Buy a Mac and ruin your life.

I took the plunge, bought a Mac Pro for home. It is ruining my life. I am stuck on PC at work and every pause, crash, blue screen of death, reboot now really makes me angry. You would think Microsoft has the mojo to scrap windows and rewrite the whole thing.
They are torturing us all. Work is too complex with interconnected programs to switch to Mac, trust me I checked.

I'm afraid of the same thing happening to me... Once I get used to having a Mac at home, I may need to buy a Mac Mini for work and secretly keep it under my desk.

What is it at work that you cannot do with a Mac?

I work at an ISP/Web firm. I have the only mac in the place. I'm do 99.9% of my work on the Mac. The only thing I use a PC for (through RDC) is Microsoft CRM which requires IE, and Enterprise Manager for the SQL server. I COULD use SQL4D on Mac for the sql server... but it sucks.

Let us know what hurdles you think you'd have with a Mac at work. I might have solved them and can share with you.

Autocad, Quickbooks linked to a Fedex and other programs. CadCam applications.
I'd would want to swap the whole office over. I don't know that I could run one Mac for quickbooks and the rest PC.

Actually Apple has it pretty good now. Companies looking to upgrade their current systems can now purchase a Mac and run Windows on it. This gets Apple's computers in the door. Now that you have an Apple computer, you can run OS X. So most of the lower level employees who use Microsoft Office can use MS Office on a Mac. This gets the company to slowly roll over to OS X. The effect can now move upwards as 3rd party applications will now have a reason to be made for businesses running OS X.

Ah, sorry... I have no experience with any of those programs.

I would just like to toss in my 2 cents on this issue.

It is unfair to blame Microsoft for the instability of your work machine. The fact of the matter is that Windows XP and Vista are actually very stable OSs. I don't particularly like how they do things and prefer OSX but when it comes to stability they are fine.

What IS the problem with non MAC PCs is the variation in hardware available and the fact that QC in individual hardware components is weak. So I wuold be willing to bet you that your problem has nothing to do with Microsoft. Your problem is the hardware in your box. The ONE big reason that MACs appear so much more stable is the isolationism behind their hardware setups.

If your work PC is truly bothering you that much then I would suggest replacing it with one you built yourself with quality hardware you can stand behind and that did not come off the bargin bin. Microsoft did not build your machine or design any of the hardware in it. Instability is hardly their fault when there are a billion possible hardware combinations to try to support and 90% of the PC hardware out there has some tiny bug in it that is nearly impossible to diagnose as anything other then a slowdown or random freeze in your OS.

Many many people have XP and Vista machine that never have any problems at all. I am typing this from work on a Vista Business box right now. it has never crashed, never had any software related problem of any kind. But I built this PC myself and there is a reason it is stable.

Windows is stable enough with decent drivers installed, but it is probably the most bug-ridden software out there. Software that's poorly designed and written, with bugs pathed and kludged everywhere, doesn't necessarily have to be unstable.

I see your point. So the system as a whole works great as long as you have enough knowledge to build a computer yourself?

I in no way wanted to start a brawl.

I will rephrase. The operating system / hardware combination is very frustrating to say the least. My work machine is a Dell, not bargain bin at all. It has enough ram, I try to keep it clean of “stuff”.

A computer is a tool. I don’t want to know how to build one any more then I want to learn how to build the car I drive.

If the closed model of hardware / software works better I say god bless, I’ll stick with the closed model as much as I can.

BUT, the Mac OS system sure seems more friendly to my non expert eyes.

Just reload the operating system……

Oh, I am not trying to fight or anything. And I am not a Microsoft fanboy. But I try to correct misconceptions when I can and there is simply one HUGE difference between the MAC and MS OS worlds. That difference is the hardware each OS is required to support. The very downfall of the MS PC is the hardware selection that so many people love and claim is a strength.

If the only hardware installed in any MS PC used drivers digitally signed by Microsoft and each peice of hardware was also perfectly bug free then most would run well. Barring user screwups or virus and malware infection.

Virus' though are also not a PC only issue. It is just that MAC arent generally targeted by the virus community.

my own IMAC right now is having its own freezes and driver issues. I have a IMAC 24" with the 2.8 extreme. And I can't log into WoW on it without crashing within minutes and my MAC freezing. this is entirely the fault of the drivers released by Apple. the card is fine. OSX is fine. The drivers certified by apple and made by ATI suck.

Heck, Microsoft keeps me in gas for my car, food on my table and pays the rent. Their software is a pain in the...well you get the idea.

To be fair, yes the latest mature XP and win2k are actually pretty stable, and it's really the applications that run on top of them that are a tad cantakerous.

We're not going to Vista, and the new employer-issued Dell laptop that I'll be getting in November will have XP on it. It's a necessary evil.

My Macbook does all the stuff for ME, and it's very powerful stuff indeed. Movie 'making', iTunes, recording, my personal calendar, managing my web site, personal email, surfing the web, contacts, interacting with my cell phone with new ringtones for free, DVD watching...list goes on. Yeah, I can do all that with Windows, but I don't WANT to do that with Windows.

When I see Windows it makes me think I'm working. When I see Mac OS X it's more recreational (though, still very powerful and I can do things that were never envisioned in the last century....back when Apple had lost it's way. Before the Steve Times. )

I miss quicksilver when im on pc's.

I'd say get a Mac pro and run Windows through parallels on it. Works pretty well for most things save for Games.

On more than one occasion, I've travelled 10miles from the office to Home to do a job on my mac, and then go back to the office to show it to the boss even though there are more 'capable' machines are the office for me to work on...

Goobimama,
Isn't running Parallels and XP on the Macpro the same are running a dell? Aren't you opening yourself up to all the problems. Spy/Mal ware bad drivers.....

You are not opening yourself up to the driver problem because the drivers are provided by Apple for windows and Mac OSX for the hardware you have in your Mac. Be it an Imac or Mac Pro. As for virus' install AVG Free on it and you should be pretty safe from most virus'. Don't use IE. Use Firefox or Safari and you won't have to worry about most spyware and malware or IE security vulnerabilities.

Well how about you don't let parallels use the internet. That will solve your problems. And as for driver incompatibility, it's not so much a problem. Parallels does everything for you.

Or, you can run it on crossover, though I'm not sure if apps like the ones you mentioned will work with Crossover...

I agree with this. I use my mac for video editing, i work at a college and use PCs on a daily basis - for, you guessed it - video editing.

My god. I never realised just how unstable pc's were for this task (even custom built machines - designed for editing!) until I owned a mac. I know i'll never switch back. Unforunately the media dept. are hesitant - mainly due to budget constraints - to move to macs.

I know i'll never switch back. It's all down to windows. They apprently built it from ground up for vista, but really - i doubt it.
It makes me so angry that windows is the leading OS for johnny consumer, infuriating actually - not only is the mac OS easier to use, more friendly, more powerful - it just makes sense.

If Apple would only sell the Macs for the same kinda low prices you can buy PC's for then they truly would have the market cracked and the evil MS empire would lose significant market share

Del said:

If Apple would only sell the Macs for the same kinda low prices you can buy PC's for then they truly would have the market cracked and the evil MS empire would lose significant market share

Click to expand...

There's no guarantee of that. And they would then sell machines with the same build quality and components as those low-priced PCs. I'll take my well-built Imac over a noisy, poorly-built PC anyway.

Mass-market PCs have cases costing £40-50 - the only PC case I've bought anywhere near Apples quality was over £100.

vaughan80 said:

They apprently built it from ground up for vista, but really - i doubt it.

Click to expand...

Vista is based on Windows Server 2003; it wasn't built from the ground up. It was however built *three times* before they released it - once based on Windows XP SP1, then on SP2, then finally on Server 2003. Obviously Bill couldn't make his mind up which one worked the best...

Too bad he didn't realise that none of them work properly.