Total newbie questions to help me switch

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Ok you have heard this all before but please hear me out, I am sick to death of Windows becuase of viruses, been running Windows 2000 for less than 2 months and it has already screwed up and I am also sick to death of Linux due to Macormedias lack of support shipping Dreamweaver over to Linux which now leaves me with no choice but to seriously look at a mac.

If you could answer some of my questions it would be greatly appreciated.

I am on a tight budget, I could possibly afford a base unit off of ebay, can I get an adaptor so I can plug the base unit in to my existing 19" monitor?

I need to run Dreamweaver and Photoshop, performance wise what is the minumium spec I would require not to have any problems running both these applications like I did on a Windows machine with 1gb of Ram?

The apple OS, is it easy to reinstall if something goes wrong, is it just the case of popping in your cd or dvd and reinstalling like you do with Windows and Linux?

Adding peripherals, If I went out and bought an external dvd burner would this work, would I have any compatability problems?

Internet explorer, Ok on my Windows box I preview pages produced in Dreamweaver using Internet Explorer, is this the same on a Mac, and are there any major differences between IE on windows and IE on Mac?

Viruses, what is the situation like and If I bought a Mac would I get treated to spyware and viruses after a couple of days usage?

Thank you to anyone that helps
 
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"I am on a tight budget, I could possibly afford a base unit off of ebay, can I get an adaptor so I can plug the base unit in to my existing 19" monitor?"

I assume by base unit you mean powermac? Then the answer is yes, you can. If you mean emac/imac then I'm not sure. If you mean iBook/powerbook then the answer is yes again.

"I need to run Dreamweaver and Photoshop, performance wise what is the minumium spec I would require not to have any problems running both these applications like I did on a Windows machine with 1gb of Ram?"

Well that's difficult to say. They will run on most machines, but I'm not sure what filters / file sizes / etc we are talking about, so I'll just recommend at least 800Mhz and leave this question to someone else :)

"The apple OS, is it easy to reinstall if something goes wrong, is it just the case of popping in your cd or dvd and reinstalling like you do with Windows and Linux?"

Yes it is.

"Adding peripherals, If I went out and bought an external dvd burner would this work, would I have any compatability problems"

Probably not. Some peripherals can be tricky, but for most things commonly available you can find drivers if they aren't recognised by the system automatically. I think any ext. DVD burner will work though.

"Internet explorer, Ok on my Windows box I preview pages produced in Dreamweaver using Internet Explorer, is this the same on a Mac, and are there any major differences between IE on windows and IE on Mac?"

No, it's horrible on both systems. But the windows version is newer. You can also get versions of firefox, mozilla and netscape navigator for mac though.

"Viruses, what is the situation like and If I bought a Mac would I get treated to spyware and viruses after a couple of days usage?"

No you won't. There aren't any viruses for mac OS X and no spyware apps either.

In fact, you don't need to bother with a virus scanner at all IMO.


Since you're on a tight budget, I'd look into a current emac or older powermac G4.
 
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A switch to Mac will end the virus/worm threat. No need for scanners unless you need to network to windows computers. Virtually (if not all) all worms rely on the indefensible windows registry. There is no such animal in Mac or Linux
 
T

thingy

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adrian29uk said:
Ok you have heard this all before but please hear me out, I am sick to death of Windows becuase of viruses, been running Windows 2000 for less than 2 months and it has already screwed up and I am also sick to death of Linux due to Macormedias lack of support shipping Dreamweaver over to Linux which now leaves me with no choice but to seriously look at a mac.
Virus protection and avoidance is very simple. If you can get your head around linux I am surprised you got hit so badly by viruses. I would comment more but this is a mac forum not a PC one.

adrian29uk said:
I am on a tight budget, I could possibly afford a base unit off of ebay, can I get an adaptor so I can plug the base unit in to my existing 19" monitor?
You can get the computer itself with no peripherals if you are referring to the PowerPC verion (ie, not the imac or emac). You can get adapters as well, but the colour quality will not be as good. All mac stores should have them.

adrian29uk said:
I need to run Dreamweaver and Photoshop, performance wise what is the minumium spec I would require not to have any problems running both these applications like I did on a Windows machine with 1gb of Ram?
This depends on what powered system PC you are comparing it to, and what powered system mac you are looking at. CPU speed would also be useful here, not just RAM.

adrian29uk said:
The apple OS, is it easy to reinstall if something goes wrong, is it just the case of popping in your cd or dvd and reinstalling like you do with Windows and Linux?
Very simple, yes. Dare I say simpler even.

adrian29uk said:
Adding peripherals, If I went out and bought an external dvd burner would this work, would I have any compatability problems?
As long as it has the mac logo on the box, otherwise it probably will not have the correct drivers. Be prepared to research hardware a bit more, if there is something you want, check out the box for a mac logo. Failing that, check out the manufacturer website for downloadable mac drivers. Your choices will be a lot more limited than they are for PC. The positive side to this is that mac peripherals tend to be of a higher quality. You do not get the variance between good and bad quality that you do with PC peripherals.

adrian29uk said:
Internet explorer, Ok on my Windows box I preview pages produced in Dreamweaver using Internet Explorer, is this the same on a Mac, and are there any major differences between IE on windows and IE on Mac?
MSIE5.5 compatible at best from a mac. You will not get true PC MSIE compatibility. It will be similar to the restrictions you get if viewing a page through Firefox or some other browser. Keep the PC on hand for testing if needs be. Personally, I would be happier as I use firefox, so it will mean more sites better compatible with majority of the browsers.

adrian29uk said:
Viruses, what is the situation like and If I bought a Mac would I get treated to spyware and viruses after a couple of days usage?
No. Macs are slowly rising in popularity, so one day they could be as bad. The virus/spyware writers code for maximum exposure, which is the only reason they target Windows so fiercely. For now you are safe.
 
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why dont you guys use safari. I think it is a great browser.(unlike ie)*looks like crap* I have firefox also but i dont use it becouse the browsers are like exactly the same and safari looks cooler to. :cool:
 
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VastDeathmaster

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Adrian,
If you switch don't forget the expense of repurchasing Photoshop and Dreamweaver. The money you pay out for these two products could probably by you an iBook or eMac. (Unless you are getting the student discounts for both)

As far as your monitor goes, I think most mac computers come with an adapter to plug that monitor into it. You can then download software that will span your desktop across both screens. I did that with my eMac for a while.

Unless Apple suddenly outsells all Wintel PCs, you won't have to worry about viruses (for the most part)
 
F

flonejek

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Don't forget that the majority of viruses for windows are due to the flawed implementation of Internet Explorr, literally allowing anyone with your IP address to run malicious code on your wintel box, whereas on macs and linux the browser is separate from the OS, meaning any malicious code run (which is pretty much limited to javascript, activeX isn't available for either except mac IE) can't access system functions to spread itself/add itself to registry and other horrible things.

This means that if the *nix based systems (mac OSX, Linux, Unix and a few others) become the most popular in the marketplace, even if people wanted to write viruses for the platform, they couldn't do the following:

A: spread autmatically like a worm
B: start when your computer stars
C: Infect your computer (unless you ran the virus application)

so you pretty much will never need a virus scanner for any of the *nixes, unless you're like a windows mailserver (to catch crap in the mail)
 

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