Thinking of getting a mac...

Soldato
Joined
4 Jul 2004
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Location
aberdeen
Hi
I am thinking of getting a mac, as i'm ****ed off with pc's, and fancy a change.

I already have 2 nice monitors i want to use though, so only want the "pc", no monitor.

Can anyone suggest one?

All i do is surf the web, use photoshop and edit html/php etc (i'm a designer/site developer), so they seem ideal.

Is there anywhere near Canterbury/Kent that sells macs?

Also, do they actually hold up to the reputation of never crashing?

Thanks
Ash
 
Sister's got an ibook and although it's cute and fairly reliable (locks up occasionally) it's not that user friendly. Of course i'm a PC user primarily so i'm sure you'd get use to how a mac functions.

GF also used them while she taught media in a school - imac G5's. They were terribly tempremental and tended to corrupt a lot of the work she did on them. She ended up using a pc i'd built for her to master and cut everything instead and the school went back to PC's after 8 months struggling with them.

I'd personally stick with PC's but if you're fed up with them then it's probably worth giving a mac a try if you want to!

I'll leave you with this! ;)

mac.jpg


Bad language in pic starred out! Sorry! :( :rolleyes:

:D

gt
 
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Chronicle said:
Argh. Their advertising actually made me believe they never crash...
Naughty Apple!!! ;) :D

They are ok really though - no worse than many pc's anyway! :)

But TBH my pc runs super stable! Make sure you get some decent kit and if you want true stability don't overclock. Just keep everything in spec and you should be fine!

gt
 
I bought a macbook last year... gonna sell it, just not for me, even though (before anyone says) i did give it a good chance.

And yes... it's crashed more than my PC since i bought it.
 
I've owned my macbook for almost 6 months after coming form PC's since the days of no hard drives. Best switch I ever made, macbook hasn't crashed on me once, it's solid as a rock, I don't need to worry about spyware/virii (in general), defragging it, maintaining it etc. All I need to do is read my email, browse the net, listen to music and play with some photos and it does that brilliantly. Not to mention I have a bash shell whenever I need it. Get yourself a mac mini, they're pretty cheap and its just the box, you use your own keyboard, monitor etc., see how you get on, am sure you'll love it.
 
Macs do crash,

I know :) but yeh get a mac they are awesome. If you have a decent monitor already get a mini, i got one a few weeks ago...

lovely. with 1gb memory its pretty nifty.
 
I became a partial switcher 4 years ago. I have used an iBook and a MacBook since. I wanted reliability for my research work.

The 'desktop' Mac Product Matrix is -

The Mac Mini - cheap, introductory level, plenty useful but you sound like a power user. Onboard graphics. Core Solo. No real expansion capability.

iMac - mid priced - All In One solution, inbuilt monitor. You can use a second monitor with this. Core 2 Duo. No real expansion capability.

Mac Pro - High Priced. Dual Xeons. Kick ass. But very much Pro unless you have lots of money. Plenty of expansion capability. Expensive FB Dimms.

There is no mid range PC style Tower that Apple currently made (often called the xMac) for tinkerers. Though second hand G4 Powermacs would fill that niche of you are willing to go second hand. The mini seems a good choice.

For me it is all about the notebooks though. Keep you PC desktop for gaming, but unhook your life from the desk with a MacBook or the MacBook Pro.
 
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artaxerxes said:
I became a partial switcher 4 years ago. I have used an iBook and a MacBook since. I wanted reliability for my research work.

The 'desktop' Mac Product Matrix is -

The Mac Mini - cheap, introductory level, plenty useful but you sound like a power user - onboard graphics. Core Solo. No real expansion capability.

iMac - mid priced - All In One solution, inbuilt monitor. You can use a second monitor with this. Core 2 Duo. No real expansion capability

Mac Pro - High Priced. Dual Xeons. Kick ass. But very much Pro unless you have lots of money. Plenty of expansion capability.

There is no mid range PC style Tower that Apple currently made (often called the xMac) for tinkerers. Though second hand G4 Powermacs would fill that niche of you are willing to go second hand.
Hi
Yeh they seem to be missing a range between the mini and the pro (ignoring the imac, as i wouldn't want one of those...) :(. Can't really justify £1500+ on a computer tbh.
 
I updated my post a little above.

Upshot. Get a Macbook. Kick ass.

Mac OS X; The thing about the entirely different metaphor of computing means you get the whole feeling of newness about computer geekery all over again. There is so much new to learn.

Join us.

Join us.
 
Chronicle said:
Argh. Their advertising actually made me believe they never crash...
Mine's only crashed once, when I deliberately overloaded the thing.

Besides if you don't like it, you can Bootcamp Windows on it anyway...

Edit: I should also say my PC works fine.

But maybe my systems run well because I know what I'm doing, as opposed to the millions of keyboard warriorz littering the web with "my system sux0rz"...
 
Beansprout said:
But maybe my systems run well because I know what I'm doing, as opposed to the millions of keyboard warriorz littering the web with "my system sux0rz"...

Too true, not one crash since XP's release for me here on my own rigs and only have two that can be attributed to me messing it up since 2001. :)

(Before then when I was just throwing things together based on mag reviews I got some interesting results, but 98SE didnt help things much.)

I am certainly considering going back to a mac as my main rig, just nothing that is suitable for me at the moment, 2GB C2D mini would be nice. :(
 
if your using it for webdevelopment go for the mac. I too am a web developer and considered the switch a few months ago, but didnt switch becaue I wanted to game still, even though you can still game on a mac, its just not the same.

If your goign to switch to a mac for web development i would suggest going for the lowest spec Mac Book Pro. I think its a lil over £1200 but you will be 100% satisfied.

As for them crashing a lot, many people I know who use macs correctly have never had trouble, but if your using it for these basic tasks you shouold not have a problem.

The Mac is perfect for Web Development, im guessing you use the Macromedia and Adobe Graphics and Web packages. They were designed for Macs. And if your a Photoshop user when CS3 is released propper it is built around a Mac framework so will run quicker than a PC.

As for there being a shop where you live I dont know but I think its better to buy online, unless of course you want to go and have a play with one.

Get a Mac ;) hope this helped
 
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