Thinking of getting a mac...

[drunkenmaster]

to be fair, you're comparing a build your own to a pre built. i've yet to see any friends get a dell, evesham, even a freaking Tiny(all against my judgement ) and see them turn up with hardware conflicts. yes windows has to work with far more wide ranging hardware, it does it bloody well too if you ask me.

as for hardware conflicts, there are IMHO very few true incompatibilities with hardware, but poor installs, too many end user tweaks and too much changing drivers just because they can. the amount of times people post links to new beta/official drivers and someone pops their head in and says something like "any boosts for my 9800pro?". people have perfectly working drivers for their card but can't resist an extra frame per second and so try them anyway. i barely ever change drivers unless i have an actual, and proper issue with a new game. mobo drivers i just don't both with using new ones. last xp install was 2 years old, had 5-6 different gfx cards in(nvidia and ati), bunch of different cpu's, memory and different overclocks and yet my xp worked fine, never got virus's, never got spy/malware and only ever, and talking rarely, crashed now and then and almost every one from games locking up, and probo most down to overclocking.

i've got vista 64 running, with a 8800gtx, only crashes i've had were ingame with stalker, probo down to nvidia drivers, i disabled dynamic shadows and again no crashes. tried 15-20 games so far, all work fine, including starcraft which is just about a decade old. you can very easily build an overclocked pc thats entirely stable and stupidly fast. you can also have lots of people who just don't know what they are doing who have lots of issues.

i've built rigs based on almost every chip, every chipset, every gfx card out in the past 5 years and never had any real issues, and any bad issues were very easy to diagnose and fix. heck, even before i upgraded to XP back in the day i had ME running pretty damn sweet, and that even surprised me.

I've only used a Mac a couple times but can't see any reason for them to be better than PC's, less issues to mess up with them, sure, but its just as easy to buy a fully stable prebuild PC aswell IMHO. i just wouldn't pay the premium for a white case and "cool" factor, gimmicks.

 

[Zefan]

the minis are core duo

Your sig is more than twice the allowed maximum filesize of 20KB.

On topic, I've been really thinking about getting a macbook recently since you can just use windows aswell. Very very tempting indeed, will have to see what money a summer job brings.

 

[Chronicle]

Your sig is more than twice the allowed maximum filesize of 20KB.

On topic, I've been really thinking about getting a macbook recently since you can just use windows aswell. Very very tempting indeed, will have to see what money a summer job brings.

Sorry to go off topic, but do you just go about checking everyones signature size...??

With broadband speeds nowadays seems like a bit of a worthless rule imo, anyway...

just my two cents.

 

[Zefan]

Sorry to go off topic, but do you just go about checking everyones signature size...??

Not ones I've checked before, which isn't many now. Some are blatantly not compressed enough, I started doing it when I noticed a few of these. Is just habit now.

With broadband speeds nowadays seems like a bit of a worthless rule imo, anyway...

Not everyone has a high speed connection, plus if there are 80 posts per page each with a 200kb sig it can get pretty large quite quickly.

 

[Wicksta]

Tried to switch to Macs on three seperate occasions (last one was last year), and normally lasted about a month. It always feels to me like everything on a mac is a compromise and I felt like I had one hand tied behind my back using it. The relief of selling each of them and going back was amazing!

 

[gt_junkie]

Tried to switch to Macs on three seperate occasions (last one was last year), and normally lasted about a month. It always feels to me like everything on a mac is a compromise and I felt like I had one hand tied behind my back using it. The relief of selling each of them and going back was amazing!

Agree totally!

Such a relief!

gt

 

[CGrieves]

Not everyone has a high speed connection, plus if there are 80 posts per page each with a 200kb sig it can get pretty large quite quickly.

Which is why there's an option to turn off signatures.

 

[artaxerxes]

Tried to switch to Macs on three separate occasions (last one was last year), and normally lasted about a month. It always feels to me like everything on a mac is a compromise and I felt like I had one hand tied behind my back using it. The relief of selling each of them and going back was amazing!

Excellent! Give us a shout next time you are selling in the member's market, I will be happy to give you relief from your Macs :O

 

[strudey]

Yah I agree - you wouldn't accept a brand new car stopping every now and then "because that's what they do", so why a computer? Human error and/or lazy/bad programmers, I guess

If cars got twice as fast every two years I think there'd be a few more crashes

 

[OspreyO]

T,,,memory and hard drives and motherboards fail at the same rate as PCs - its basically the same hardware as is in a PC.

But...!

The Apple machines have a limited number of specifications, and the operating system is tuned specifically for these components. Unlike Windows which has to be compatible with thousands upon thousands, and each of them has to play nice with thousands upon thousands, and it will be your crazy combination that doesn't.

Therefore errors from using motherboard X with graphics card Y do not occur (often!).

Given the limited hardware ecosystem; when there is a problem lots of people get, Apple sees it and patches it, or it is easy to go to macfixit and get the temporary workaround, or likely Apple replaces the component if was a genuine fault (logic board replacements in iBooks et cetera).

Of course Apple is commodity hardware in a nice box... so buying boutique components, you might even get a better stability, if and only if they play together nice. Buying an Apple is likely better than carefully choosing your own components because they have X thousand engineers checking them for compatibility. Yes you are the tech wiz when building your own - just like me - but you don't have the resources to test like Apple.

[edited for clarity]

So apple has the same faults as any other system. Thats what I said. Fewer of them and speedy fixes that very debatable . Apple has a history of ignoring problems until someone starts up a class action or theres major media focus on the problem. Do google on class action iPod or class action macbook etc.

The majority of PC's rarely get upgraded, and remain in the stock configuration from the company that sold them. Apple doesn't have the resources of the larger PC companies simply because its a lot smaller. In the corporate enviroment when you are looking after thousands of stock PC's you hardly ever see hardware conflicts that you home users and hobbists complaining of.

For me they are both machines once properly configured one I've no real issues with either. Crashes and conflicts aren't a frequent feature of my daily computing experience.

Perhaps the limited ability to fiddle with Apple hard means that tweakers are prevented from mucking with their machines too much. But Apple tweaking forums are as full as PC forums with people trying put their machines back together.

 

[Fireskull]

First thing is if you know the software you are going to use works on a mac then thats the big seller, if the software you want to use isnt on mac or has a bad rep on a mac dont bother because its more hassle than its worth lol, mac works excellent with stuff thats supported but if it aint it will drive you mad , mac > pc for anything other than gaming imo, and this is from a PC user who only has a pc at home, but my job is managing 60+ mac workstations and servers daily lol.
And these new intels have been pretty tempremental but once all the problems are sorted there damn solid and the only 2 guys who have had their crash is only us 2 IT guys mainly because were askin them to do stuff they cant lol, i cant speak for the Minis as never used one or the new intel iMacs, but we have crap loads of G5's, all the generations of the mac book's and MB Pros and some a few older iMacs and atm were trying to get all the workstations upgraded to new Mac Pro's and so far over 50% done with no problems and their Solid as you like.

 

[artaxerxes]

So apple has the same faults as any other system. Thats what I said. Fewer of them and speedy fixes that very debatable . Apple has a history of ignoring problems until someone starts up a class action or theres major media focus on the problem. Do google on class action iPod or class action macbook etc.

The majority of PC's rarely get upgraded, and remain in the stock configuration from the company that sold them. Apple doesn't have the resources of the larger PC companies simply because its a lot smaller. In the corporate enviroment when you are looking after thousands of stock PC's you hardly ever see hardware conflicts that you home users and hobbists complaining of.

For me they are both machines once properly configured one I've no real issues with either. Crashes and conflicts aren't a frequent feature of my daily computing experience.

Perhaps the limited ability to fiddle with Apple hard means that tweakers are prevented from mucking with their machines too much. But Apple tweaking forums are as full as PC forums with people trying put their machines back together.

So your argument is that Apple's fail at the same rate as a machine maintained by a geek who posts on OCuk and claims no crashes, or the same rate as a very well maintained office machine? I would agree!

If we add back in the large amount of home user machines not in that wonderful state - how does the Apple compare? Does Apple's reputation for 'Just Working' as above stop there?