How about a non-objective comparison?

I just saw the thread that Bob closed this morning (and it must have gotten busy based on the clean-up).

My bottomline comment, is though I agree with the cost/benefit numbers Ivan posted (though his are conservative because he didn't address bundled software) relative cost is only part of the equation.

To me the big reason to choose Mac is the hassle factor (or lack thereof). I am not a total technowimp. I have owned and used computers on a daily basis most of my adult life (starting with the Ti-99). Used to be a pretty fair programmer (really loved Turbo-pascal). For a time I was the local systems administrator for our Unix-based workgroup in our engineering office Have used windows systems at home and work since the dark (B&W) days of Win 2.0. Also, ran Linux for a time at home on my desktop and laptop.

But, a couple of years ago I realized that I was no longer interested in how computers worked as I was what they could and would do to make my life easier. I was intrigued by the promise of Mac but had a hard time swallowing the price difference (being naturally frugal--aka cheap!).

I finally decided to give it a try and bought the lowest level white Macbook. Two things happened almost immediately: 1) My hassle level went WAY down and my satisfaction went way up; 2) My lovely wife, who almost never touched a pc in our almost 30 years of marriage (at that point). essentialy took over my new Macbook.
So, in a fairly short order I bought an upgraded replacement for me. My wife has since inherited the replacement and I have a 15in MBP.

Have I spent more money than I would have by sticking with windows? Absolutely! But, the relatively minor cost difference has been well worth the reduced hassle and ease of just doing stuff. And all that goes double in my wife's case.

Amen, brother! Your story is similar to mine. I got tired of having the hassle factor on my PC, just wanted an appliance that worked. Saw the iMac in my local computer store, liked the form factor and the fact that I could run windows on it if I had to. Brought it home, worked out of the box like a champ. My wife, many months later, needed a new computer for her use so I took her to the Apple store and turned her loose with the salesman. She ended up with a aluminum MBP that met her needs exactly. Fast forward a couple of months and she approached me about shifting her business PC (she has a home based business) from Windows to Mac. So now we have three, my iMac, her MBP and her business' mini. Add two iPhones and an iPad and we're an all Apple, no hassle family!

Hi there!

I have been a die hard PC user since the age of 14 when I got my first Windows based machine (I'm now 25). Foolishly I always rode on the bandwagon with other Windows users and genuinely believed that Macs were simply overpriced, locked down, lacking in performance computers for people who didn't have a clue what they were doing. I hate to admit it but such was my ignorance I used to flatly refuse to enter Apple stores with my Mac crazy friend! :Blushing:

However, we had a new 27" iMac delivered to my workplace a few weeks back and, quite possibly due to delirium, I decided to have a sneaky go on it late one night as open evening was winding down.

After approximately 2 minutes (if that) I realised that my 'opinion' of Macs was woefully ill informed and... well, completely wrong! That very weekend I went and purchased a 13" MacBook Pro, which I'm currently using to post this message. Expensive? At £1000, yes - absolutely; especially when you consider that I bought / built a beast of an i7 gaming machine this Summer for £800. Worth it? So far, yes. I'm still having a few troubles with my crossover but I'm slowly getting there. One thing I have to mention is the build quality of the thing. Truly, nothing could have prepared me for how incredibly well built it is. There are absolutely no comparisons in this respect; it sits in a league of its own far, far above anything else I've ever used.

Ultimately I just fancied a change I think. Plus I needed a new laptop for my course.

I can honestly say that my next PC upgrade (which admittedly won't be for years yet, but still) will in all probability be an iMac. That or a Mac Mini.

Oh, and I work in IT support. Computers bore the turd out of me these days but using the Mac is kinda fun. My only criticisms so far are:

- The Magic Mouse is rubbish! The tracking is truly God awful, even after editing the tracking speed via console.

- My external HDD won't work

- I had to pay twenty-bloody-one pounds JUST so I could hook my Mac up to a bigger screen via VGA. Daylight robbery much?!

Anyway, hello from a (very humbled) ex-PC user. It's great to e-meet you ;D

I tried to keep the personal reasons out of my original post in that thread as that could devolve quickly. I wanted to make a case that after Apple went to the Intel platform the cost of the hardware - when everything is equal - is really not that much different.

That being said this thread brings up a good point. The very first Mac I ever bought was a Mac Mini G4. It wasn't even for me. I bought it for my Father In Law because I was tired of cleaning up Malware - and note I use the term Malware as there were viruses, spybots, popups and everything else you could think of. I would spend a day just cleaning that up. Then I would come back a month or two later and a whole new set of Malware would be installed. I finally just bought him a Mac in hopes I wouldn't have to deal with that anymore. It worked! To this day, he hasn't gotten a single piece of Malware on the Mac. (I have him setup with a regular user account and he doesn't have administrator rights or privileges.)

The second Mac I bought was for my wife. Her requirements have always been the smallest, lightest computer available. She only does web browsing and Office so she doesn't need anything ultra powerful. I bought the first generation Macbook Air for her after it came out. My wife had a small Sony running Windows Me which lasted 3 years. (After 2 of my other friends' Sony computers died in 3 years I gave up on Sony. They may be back with quality but they have lost my business forever) After that died I bought her a small Alienware. Turns out the Alienware had an issue with RAM and overheating. That computer is still running (after I got replacement RAM) but you have to use a laptop chill pad at all times to use it or you get a BSOD. Fed up with the small laptop offerings from the Windows Camp I went and got the Air at that point. It has been running rock solid ever since. It is underpowered and my wife does wish it to be a little faster. A new MBA may be in the cards for Christmas - but I may just forgo that and get a 13" MBP so she can run Bootcamp/Parallels efficiently.

I finally got my own Mac in 2009 after messing with the multi-touch trackpad. I have found nothing like it on the Windows side. I chose the Mac as it gave me the maximum amount of freedom to install whatever OS I wanted. I have Windows in Parallels/Bootcamp and Linux on a Parallels Virtual Machine. Not to mention I can use X11 with the Mac so I can ssh and display back any Linux work I need to do.

Sadly OP this type of thread leads to quite nasty flame wars of the old Mac V PC variety and no doubt that is why it was closed.

harryb2448 said:

Sadly OP this type of thread leads to quite nasty flame wars of the old Mac V PC variety and no doubt that is why it was closed.

Click to expand...

I understand . . . And hesitated about posting. But, if you can't say good things about Macs on a Mac forum, where can you?

Also, I used to frequent the switcher threads before I got my first Mac and thought I would share my experience with those still considering taking the plunge.

Sadly Razormac we get a lot of trolls looking for threads to start their little games with and was not suggesting you were doing that just explaining why sometimesa mods do have to close threads down when things get out of hand

I may have misread or misunderstood the purpose of this thread but my gut instinct is that it is asking folk to compare the good/bad points of Mac PCs and Windows based PCs. Having only switched this Mac Mini, my first ever Mac desktop, on for the first time ever this morning I can't call myself an expert Mac user yet (that will have to wait until next week, ;D )

So far, I see good and bad points when comparing this Mac Mini to the HP DC7100 SFF that it has replaced. Some of the issues will no doubt be minor teething troubles caused by the change over. Things like finding out how to do a Right mouse click, for instance. A doddle with a standard USB mouse (as opposed to a proper Apple mouse) The way I found was to press and hold the ctrl key while clicking the mouse. There may be other ways but it does seem a little strange to need two hands to do a mouse click.
There is absolutely no getting round the fact that this Mac Mini looks a lot better sat in the unit under the 50" plasma screen which acts as my monitor and it is also quieter than the old Windows PC (which was fairly quiet itself) which is great because when watching things like BBCi Player you don't have a noisy fan running in the background.
But as I said earlier in a roundabout sort of way, my biggest problems at present are probably caused by the newness (to me) of the Operating System and the, well, just differentness of the whole new Mac experience.

Razormac said:

I understand . . . And hesitated about posting. But, if you can't say good things about Macs on a Mac forum, where can you?

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I agree...but it's the "Trolls" that purposely join Mac-Forums just to "flame" a post such as this which sends the whole thread into the "crapper"! And it only takes one!



- Nick

pigoo3 said:

I agree...but it's the "Trolls" that purposely join Mac-Forums just to "flame" a post such as this which sends the whole thread into the "crapper"! And it only takes one!

- Nick

Click to expand...

Nick,
I like your appliance there, but I'm afraid I would feel a bit inhibited using it. But it might be nice to put one in the guest bedroom.

Razormac said:

Nick,
I like your appliance there, but I'm afraid I would feel a bit inhibited using it. But it might be nice to put one in the guest bedroom.

Click to expand...

Maybe it's an "appliance" for the Trolls to use!

- Nick

If that tongue moves I may get one for the missus.

pigoo3 said:

I agree...but it's the "Trolls" that purposely join Mac-Forums just to "flame" a post such as this which sends the whole thread into the "crapper"! And it only takes one!

- Nick

Click to expand...

the only power people have over you is what you give them. that and the power they take. haha. still dont give the trolls power and they will have none. that is all.

pigoo3 said:

I agree...but it's the "Trolls" that purposely join Mac-Forums just to "flame" a post such as this which sends the whole thread into the "crapper"! And it only takes one!

- Nick

Click to expand...

That's some sharp teeth you got there. >_>"

5tevie said:

Things like finding out how to do a Right mouse click, for instance. A doddle with a standard USB mouse (as opposed to a proper Apple mouse) The way I found was to press and hold the ctrl key while clicking the mouse. There may be other ways but it does seem a little strange to need two hands to do a mouse click.

Click to expand...

You can right click on a Mac with any standard two button mouse. The only thing that is odd is that Apple leaves this option turned off by default.

Mac 101: Enable Right Click on Macs: Apple

jaygrey wrote ..... You can right click on a Mac with any standard two button mouse.

Isn't that what I said?
I wrote earlier .... A doddle with a standard USB mouse (as opposed to a proper Apple mouse)

For clarification, I'm using a Bluetooth Keyboard and a Magic Mouse. (which only has one button)

I've had an experience similar to many of the other posters. Despite only being 18, growing in the digital age I've been exposed to many different devices running Windows, and I've used everything from '98 to Windows 7; brands from Toshiba to Dell to HP, etc. and let me say that I grew sick of every single one.

My breaking point, however, was Vista. The UI on that thing was, and is, absolutely horrid. Nothing worked without clicking 'yes' three times, and god-forbid you had a couple things running at once; everything would overheat and become laggy...in short, after 'breaking' multiple times a week, I'd had enough. And it wasn't even my laptop.

So when the time came around to shop for a laptop that I could use for college, I had been looking at some of the mid-range Windows laptops--the Inspiron, a Toshiba Satellite, etc.--and then I stumbled into the Apple store in my area. Within minutes I was in love with the Macbook (Pro) and I spent a long time trying to find out how to get one. I had thought I would be stuck with a netbook or an old, old, old old old 7 pound BRICK of a Toshiba running Vista.

I did, however, end up getting the Macbook Pro, 13". In my opinion, it's been absolutely perfect; the keyboard, trackpad (oh my god the trackpad <3 ), screen, every piece of hardware is beautiful and I don't feel like it's some cheap computer that'll break in a year; I think I'll be getting anywhere from four to five years with this thing, and that's okay with me. Running OS X Snow Leopard? It's beautiful. Everything works. Period.

Elegant Esthetic ..... Nice tale but sadly you are in for disappointment.
Not with the Mac, I hasten to add, or indeed with anything Mac related.
I have only been a Mac owner for a few days but I did a LOT of research before taking the plunge. (my desktop PC last week was an HP/Compaq DC7100 which I had used every day, bar holidays, for 2 years and any day that I wasn't pounding the keys for 10 hours or more felt like I was sneaking a day off. Did it ever break down? Not once.
So without meaning any offense in any way, shape or form it is sometimes what we users do TO computers that breaks them and not a fault within the PC, or laptop itself.
Having said that, your comments about Vista are spot on but I was lucky never to have that abomination on any of my own PCs.

As to why you will be disappointed ..... In about a years time, Apple will bring out a shiny new version of the MacBook and you will start to drool every time you see it or hear about it. You will look at your lappy and instead of thinking, "What a fabulous machine this is. It simply could not be any better." You will be thinking instead, "Maybe if I sell the dog and one of the kids I will be able to get this new Mac."

Nah; I'm generally content with something once I have it and get used to it; my needs for a computer are rather low, and I'm really not that interested in a faster processor or whatever they could come out with. I am itching for an iPad, but I'll be happy with this laptop for a long time.