- Joined
- Sep 24, 2006
- Messages
- 2,766
- Reaction score
- 232
- Points
- 63
- Location
- Brooklyn, New York
- Your Mac's Specs
- 15" 2014 MacBook Pro, i7 2.5Ghz, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD; iPad 3, iPhone 6
I bought my wife a MacBook (1.83 ghz / 1gig RAM) just last week and we're both in love with it. I am using an ageing Windows Laptop and am due for an upgrade probably early next year... a Mac is tempting, especially after seeing how dull looking and unimaginative Vista/Aero is shaping up to be (I know, I have Vista Beta and Office 2007... seriously ugly).
Anyway, there are a few things that would potentially put me off. I am saying these to be convinced, not to start an argument, so I'll just write 'em as i see 'em.
- Home Accounts Package. I have used MS Money since 1998 and although it started out a bit naff, I am now using the 2004 package and it's a very good programme indeed. Quicken on the Mac (and PC) just doesn't float my boat. Are there any alternatives (I don't mean rinky dinky shareware stuff... something serious).
- OS upgrades. Mac users make fun of windows users for having to wait on Longhorn/Vista. BUT... from my point of view I have had a stable OS for 5 years... and, quite honestly, XP has been fine for me. No huge crashes, never had to reinstall either this laptop or my previous desktop (had this machine for 3 years) and I am not sure of the benefit of paying for an upgrade virtually yearly. Also, my wife's previous machine was a G3 700mhz, running OS X 10.2.8 which crashed a lot. I read that 10.2.8 was full of bugs. Also, we could not upgrade to QT7 without at least 10.3.x, which begs the question, how long does Apple support an OS release? Even Ubuntu (Linux) has a 5 year support promise!
- Reliability. WHen the G3 died, we looked on eBay for a replacement (before I suprised her with a new one)... it was FULL of G3s with dead logicboards. I was very suprised... did Apple have a bad couple of years? I'd expect a machine like this to last 5 years, minimum - in fact I'd expect it to be unuseable due to being too slow before breaking.
- iTunes. I love iTunes and I love my iPOD... but I am not sur I want to get tied in to a single proprietry format (AAC) that I am then stuck with forever. How do Apple fans feel about this.
So... it could be a Leopard powered MacBook Pro for me in early '07 - or Vista, a Zune and MS Money for the next 5 years.
Anyway, there are a few things that would potentially put me off. I am saying these to be convinced, not to start an argument, so I'll just write 'em as i see 'em.
- Home Accounts Package. I have used MS Money since 1998 and although it started out a bit naff, I am now using the 2004 package and it's a very good programme indeed. Quicken on the Mac (and PC) just doesn't float my boat. Are there any alternatives (I don't mean rinky dinky shareware stuff... something serious).
- OS upgrades. Mac users make fun of windows users for having to wait on Longhorn/Vista. BUT... from my point of view I have had a stable OS for 5 years... and, quite honestly, XP has been fine for me. No huge crashes, never had to reinstall either this laptop or my previous desktop (had this machine for 3 years) and I am not sure of the benefit of paying for an upgrade virtually yearly. Also, my wife's previous machine was a G3 700mhz, running OS X 10.2.8 which crashed a lot. I read that 10.2.8 was full of bugs. Also, we could not upgrade to QT7 without at least 10.3.x, which begs the question, how long does Apple support an OS release? Even Ubuntu (Linux) has a 5 year support promise!
- Reliability. WHen the G3 died, we looked on eBay for a replacement (before I suprised her with a new one)... it was FULL of G3s with dead logicboards. I was very suprised... did Apple have a bad couple of years? I'd expect a machine like this to last 5 years, minimum - in fact I'd expect it to be unuseable due to being too slow before breaking.
- iTunes. I love iTunes and I love my iPOD... but I am not sur I want to get tied in to a single proprietry format (AAC) that I am then stuck with forever. How do Apple fans feel about this.
So... it could be a Leopard powered MacBook Pro for me in early '07 - or Vista, a Zune and MS Money for the next 5 years.