware. It will run at the same speed.

3) I play games on my PC from time to time, what is the Graphics card in the iMac like?
- Crap

4) I've been told that I can run windows on my iMac should I wish, what kind of performance hit would I get and when might I need to do this?
- If you Boot Camp it, it will run at the same speed as if it was on a PC of the same spec. Boot Camp is free.

5) My PC is mainly used for : Internet, Outlook express, MSN, My Phone Explorer, Video editing (I'll be getting Final Cut), MS Office stuff. I assume the Mac has these (or replacment) programs, I guess my question is what can't I do on a Mac?
- Games. Visual Studio. I haven't found much else.

Is there anything else that might sway me to or from buying a Mac or anything I should know or is particulaly cool?
- Apple don't offer anything like onsite warranties / accidental damage cover that Dell do. It will cost you ~£80 every two years to keep the OS up to date. On the other hand they don't lose their wireless connection when you put them to sleep.
Click to expand...
 
Hi all,as you can see this is my first post so go easy on me.
I made the jump across about 6 weeks ago,got sick of xp crashing lol
TBH i found the switch quite easy,theres nothing i can't do with my sexy new imac that i couldn't do before,then again,all i do is d/l porn!!!,only joking.
i would recommend anyone to switch.
 
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