close to switching, a few ?'s

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ive been a pc user for 8 years now and i guess im getting bored and fed up with virus, spyware, slow pc etc.
im seriously considering an imac 17" with "tiger"
id like to use it just for basic web browsing, email and instant messaging.
the one thing that is keeping holding me back from switching over is AOL. lol i know aol is hated but im such a die hard fan of aol. i need it for IM's and email and i love the favorites setup. downside to aol on my pc is its slow, crashes and freezes daily.
i came across a download for a mac version of aol. will this be any different than aol on the pc? is it crappy no matter where its used?
if it runs the same on a mac then i can deal with it but im wondering if it can actually slow down a mac computer?

second, i have comcast internet (wireless) will this work with imac?
third, i notice the imac screen is a bit longer than my pc's square monitor. how do web pages look on an imac? do they fill the entire screen?
 

eric


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are you just talking about aol instant messaging?
if so, there is a program called adium that is sort of an equivelent to trillian on windows (a swiss army knife of chat programs).

actually, i believe the native chat host for ichat, the default chat program on OS X is aolim too. so if that's all you need, you'll be set.


i have comcast high speed. the modem is wired to a linksys router with wireless networking. it all works just fine.
you may have to set up the wep or wpa security if that's been enabled, but it's not too tricky. and if you do have trouble, do a search on these forums - it's been talked about a lot.
 
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ive been a pc user for 8 years now and i guess im getting bored and fed up with virus, spyware, slow pc etc.
im seriously considering an imac 17" with "tiger"
id like to use it just for basic web browsing, email and instant messaging.
the one thing that is keeping holding me back from switching over is AOL. lol i know aol is hated but im such a die hard fan of aol. i need it for IM's and email and i love the favorites setup. downside to aol on my pc is its slow, crashes and freezes daily.
i came across a download for a mac version of aol. will this be any different than aol on the pc? is it crappy no matter where its used?
if it runs the same on a mac then i can deal with it but im wondering if it can actually slow down a mac computer?

second, i have comcast internet (wireless) will this work with imac?
third, i notice the imac screen is a bit longer than my pc's square monitor. how do web pages look on an imac? do they fill the entire screen?

For basic web browsing, email and instant messaging a Mac of any flavor (iMac, Macbook, Macbook pro, Mac mini etc) will work just as they did with your windows PC, but will look much more pleasing. iChat is used for AOL instant messaging, and is very slick. Some people like to use a third party chat application called Adium which is pretty good as well, but iChat is more than adequate. For email Mail (the app that comes with a Mac) should work with your AOL email, but don't hold me to that since I don't use AOL email.

Your Comcast internet wirelss will work with an iMac equipped with an Airport (the laptop models such as the Macbook and Macbook pros come with an Airport network adapter, not sure about the iMac, though I know the Mac Minis do, so perhaps the iMac does..check the specifications before you buy. Airport is the keyword when it comes to Apple wireless.) Also most all modern Macs come with an iSight camera built into the screen for video conferencing (and other stuff) that can be used over AOL instant messaging. At the very least you can send a picture, or depending on your internet speed a full motion video with audio in addition to just the typed stuff.

And if worst comes to worse, any Intel Mac can also run Windows to do all of what you have come to know and despise under either Parallels (yes, it's an 80 dollar bit of software, but it does do windows) or Bootcamp (which is free, but is an either or proposition as in you either run Mac OS X or run Windows in a 'dual boot' mode depending on what you want to do) so if you get a new iMac, Macbook Mac Mini, or Macbook Pro you can still use that cra- er, Windows software that you might be already familiar with if you must. I run Parallels to do the Windows only software that my corporate job requires on my Macbook, while enjoying the benefits of the Apple software for what I need. It is literally having my cake and eating it too.

As for other AOL software, I'm not sure. But perhaps you can use your Mac experience (should you decide to purchase one) to wean you off of the AOL environment to one which is much richer, more intuitive, and less prone to that whole spyware and virus thing that plagues the Windows world.
 
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yeah pretty much the whole aol i want to use. im just addicted to aol, i have it now for 8 years and i have trouble getting used to anything else. i do run firefox on my pc, i use that when aol is being extra slow. i like firefox for browsing but it doesnt have all those fun tabs like aol has (ie favorites on top with cartoon pictures etc) ok i sound like a baby lol but i like the cartoon look of things i guess

are mac's easy to use? can i just learn it as i go like i did windows? or do i need to do some heavy instruction reading before i plug it in?

i think i'll go to bestbuy today and see if i can test run a mac. maybe my next post will be "yay i got a mac" :flower:
if i have any problems i can come here and you guys can help me out?
 
M

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Welcome to Mac-Forums, beemo.

The only way this will work is if you completely forget all about Windows and open your mind to a new way of doing things on a computer. Mac OS X is not Windows, it doesn't work the same way, it doesn't feel the same either.

The worst you could do is buy a Mac just so you can install Windows on it and use only Windows.

If you can let go of the way you did things in Windows and are ready to see what OS X has to offer, then this will work nicely. :girl:
 
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I agree with MHC. As a recent switcher, myself, it takes a little bit of effort to not try to make OSX work like Windows sometimes. If you really want to switch you will learn the OSX way of doing things, and you'll like some of them, and hate others.
 
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One last thing I don't see addressed by the above. Yes, the iMac screen is a bit longer than the average PC screen (has a different "aspect ratio") but everything will display just fine. All that has happened, conceptually, is that you have added some extra pixels to the end of the screen. This will not distort existing stuff - it just gives you more room.

In fact, you are seeing this trend happen in PCs too these days, with the emergence of so called "widescreen monitors".

So, don't worry about it... and, enjoy the extra screen real estate!
 
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Hi beemo,

Well I read your post, and my 333Mhz aqua imac can do everything you need. And quite well too. I'm amazed at what is can do. But getting back to your post I'm having a similar dilemma myself but it's getting sorted out.

But I have to echo what everyone else has said here. If you love your old windows ways that much, get the imac (the high end 17" in the one I'm seriously looking at also), dual boot it, and use which ever OS you feel comfortable with.

And yeah I think too the extra screen real estate of the edges due to the wide screen factor is a huge plus. It makes having 2 apps or documents side by side fit nicely. On my current mac, that's a little hard to do.

And to answer your question are macs easy to use? I'd have to say yes, once you understand that the mac OS is based on drag and drop where windows on the whole isn't. And that the main thing you have to know. Yes having that test run, which you probably already have had is a good idea.

And on a personal note, I learned the mac OS back in the days of OS 5 and the old B&W screens. My first mac didn't even have a hard drive. But my point is I always found the windows system hard to use, sure I learnt it, and I can do it now, but I always found the Mac OS easier to learn.

My advice to you is test run some macs and make your choice, and use what ever OS you want to.

And if I rambled on way too much here, well I'm sorry.
 
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yikes i came across this
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,51926,00.html

my pc now runs windows xp, 2.79 GHz, 512 mb of ram

i have a feeling the imac 17" will run slower than my pc
imac 17" 2.0GHz processor speed compared to my 2.79 GHz
128MB GDDR3 SDRAM compared to my 512 mb of ram

so does this mean the imac will actually run slower than my pc??
if so that doesnt sound too good, i want to go faster not slower :(
 
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Yes I too would like to know what factual evidence that article is based on. Cause to me my old imac with firefox seems to load up and render most web pages pretty quickly still. I don't see any truth in that article. But I could be wrong.

From the article
And, at least in Wired News tests, OS X didn't mimic 9.2's habit of locking up completely, requiring the Mac's power cord and/or battery to be removed in order to reboot it -– hardly a satisfying user experience.

That's just so funny. It's not supposed to mimic it as we all know. I think whoever wrote that article needs I dunno, some sense knocked into him/her.
 
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ok scratch that article :)
i realize that on the web anything can be written true or false

so what about my pc's spec's compared to the imac 17"s???
 
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Umm that article is dated 2002....5 years ago.... 'nuff said

ok forget the article i said

how does the speed compare to my current pc?
it does appear that my pc is faster than the imac 17"??

i found reviews for the 17" on circuit city. the first few gave it good but the last two said its slow. they are new dated 2007 and dec 2006
rating 2.3

intel mac is slow and NOT as fast as people will admit
Reviewer: netMe from los angels,ca on Fri Jan 12 08:39:55 EST 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful

When was the last time apple users have used a newer XP computer??? I am a first time apple buyer and got the 24' with 2gig memory and upgraded video card. My 2 year old amd 1.8 athlon single core was 20% faster in all respects. Maybe it is because theseare newer intel macs and the bugs have not been worked out. If you have photoshop on(even the new cs3) and want to open another program, the spining wheel of death pops up and takes amout 30 seconds to load the new program. Old computer would take about 5to 10 seconds. Loading multiple programs takes forever. For 2k I geta 3 year old cd/dvd burner(24x)?!? . Internet, Flash and other programs have not been written for the new intel mac so they don't work!!!. You can use Roseta, but again why should I havetoput up with running a slow computer.Back to photoshop.Come to find out, most professional use PCs because photoshop is faster with windows. This computer is good, it just runs like a PC 3 or 4 years ago. And yes. it does locks up and crashs about onceevery two weeks.Sure there are fixes and work arounds, but for the money,no more excuses from apple people. Windows PCs have grown up and are just faster and easier to use.a year. Disapointed

Was this review helpful to you? yes no
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meh
Reviewer: grrrr from Bay Area, Ca on Sat Dec 16 01:02:49 EST 2006
14 out of 31 found this review helpful

It's a beautiful computer, and the display is flawless, but i was suprisingly underwhelmed. The first thing I had to do when I plugged it in was to download and wait for a software update that took an hour. I use major graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop, and so far Photoshop runs very slowly on the computer, slower than on most pc's. Tends to go into an odd standby mode (not a screen saver or darkened screen) and when I try to interact with any program after a 5 minute idle period, it takes about a minute for the Mac to warm back up again. Not for use by people who demand performance.
 
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ok forget the article i said

how does the speed compare to my current pc?
it does appear that my pc is faster than the imac 17"??

Even though your PC has a higher clock speed than the iMac, the iMac's processor is probably a lot more advanced. You probably have a Pentium of some sort in your current computer. The iMac has an Intel Core 2 Duo, which is a dual core processor. It runs more efficiently and can handle more processes than your current computer.
 
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Speed is completely relative, and although they both run Intel-based chips, they aren't exactly comparing apples to apples (sorry for the pun). OS X and Windows are two completely different OS's, each with their own way of managing memory and the like. OS X is based on BSD/Unix, and it's underlying code is very different from Windows. OS X is a cleaner OS in many ways, including coding and application execution. Right now I'm using an Mac Mini with an Intel CoreDuo 1.83Ghz processor and 512MB RAM, and for normal day-to-day stuff it smokes my AMD Athlon XP 3200+ with 2GB RAM.
 
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this is all so confusing. i dont wanna blow $1200 bux and end up with a slower computer than what i have :(

so far i havent come across anything that says that mac's are fast, only slow.
sure i want things to run smoothly but it also has to have speed.
im gonna do more research on mac's and also alienware which claims to be the fastest out there
 
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The reviews you've read that say Macs are slow both talk about Photoshop. Photoshop CS2 isn't written to natively run on Intel Macs, so it does run slowly. But you said that you want to use the computer for web browsing, email, and im, which an iMac will have absolutely no problem doing quickly.
 
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The reviews you've read that say Macs are slow both talk about Photoshop. Photoshop CS2 isn't written to natively run on Intel Macs, so it does run slowly. But you said that you want to use the computer for web browsing, email, and im, which an iMac will have absolutely no problem doing quickly.


yeah i dont use any photoshop stuff
thank you, you gave me hope again
:girl:
 
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Here is a link to an article on CNET (A fairly reputable source) on the Core 2 Duo processor. Basically it says it beats AMD's Athlon 64 which, at the time, was already determined to be faster then the Pentium 4 and Pentium D.

http://news.com.com/Intels+Core+2+Duo+lives+up+to+hype/2100-1006_3-6094356.html

I have used PC's since the late 80's and just switched to Mac 2 weeks ago. I am more then happy with the performance of my MacBook 2Ghz Core 2 Duo.
 
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As long as you don't send a bunch of large files in any messenger program on the Mac, you'll be content. File transfer on the mac through Adium or MSN:Mac is ridiculously slow.
 

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