What did you have before Mac?

I still have my Windows XP Laptop, but will hopefully be getting a MacBook Pro, 15" or 17" around August (Sooooo long!).
I'm still deciding for between 15 and 17 inch... I definitely will be using BootCamp to run all my steam games, like Left 4 Dead and Half-Life 2.
Should I spend an extra £200-£500 for a slightly more powerful machine? The 17" is so expensive... almost £2000! I was thinking not, as I could spend that on the extra Windows disk, Laptop stand, USB Mouse + Keyboard and other small bits and pieces.... Any suggestions?

I am looking forward to it so much, mainly for the gaming (don't say "Windows runs games better!"), as I just really like OSX and the laptop itself. BootCamp is such a good idea - I get to have both XP and OSX? Awesome! However, I think Snow Leopard is being released soon, so should I wait for it?

Anyway, what OS did you have before Mac?
Have you always been a Mac user, or are you still a Windows User?
I just want to see the amount of "switchers" compared to the Mac veterans.

I was on Vista before. It's just XP with more clutter on top - it just didn't move the game forward.

Left4Dead runs great on my iMac.

So Steam works perfectly fine on BootCamp?

Zyluz said:

<snip>
I definitely will be using BootCamp to run all my steam games, like Left 4 Dead and Half-Life 2.

Click to expand...

Rather than using Boot Camp, you should look into using Crossover Games. Codeweavers is committed to supporting Steam in particular, and most of the Steam games work nearly flawlessly. Using Crossover Games would save you the trouble of dual-booting or even having Windows installed. Check out the compatibility database for more info on your needs.

I had tripppple boot, XP+Vista+Ubuntu.
None of them really stable as OSX.

I had:

Beefy Dell tower system with tri-boot XP SP2, OpenSolaris and LinuxMint

Smaller unbranded tower system running various experimental Linux distros, a sort of sandbox

I still have the Dell. It has about 650GB of disk space and I'm going to turn it into a wireless file server when I have a spare hour.

Actually, as it's running Mint, it would take about 20 mins, but my need for disk space hasn't overcome my laziness yet.

I've been using a MacBook Pro since May 2008 and it is (with the exception of a couple of fairly serious reservations) by a long way the best computer I have ever used. In fact, it might be the best technology purchase I've ever made.

I used various Linux distros for 5 1/2 years before moving to Mac.

Oh, to the OP - if you want a portable, IMHO, the 17" is on the edge of portability. It's big and heavy.

Now that you say it, buying Crossover Games would be much cheaper than buying Windows...

It's just an app?
How exactly does it work?
Do you just download and install Steam on OSX, then open it in CrossOver games? Or do you just select the game installed?

I had Windows 95. Got it in '97, lasted until about '03. I wasn't in the situation that I needed my own computer until 06, so I bought my first iMac.

I can remember in 99 wanting one of those iMacs in the colorful cases SOOOOO bad after seeing the commercials.

I have always used several different systems, Mac included, since the late 80s. So I have always used Macs, but not exclusively. Nowadays 100% of my computing is done on a Mac, 95% of which in OS X.

I rocked XP SP2 before osx, and honestly compared to some of Windows other OS's it wasn't half bad.

My first computer was a Mac running System 7 and have stuck with them ever since.

Have owned a Performa, Blueberry iMac, eMac, G4 Powerbook and an aluminium iMac and have been extremely happy with all of them.

I currently use the Powerbook and the new iMac but (With the exception of the Performa which I left with an ex girlfriend, so not sure what happened to that) they are all still running perfectly as they are being used other members of the family.

Using Windows at work was a completely frustrating experience over the years so I wouldn't touch a PC with a barge pole! (Although I do have both XP and Vista installed on my iMac, purely because I can, I use them about once a flood lol)

Zyluz said:

Now that you say it, buying Crossover Games would be much cheaper than buying Windows...

It's just an app?
How exactly does it work?
Do you just download and install Steam on OSX, then open it in CrossOver games? Or do you just select the game installed?

Click to expand...

With CX Games, you install that like any other OS X application and create a "bottle" that will emulate a Windows installation. Once done, you use Crossover to install the Windows app/game into the bottle best suited for that app. Crossover basically tricks the Windows software into thinking it's running under Windows. There's very little overhead on the system to slow things down, so you have nearly full performance even for 3D games (unlike under Fusion/Parallels). Some of the more recent games that have come to OS X or are coming are actually the Windows version packaged in a manner that uses the same technology Crossover is using. Spore is one example in particular. Support is hit or miss... some things work flawless, others mostly so, others not at all. Always check the compatibilty database for details on the current status of any app or game you want to try. Each major upgrade over the past couple years has resulted in bigs leaps in improvement over how some apps and games run.

I had used Windows 95 and 98 and am still running my old PC with Windows XP. It is still an exercise in frustration every time I fire it up to keep it updated. Soon, I hope to move on to a new Mac and the old PC will be history.

I actually was an Amiga user -- a die-hard Amiga user -- from 1993 until 2006; my first computer was the Amiga 600 with a megabyte of RAM and a 7mhz 68000 CPU (oooooooooooh!), five years later upgraded to the Amiga 4000 with 8 megabytes of RAM and a 33mhz 68040 CPU (again -- OOOOOOOOOOOH!), and my last Amiga was an AmigaOne with an 800mhz G3 and a gigabyte of RAM. I was talking about selling it and getting a used or bare-bones PC because I wanted to practice programming and get something that the Amiga could still not do, and my wife said, "Well, why even get rid of the Amiga? Just get a PC in addition to that."

Which was what I had ended up doing...or so I thought. I went on Craig's List and found a used Dell with good specs for pretty cheap -- I wanted to go the used route 1) to save money (my wife had just lost her job at the time and we were going through a cross-country move at the same time) and 2) because I didn't want any of my money going to Microsoft. Then...at my wife's other job they messed up her payroll, meaning that we weren't going to be able to make our rent payment, so I sold the AmigaOne on eBay and got...a LOT more than I thought I would. I was going to buy another one after my wife got another job, but when I went shopping around, everybody whose web site showed it for sale actually didn't have ANY, and they weren't being made any more...

Meanwhile, I dual-booted my new (used) PC with Ubuntu and did lots of hacky things with it (LEGAL hacky things, mind you)...and I just wasn't having fun. So after my wife got her new job and found that I just couldn't get an AmigaOne (yeah, I know, if I had waited a year, I could have gotten a SAM to run Amiga OS 4.1, but still....), so I decided to try an uncharted territory for me: a Mac. I wanted to learn that system because I'm a computer nerd, and people always come to me for help. I'd help people with weird PC problems, and they'd ask, "Can you do that on my Mac as well?" and of course I couldn't...and I also wanted a laptop, and there so far has never been a laptop that can run Amiga OS 4 (except maybe an extremely modded iBook), so I decided to go with a MacBook. That was right after Christmas last year, and...well, I posted my reaction to my new MacBook on my blog. (And I'm thrilled to say I just paid it off completely this weekend. )

But basically, as much as I loved the Amiga, my Amiga was never as much of a joy to use as my MacBook is.

I had been wanting to buy a Mac for years but never had the money until right around when Vista came out. I figured I'd give Vista a shot before spending money on a Mac. Good thing Vista ended up sucking otherwise I never would have made the transition.

I ended up relegating the PC to HTPC duty once Vista became stable enough to use on a regular basis. I upgraded it last summer and now I use it as an entertainment computer (play games on the monitor and Media Center on the TV)

I came from windows both xp and vista, and I still use all five. I use xp, vista, mac, linux, and open solaris.

I came from a Windows Vista laptop. Had lots of faults with it. Poorly designed case and had a problem where Vista wouldn't always connect to the wireless access point. So today I bought myself a Mac.

When I got my last laptop I nearly bought a Mac but stupidly decided to go for a PC.

I am a gamer from way back. I always built custom computers for myself. Various versions of Windows, 3.0 to XP. My wife got a laptop with Vista on it when Vista was brand new (what a headache). That is what pushed me to Mac, although I had been intrigued by Macs for a while. I still currently own a Dell Vostro 1400 laptop running XP sp3.