Not all experiences are bad

If one comes to these forums and doesn't take into consideration that the majority of messages being posted are people with problems they would soon get the idea that the Mac is a pile of junk. By far the majority of Mac users do not have these problems so they don't write any messages and you tend to think they don't exist and the Mac is junk.

Messages like the one "switched to Mac and going back" tend to give a very bad picture of the Mac computer, and while many people have problems, by far more don't. You see the same thing, and many times the same people writting the same complaints on any pc forum. The majority of the pc magazines i see are filled with articles on how to fix what is wrong with windows and the pc in general. They don't spend their time telling you how to best use your pc, rather how to fix it.

Just for a little of balance, let me tell you about my experience in switching from the pc world to the Mac world. I have used computers of one flavor or another for well over 20 years. I lived in the San Jose area back in the early days of Apple and Atari, and a few others... right smack in the middle of the so called silicone Valley. I didn't start out with apple, but i almost did.

After over ten years of pc computers and winders i finally had enough of the crashes. "General fault" was a personal friend back in the winders 3.1 days and the ol "blue screen of death" was well known in my house all the way up through winders Nt. Winders 2K was a welcome relief and things started working a bit better for me then and along came Winders Xp, which is the best by far of the Winders line, but far to often i found myself rebooting because a bad program had frozen my system, or Xp itself had just decided it was time to reboot. Between the operating system problems and the constant virus programs and hackers taking advantage of the flaws of anything winders I finally had enough.

Last year the day after Thanksgiving I went down to my local Comp Usa store and purchased myself a PowerMac G5 2.0. I brought it home and was imediatly impressed even with the box it came in. Packing was wonderful i had never seen anything like it. My God the cardboard is thicker than my desk...

Being used to a lot of flash from Pc's i wasn't that impressed at first by the looks of this rather plain Jane silver/gray thing sitting in front of me. Then for the first time I took the side cover off and looked inside. What a work of art looked back at me. Everything was so neat and clean looking, not at all like the tangled mess i see when i open a pc... I could not believe what I was looking at... how the fans slide out and get you so much room to add some extra ram like that...soooo easy!! What's this, my God! all you do is slide the second hard drive in there and just turn that lever, then...Whoa, there is the power and data lines right there!!! How easy was that!!

The only problem i have had with the G5 was a hard drive problem... not the one that came with it, but the one i added. For some reason I started getting some file corruption on that drive, so i pulled it out and stuck in a new one and problem solved. This baby runs from 4am to about 7pm 7 days a week and no problems whatever. The OS seems to be quite solid and i find I can do many things under OS X that i could not do in XP. It is one of the quietest systems I have ever had. Even when the fans come up to high speed to cool the system it is still one of the quietest.

Plug and Pray with the Pc has now turned to Plug and Play with the Mac. Every thing i have plugged has just worked... I use a Microsoft wireless keyboard, a Logitech wireless mouse, a Maxtor external hard drive, an Epson scanner, a Creative sound system and a Linksys router, an Hp 4550 color laser, and an Hp 2440 black laser, and Corsair ram, and a Sansung flat panel. Everything just worked when hooked up...

I was so impressed with my PowerMac G5 that just before Christmas I took the wife back to Comp Usa and bought her an iMac G5 1.8. Brought it home, poped the back off and stuck in another stick of Corsair ram, bringing it up to 768. It runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week and has given no problems what ever. Runs like a top, quiet as a mouse, and so far everything we have plugged in just works. A thing of beauty sits on her desk.

I will keep my last home built pc, a gamer using the Amd 64 bit chip, water cooled and fancy lights and all for games, but i am now and will always be a Mac user. I'm by far not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but i know a good thing when i see it.

So, remember new people, just cause you see a lot of complaints on these forums, that don't mean the Mac isn't worth a look. Go to any pc forum you will find the same, if not worse.

wow, that was long. I notice most problems are on the users end, or caused by ignorance to their new mac, not knowing how to do things and such.

Macman said:

wow, that was long. I notice most problems are on the users end, or caused by ignorance to their new mac, not knowing how to do things and such.

Click to expand...

Ya, i know I tend to wander at times...can't help it, it's a character flaw...(G)

witeshark said:

Thanks James. I had my trip though wintel95 > ME and researched why it was never possible to be sure of stability. So my intended cruise to Xp took an off ramp to Linux (Red Hat) and then Mac OS X. The Mac is all I use now, and just delighted with it!

Click to expand...

You missed Xp?...certainly the best of the bunch, but still not really ready for prime time either...

Tried Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Corel Linux, Buffalo, and a couple of others too... to darn hard to work with. Installing programs was awful. SuSE had the easiest install, that is up till their last version, that had problems and i gave up on it and turned to Mac. No need to go back now...OS X is where it's at for me now.

I love my Mac

I love my mac and would never consiously do anything to hurt it, or ever swap back to a pc, but i do have a valid problem and do not know how to fix it, are you saying that people with little knowledge of macs shouldnt have one?
I dont think I knowingly caused my problem.

P.s. can anyone help me?

this was my problem:
I came home the other day to find that all the sockets in our flat were not working, went to the box thingy and the switch for the sockets in the house was off, Im not sure what happened but switched it back on and all sockets and all appliances still work, apart from one, My beloved G4 powermac...................
Im weeping as I think about it..............
What happens is this:
when you push the on button the light comes on but seems to have no spark, it doesnt turn the computer on, the light just goes off when you let go.................
however I know there is some power as my apple monitor light comes on when i push the on/standby button on there, the only power source for this is through the G4 so something strange is going on.

I have read in the manual what to do and all it advises is, check the power supply is connected, do you not think thats the fist thing i tried? (sorry am a bit bitter right now)
then it goes on to talk about what to do when it is switching on to reset the PRAM, well I would do that if i could even get a startup or some kind of reaction other than a light switching on when u touch it!!!

anyway, ive checked my macintosh bible and that gave no help with this problem either, so please can anyone out there help me?
Ive done all I can, I am not a whizz on computers, I dont really understand how they work and what I should do, I just use my mac to make films and put my photographs on so there is alot of stuff i dont want to loose on there, stupid thing is, ive just bought myself an external dvd drive so i can back everything up, but hadnt got round to it yet...........typical. The first thing im going to do if i ever get it working again is back up every single little tiny file i have on there!

Thanks for your help......

Claire x

ps. i have tried different sockets, different kettle plugs and everything i can think of in that area of things, i left it completely disconected from any plugs overnight but it made no difference.

I would be very greatful for any advice,
thanks xxx

Have you tried calling Apple Support? It sounds like it might be a power problem.. where something burned out due to a surge.. was it on a surge protector?

>are you saying that people with little knowledge of macs shouldnt have >one?
>I dont think I knowingly caused my problem.
*******************************

No, i don't think MacMan meant that at all, what he was saying is what I have said many times before, most crashes and most problems are usually self inflicted. Either from pushing a system beyond what it was meant to do or simply not knowing what they are doing. There are plenty of times when a hardware problem will cause crashes or when a rouge program will lock up or when the OS itself just decides to head south, but many many times it is because someone did a dummie...

I see your problem got solved... power outages tend to do things like that to electronics. You were lucky as your computer acted like a breaker and shut itself down without serious damage, many aren't so lucky. That is why many times during good storms it is wise to shut off and even unplug your electronic goodies. Doesn't always hurt em going down, but sometimes the surge when it first comes back up will do it...

exactly, also, many switchers go crazy downloading fonts, screensavers, and 3rd party apps that can cause problems.

Macman said:

exactly, also, many switchers go crazy downloading fonts, screensavers, and 3rd party apps that can cause problems.

Click to expand...

ME GUILTY!

Macman said:

wow, that was long. I notice most problems are on the users end, or caused by ignorance to their new mac, not knowing how to do things and such.

Click to expand...

You hit the nail right on the head, I have had 6 macs so far with little or no trouble at all , and the trouble I did have was my own fault. Scott

Well, that's also true for a lot of Windows related problems...Most viruses get spread because people inadvertently opening some attachment in a mail, eventhough the sender is unknown and the mail is highly suspicious.

If it were posiible to drive that bad habit out of people, that would already solve 90% of all virus related issues.

If anything else fails...change user, and the issue is solved! :spook:

ClaireGriffiths said:

I love my mac and would never consiously do anything to hurt it, or ever swap back to a pc, but i do have a valid problem and do not know how to fix it, are you saying that people with little knowledge of macs shouldnt have one?
I dont think I knowingly caused my problem.

P.s. can anyone help me?

this was my problem:
I came home the other day to find that all the sockets in our flat were not working, went to the box thingy and the switch for the sockets in the house was off, Im not sure what happened but switched it back on and all sockets and all appliances still work, apart from one, My beloved G4 powermac...................
Im weeping as I think about it..............
What happens is this:
when you push the on button the light comes on but seems to have no spark, it doesnt turn the computer on, the light just goes off when you let go.................
however I know there is some power as my apple monitor light comes on when i push the on/standby button on there, the only power source for this is through the G4 so something strange is going on.

I have read in the manual what to do and all it advises is, check the power supply is connected, do you not think thats the fist thing i tried? (sorry am a bit bitter right now)
then it goes on to talk about what to do when it is switching on to reset the PRAM, well I would do that if i could even get a startup or some kind of reaction other than a light switching on when u touch it!!!

anyway, ive checked my macintosh bible and that gave no help with this problem either, so please can anyone out there help me?
Ive done all I can, I am not a whizz on computers, I dont really understand how they work and what I should do, I just use my mac to make films and put my photographs on so there is alot of stuff i dont want to loose on there, stupid thing is, ive just bought myself an external dvd drive so i can back everything up, but hadnt got round to it yet...........typical. The first thing im going to do if i ever get it working again is back up every single little tiny file i have on there!

Thanks for your help......

Claire x

ps. i have tried different sockets, different kettle plugs and everything i can think of in that area of things, i left it completely disconected from any plugs overnight but it made no difference.

I would be very greatful for any advice,
thanks xxx

Click to expand...

I've had that happen before..all you need to do is reset the PMU switch. Its fairly simple. Completely unplug your computer from the wall and any power source. Next open up your Mac and search for a small black button on the motherboard, usually near the cpu. once you've found it, simply press until it clicks (doesn't take hardly any pressure) and close it back. Plug it back in and your Mac should start right up. Let me know if you run into any more trouble.

Thank you!

Thank you for this post. And this is actually my first post/responce on the forums here.

Just two days ago I took the plung and bought a Dual 1.8 Power Mac G5. After making the purchase I was a bit worried and wondered if I have made the right choice. I can not comment on the Mac as I have not received it yet, but should be coming on Friday. I am excited but still just a tad uneasy. Its getting closer to receiveing it and I will be sure to post up how happy I really am about the new Mac that sits on my desk.