Before I bought my first Mac I was heavily in to building PCs.
I had the highest spec possible for the SFF machine I'd built, had it running on Windows XP Professional x64 at a time when it was considered to be hard to get drivers, and I had spent ages getting things set up how I liked.
For example, I'd run msconfig to cut down on startup apps, I'd tweaked the services.msc to get the number of services down to <15 and I'd used gpedit.msc to tweak various "cosmetic" things.. I'd even pottered around in the registry adding some cool features to get my machine to flawlessly.. which it did.
The result of all my work was a machine that could play any game (for it's day), would boot in under 30 seconds and was visually appealling.
The only thing that made me switch was the fact that I'd had built PCs for years, and was tired of constantly upgrading GFX cards and spending all my money on upgrading. I hadn't even installed Virus Protection because I never beileved in it, and was confident that I wouldn't get infected (so it wasn't because I was fed up of virii
)
I have to say, I do miss gaming on the PC and I was extremely pleased with my first iMac .
It was great because I took it out of the box, booted it up, and BOOM! it was running all my apps in under 20 minutes.. however, I still miss that "build it yourself" feeling from the machines that I used to get, and would love a gaming PC again one day, but there's just two things stopping me doing that.
- No room for additional PC in the house
- Vista.
This is not meant to be a rant against Vista, but having set up at least 20 machines for my dad's business I have come to the conclusion that I plain just don't like it.
XP was a bit of a pain, but within 5 minutes you could shut it up and get on with things.. with Vista it just seemed like it was deliberately built so you had to drill deep down in to the control panel to find the one setting you needed.
If XP had Direct10 support I would have stayed with my machine, but screw upgrading to Vista (I thought), and now having used it, I probably wouldn't go back. Before anyone starts, yes, you can turn off UAC, Windows Defender etc but seriously.. £300 for what's a prettier version of XP, it didn't feel worth it.
In conclusion, I think that if you approach the Mac platform with an open mind, and you give it a fair chance then you'll probably find things you love and you'll enjoy it, regardless of the spec or limited upgradeability.
However, If you approach it with "let's see what all the fuss is about" mentality then you'll probably come away feeling cheated. I find that a lot with PC users.. my friend for example, came over my house and said "Can I go on MSN?".. goes on, and within 5 minutes he's moaning about 1 thing or another. I explain that the MSN client is a few months/years behind the Windows Live! one and he just say there laughing his arse off and said "Wow, I wants me one of these"
That said, I have never had any issues with Leopard, and it flies on my iMac so perhaps I haven't had a bad experience like some on here (Slogan's wireless issues), so I'm inclined to prefer OS X over Windows. It's the anti-Mac, fanboys that annoy me.. as do a select few of the diehard Mac fanboys that give us a bad name.. those ads don't help either
It's alright playing with a Mac, but until you own one.. you can't comment.
I have no idea where I was going.. I'm ranting
) but I can at least workaround them for my needs.
