Should I....

Hi People

I'm going round the twist debating whether or not to purchase an imac, I am smitten with gadgets and once something catches my eye i'll go all out to get it, for a little while now since the purchase of my iphone become very interested all that is Apple, I must of viewed the Apple website thousands of times and drooled over the 27" imac. What topped it off was recently visiting a graphic designers where there was 2 imac's running i couldn't keep my eyes off them. At the back of my mind i was getting one of these things...
Now as a newbie and you've probably heard it a thousand times but please please help with advice.
I have a pretty good pc but i can bring it to a crawl at times, through photoshop, video editing etc ...
I don't want to annoy anyone by asking the same old same old but~
1 What advantages are the mac over pc
2 will i be limited to software if i purchase an imac, as in will i have to go out and purchase nero , photoshop etc for imac.
3 will my printer and netgear router work with it or will i have to buy new.

What are your thoughts on the 27" imac is it powerfull, what advantages over pc .
I really appreciate any replys as to be honest i'm going into this blind but smitten with the design.

Thanks people cant wait for your replys, As much information as you can give me would be fantastic.

warriorsoul7 said:

What are your thoughts on the 27" imac is it powerfull, what advantages over pc .
I really appreciate any replys as to be honest i'm going into this blind but smitten with the design

Thanks people cant wait for your replys, As much information as you can give me would be fantastic.

Click to expand...

Welcome to Mac-Forums!

While you're waiting for replies...you could also try the search feature for the forum. These sort of questions get asked all the time...and you should be able to find some "nuggets of knowledge" from some previous threads...until you get some fresh replies.

Good luck

While I won't agree with you on the design part, I will say that the Core i5 iMac will be the perfect computer for you for years to come.

Well I just made the same plunge about 3 weeks ago and luv it. I also use a netgear router and it works fine. I have a hp printer and just had to install the mac drivers. I too thought that a mac was hard to get software but I was wrong anything you want to do you can find and the speed is amazing on this thing. I love just click and your there no waiting like before.;D

I bought a 27" iMac core i5 in February, and absolutely love it. I do some 3D modeling and rendering, and it blows my old C2D PC out of the water. Every application I used on the PC, I have found a Mac equivalent for except one, the software for my Zune MP3 player. That problem was overcome by purchasing an iPod .

If there is software you use that you cant find a Mac equivalent for, or just don't want to buy a Mac version of, you can run Windows on the Mac by using Bootcamp or in a Virtual Machine using Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion. I have Vista in a VM, and it runs better than it did on my PC. The only reason I installed Vista is that the installers for some of my 3D content are Windows .exe's. Other than that, Windows is not used.

As far as advantages over PC's, I have yet to have the system crash, I have not had to tweak the registry to get things to work right (there is no registry), the non-existant registry never gets corrupted, no viruses...and the list goes on.

You also can't beat the display on the iMac. It blows my HDTV out of the water.

This is my first Mac, unless you count playing with an Apple IIe back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, and all in all, I don't think you would go wrong buying an iMac.

1 What advantages are the mac over pc
I could give you a laundry list of advantages, but I'll focus on only one for now. Generally speaking, I find the Macs to be far more reliable, easier to use, and less "work" than a typical PC. Whereas I've had to spend countless hours tending to all of the issues that have arisen on the PCs owned by my parents and my sister's family, I've never once been asked to come over and fix my brother's iMac. I've also never had to "fix" anything like this on my own two Macs (a 2007 MacBook and a late-2009 Mac mini). As someone above said, you don't have to fix the registry (because there is none) nor do you need to worry about viruses infecting the system (because there are none). You turn on the computer, it works great, and that's pretty much it.

2 will i be limited to software if i purchase an imac, as in will i have to go out and purchase nero , photoshop etc for imac.

You will have to buy Mac versions of the software you want to use. However, if you want to install Windows via Bootcamp or a virtual machine, you can do that as well. Quite honestly, if you're trying to kick the Windows habit, I would try to get the Mac versions.

As far as facing limitations concerning Mac software, I think you'll find that there is a very vibrant developer community behind the Mac and you should be able to find software that does just about anything you want to do. Shortly after switching a couple years ago, I realized that I was able to do everything I did on Windows on my Mac. It was one of the easiest transitions I ever went through.

3 will my printer and netgear router work with it or will i have to buy new.

More than likely, they will work just fine. I've connected my MacBook to all kinds of third party routers without any issues whatsoever, even ones made by Microsoft. I've only come across one printer that didn't work with my Macs: a Dell all-in-one printer, copier, and scanner. And that's just because Dell doesn't create Mac drivers for any of its products. Otherwise, we have an HP printer at home and we can print and scan on it perfectly fine. If you have any other brand of printer, it should be compatible with the Mac as well.

Good luck with your purchase. I know you'll love your new Mac once you get it!

To paraphrase another famous company:

JUST DO IT!

warriorsoul7 said:

I don't want to annoy anyone by asking the same old same old but~
1 What advantages are the mac over pc

Click to expand...

Yes, nobody's EVER asked that one before ...

Seriously, if Apple's website didn't already answer this for you, there's nothing much we can add. But, just in case you missed it somehow:

Apple - Get a Mac

2 will i be limited to software if i purchase an imac, as in will i have to go out and purchase nero , photoshop etc for imac.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here, but with regards to the two specific programs you mentioned, Nero doesn't exist on the Mac, primarily because basic data, music and movie burning is built right into the OS. If you'd like to go beyond the basics, you will probably want to look at Roxio's Toast.

As for Photoshop, if you are a registered user, Adobe generally lets you "side-grade" to the latest Mac version for the normal "upgrade" price. You should call them and ask.

3 will my printer and netgear router work with it or will i have to buy new.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how we're expected to answer the part about the printer without you telling us what kind of printer you have, but the answer to both parts of this question should be "it will just work with it."

What are your thoughts on the 27" imac is it powerfull, what advantages over pc .

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At the moment it is probably THE most powerful consumer-level personal computer available for any platform -- and the only one that can easily run all three mainstream OSes.

As for "advantages over a PC," there's only one:

1. It's not a PC.

HUGE advantage.

I really appreciate any replys as to be honest i'm going into this blind but smitten with the design.

Click to expand...

Anyone who has an eye for design is clearly a person of taste and intelligence. That is precisely the sort of customer Apple:

a. wants
b. caters to

So I suspect that after a short period of awkwardness as you UNlearn the Windows mindset and learn "the Macintosh Way," you'll absolutely love it.

I'm amazed at the response and how helpful you guys are, you pretty much made my mind up.
One thing that I've heard before but cant understand is, you don't get viruses on a mac.
Sorry for asking the obvious but what happens if you download a file from the internet and it contains a virus.
I recently downloaded a music player from what i thought was a reputable site and it contained a virus when scanned with AVG, which leads me on to my other question.
Do you run anti-virus software on macs ie AVG , Norton etc.
I'm pretty excited about making a switch but also nervous that i will be limited with software but this mindset has only been etched by using windows for so long.
Like i said previously I could sit and read post's all day long about tips,ticks and any knowledge you guys could give me about macs.
Really appreciate your help.

warriorsoul7 said:

I'm amazed at the response and how helpful you guys are, you pretty much made my mind up.
One thing that I've heard before but cant understand is, you don't get viruses on a mac.
Sorry for asking the obvious but what happens if you download a file from the internet and it contains a virus.
I recently downloaded a music player from what i thought was a reputable site and it contained a virus when scanned with AVG, which leads me on to my other question.
Do you run anti-virus software on macs ie AVG , Norton etc.
I'm pretty excited about making a switch but also nervous that i will be limited with software but this mindset has only been etched by using windows for so long.
Like i said previously I could sit and read post's all day long about tips,ticks and any knowledge you guys could give me about macs.
Really appreciate your help.

Click to expand...

Nothing.
Most of us don't bother with anti-virus, I certainly don't, and have never had an issue in 8 years.
Virus are aimed at attacking Windows in particular, and they just sort of vanish if they find themselves on a Mac.

Well, I haven't answered one of these for a long time, so:

If you've ever wished you could get away from Windows and have tried installing Linux on your machines several times over the years, and decided "It's nice, but just not ready for prime time and everything I want to do", you're gonna like a Mac.

If you enjoy toying with and learning new things: you're gonna like a Mac.

If you're one that has a problem with or no desire to unlearn old habits and the way you've always done things and get a Mac wanting it to be like Windows, you're not gonna like a Mac.

If you want your apps to work like they do in Windows instead of learning how they work in OS X, you're not gonna like a Mac.

OS X is flat out not Windows, and therein lies the advantage.

I was one of those hardware enthusiast gamers. I could sit and spend an hour or more lapping my new CPU in order to drop the temp another 2C so that I could get another 0.5Ghz out of it with my overclock. Spent a lot of time overclocking, tweaking, stopping every one of those stupid windows apps you install that thinks it needs to launch at start up, stopping all the miscellaneous services that Windows has running by default and then on top of all that running a full virus scan, Spybot scan, Adaware scan and defrag once a week to keep my machine running in tiptop shape. There was a 3-4 hour time frame when you couldn't use your computer.

And then, I still had to do a clean install at least once every 6 months, because even with all that, it had still slowed down. I went through withdrawal the first 3 months on my Mac trying to figure out what else I could tweak, change, etc. Took me that long to figure out, that once I had my preferences set, for the most part, the thing just seemed to work.

No more anti-virus apps, no more need for Spybot, no more need for defragging (for the majority of users). There is a little maintenance to be done, but that's typically once a month or less now and takes maybe 15 minutes. No more having to "fix" the wife's machine every 3 months because she had this knack of finding all the spyware out there no matter what I put on her machine to stop it.

Haven't done a clean install except for when a new OS comes out. Have one Mac here, now on it's 3rd OS without ever having to do a clean install. I'd like to see a Win machine that started at XP and then over the last 3 years went through a Vista upgrade and a Win7 upgrade that's still running as fast as new.

Your router should be fine. If you're going to keep multiple operating systems or even just multiple computers in the house, I'd encourage a network aware printer that you can attach to the router instead of an individual machine. One of the best investments I made after getting my first Mac.

On one hand there's not much to learn to start using a Mac. On the other hand there is much to learn. Read through the stickies in the Switcher's forum (eric's while a few years old now, is still very good) and just hang out reading questions and answers and you'll get it.

It's not a panacea, there will be some things to work out; but overall, it's a darn good OS.

If I'm not mistaken viruses also tend to be .exe files, which macs cannot run anyway!

Jonik said:

If I'm not mistaken viruses also tend to be .exe files, which macs cannot run anyway!

Click to expand...

Exactly!

warriorsoul7 said:

I'm amazed at the response and how helpful you guys are, you pretty much made my mind up.
One thing that I've heard before but cant understand is, you don't get viruses on a mac.

Click to expand...

That's correct. No viruses. And there's very little chance that there will ever be viruses on the Mac.

Sorry for asking the obvious but what happens if you download a file from the internet and it contains a virus.

Click to expand...

Nothing. The virus was designed to prey upon the inherently weak and buggy architecture of Windows. Mac OS X isn't Windows, therefore doesn't have those vulnerabilities nor the architecture the virus relies on. Ergo, won't work.

Do you run anti-virus software on macs ie AVG , Norton etc.

Click to expand...

No. While there are a couple of commercial companies that make "anti-virus" programs for Mac, they feed on public ignorance to make their money. There are no viruses for the Mac, so they rely on paranoia and fear rather than sound arguments (reminds me of a certain political party, come to think of it ...). Norton itself IS a virus, in that it replicates the effects you are seeking to avoid (slow performance, wasted resources, lost data, impossible to remove).

Were there ever to appear a genuine "virus" for the Mac (and again, contrary to uninformed opinion, this is really very unlikely), the open source ClamX AV would be your best bet for a quickly-updated (and free!) solution. So why even bother to download it until we actually get a report that there is actually ever a Mac virus?

Some people make the case that Mac users should install anti-virus programs in order to prevent them accidentally passing on Windows viruses to their Windows friends. That is, I suppose, a valid view. My own personal opinion is that it is the responsibility of the user of Windows to protect their own buggy OS, not my responsibility as someone who correctly chose a virus-free OS to help protect them. I don't forward suspicious files willy-nilly in the first place, which I think does a lot more to protect my Windows friends than me running an Anti-Virus program for their benefit would do.

Macs are not immune to flaws in the OS or security issues -- a couple of such exploits have turned up over the years -- but they've never resulted in viruses because of the inherent structure of a UNIX-based OS. Security problems are generally addressed in a timely fashion by Apple, and the handful of various minor malware that's turned up over the years has only been seen in obviously dodgy packages (pirated apps, "porn video codecs") relying on "social engineering" (ie stupidity), so any level of common sense is your best safeguard away from problems.

I'm pretty excited about making a switch but also nervous that i will be limited with software

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I'm not sure what you mean by this, but I would guess that you're referring to the lack of obvious large displays of endless crapware like you see for Windows. It's true that Macs have a smaller pool of software to choose from, but the standards for Mac software are, you'll find, VASTLY higher, and all the main areas of concern have been addressed. So yes, you might have three options instead of 50, but generally this is not a problem.

Two areas where Macs DO lag behind Windows machines are in the areas of games and business accounting, as well as some vertical market niches like architecture. However, as Macs can easily run Windows right alongside the Mac OS, this again is less of an issue than it once was. I discourage people from relying on the Windows ability of modern Macs, as they should find that their needs are more than sufficiently met by the higher-quality Mac software, but occasionally I see a case where people legitimately need to run Windows as well, and for them the ability is all there built into the Mac.

Like i said previously I could sit and read post's all day long about tips,ticks and any knowledge you guys could give me about macs.
Really appreciate your help.

Click to expand...

My best tip is the one I give all the switchers: LEARN THE MAC. In particular, learn the programs the Mac came with and the whole "Mac mindset" (ie UNlearning some of the bad practices of Windows) before moving onto other fields of interest. Understanding the basic philosophy of why Apple has designed the system the way they have arms you with the knowledge you need to conquer anything else in the Mac world you may come across.

Have a look at Switch 101, Mac 101 and the iLife tutorials to get a feel for how Macs work. In the iLife videos, pay particular attention to the structure of iTunes -- it is the key behind most other Mac software.

Thanks guys for all your replies, really appreciate your help, I guess one day i to will be in a position to answer these questions.

Well i've made my mind up, Its an i7 for me, Been searching the internet browsing just about every company that sell Apple iMacs, most only sell the i5 seems like the i7 is a custom machine. No company offers iMacs at a discounted rate as i can see so i will probably purchase direct from Apple Store. An i5 would probably be more than capable for what i need but i'm an all or nothing type of guy.

I have noticed on a popular auction site people selling the Apple Care Protection Plan (serial Only) very cheap, after reading the descriptions i'm lead to believe purchasing the serial is exactly the same as from the Apple store but minus a box. Same cover etc. Can someone clarify this before i decide to purchase.

I feel like a child at Christmas and find myself watching 27" iMac unboxing videos on youtube (sad i know) but i'm pretty excited about ditching windows and firing up that big screen.

I have never ever ever regretted buying a mac and am waiting for a refresh for the MacBook pros to complete my switch from windows, but I don't think apple really care too much for notebooks.

The Mac is a fun,easy to use computer that will enhance your actual reasons for needing a computer and will handle most tasks effortlessly.

my only niggle is the absolutely pointless and pretty useless iPhoto application which makes transferring photos neigh on impossible from one 'event' to the next, so I am now going to migrate everything photographic to Lightroom to catalogue.

if you are one of those folks who has a needs to have windows on a mac, then don't bother switching....it negates the whole reason to migrate in the first place!

also, apple's customer service is second to none.

Hi there,

Just to add my 0.02 to what the other posters have already said: Re: Photoshop; if you decide that you want to run a photo editing app, you can shell out the money for Photoshop on the Mac, but before you do, I would strongly advise you to check out Gimp - It's a freeware application and has pretty much the same feature set as Photoshop, without the large RAM footprint.

See the attached screenie.

Hope this info helps.

bluefox9er said:

I have never ever ever regretted buying a mac and am waiting for a refresh for the MacBook pros to complete my switch from windows, but I don't think apple really care too much for notebooks.

The Mac is a fun,easy to use computer that will enhance your actual reasons for needing a computer and will handle most tasks effortlessly.

my only niggle is the absolutely pointless and pretty useless iPhoto application which makes transferring photos neigh on impossible from one 'event' to the next, so I am now going to migrate everything photographic to Lightroom to catalogue.

if you are one of those folks who has a needs to have windows on a mac, then don't bother switching....it negates the whole reason to migrate in the first place!

also, apple's customer service is second to none.

Click to expand...

Not familiar with Lightroom, but moving photos between events or even combining events in iPhoto is pretty painless.
You select the photos to move and drag and drop them . . . to combine events (merge) you drag one event on top of another.

Well i did it, This is my very first post using my Brand New Apple iMac i7, I have ripped out my old pc and placed my stunning 27" Beauty in its place.
Simply stunning, just need to learn how to use it.
I apologise in advance for all the questions i will be asking on here.
I'm amazed at the quality of Apple products. Its simply a breeze to use the new keyboard, Sorry if i sound like its Christmas day but i'm pretty excited about it.
I can stand up in the middle of the room arms held out and shout out i'm a converted mac user.

Sounds daft but i cant wait to receive an email on it. LOL

You are going to love the new iMac. I have the 27" i5 version and can't believe I never switched earlier. It is by far the best computer I have ever had.