i'm thinking to switch from pc to mac g4? help!

[jooka]

i've been thinking to buy a powerbook g4 or something like that next and switch from pc to mac.

have you switched from pc to mac?
can you point out some good reasons why to switch?
what about bad points? is there any?
what about programs?

i've been using mac in the university time to time, scanning and some e-mailing but that was long time ago. today i'm into digital photographing, internet, web developing, music,..

so, simply... now is your chance to praise your mac if you feel it deserves it! anything is welcome about it.

 

[trpnmonkey41]

I switched to a G4 last July from PC and haven't looked back

Good Points
Lifetime of Systems - I have used this for almost 1 year now and all I have done is added more memory when i had the extra cash
Stability - OS X is on a UNIX mainframe. rare crashes, or system lockups
No Viruses or any serious Spy-Ware (Just your basic tracking cookies pretty much)
and a ton more but its 6:50 in the morning so im tired and have to leave soon but if you just browse around you will see plenty of praise for switching

Programs
the whole iLife suite is excellent (iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, iTunes)
Safari has an excellent built in pop-up filter
Mail.app has the best junk filter I have seen yet

 

[lzasitko]

I switched a while ago

I switched a while ago when I got an iBook. I used a performa for years back when they were new and then needed a PC so that became the wifes computer of choice. Last June I bought her a new iMac, then in Nov I bought a clamshell iBook. A couple weeks ago I bought a brand new 1.33ghz 12" PowerBook. I got this to replace a pc portable that died on me a month or so ago.

pluses for me at least;
- Great lcd screen, of all the pc's I looked at, Toshiba was close and Sony was almost as good but I like Apple's better.
- OSX hands down blows any version of Windoze into the weeds
- Styling is better though some of the new pc's are looking more and more like the Apple's, the Vaio's look pretty good
- Ability to run Windoze if needed. I have Virtual PC v6 and Win2000 on mine and run Autocad, Floorplan and Lightscape without problems. Try to find a emulator on the PC side that will run OSX decently...
- Stability of the system is far better. Mine is never off, just sleeps at night and so far not one crash or anything. My old Toshiba portable that is now a boat anchor used to crash at least one or twice a day and even on my PC desktop with XP and 1gig ram I still have memory problems and crashes.
- My PowerBook came with Quikbooks New User Edition
- If you use Office, the Mac version is much nicer than the PC version, go figure.... Microsoft is it's own competition
- Lack of virus's
- Programs are smaller than the same thing on a PC
- Spam filter in the mail program is the best I have seen yet
- Resale value and lifetime. After 10 years the performa still works though it is long obsolete. I watched a Key Lime Clamshell sell on ebay a month ago for $1025, this is for a computer that has not been on the market since 2001, try getting that much for a PC. My Toshiba that died was not worth fixing after 3 years.....

Drawbacks for me...
- Initial price is higher but once you start comparing the machines the cost is similar.
- Lack of some programs or the same programs for a Mac cost more. I use Autocad all the time and though there is talk of Autodesk making a version for Apple again it is still nowhere in sight. Looked at some tax and accounting programs and the mac versions are more than the PC's but I put that down to market size. If they sell fewer they have to be priced a bit higher, oh well.
- No Appleworks on the PowerBook so I copied it from my iBook
- no point in installing demo programs on a brand new computer. Office demo was installed and soon made it's way to the trashcan

 

[Snuffy]

I'm in the process of making the 'switch'... should transform from the world of Windows to Mac by tomorrow afternoon!

I too used to use a Performa years ago at University and loved it to bits. When I left University I went to the 'Bill Gates' side and that has been it until till tomorrow when I get my new PowerBook!

I'm quite keen to use Virtual PC 6.1 on my 1GHz G4 PowerBook... it is going to have 2GB of RAM whacked in. I've heard that Virtual PC 6.1 is sort of slow but surely with 2GB of RAM it should be fairly usable! Any comments about your experience of Virtual PC on a similar setup?

Looking forward to becoming a Mac person again (even though as I type I'm surrounded by 30 Windows machines humming in the background at work!).

 

[lzasitko]

virtual PC v6

I'm in the process of making the 'switch'... should transform from the world of Windows to Mac by tomorrow afternoon!

I too used to use a Performa years ago at University and loved it to bits. When I left University I went to the 'Bill Gates' side and that has been it until till tomorrow when I get my new PowerBook!

I'm quite keen to use Virtual PC 6.1 on my 1GHz G4 PowerBook... it is going to have 2GB of RAM whacked in. I've heard that Virtual PC 6.1 is sort of slow but surely with 2GB of RAM it should be fairly usable! Any comments about your experience of Virtual PC on a similar setup?

Looking forward to becoming a Mac person again (even though as I type I'm surrounded by 30 Windows machines humming in the background at work!).

Virtual PC v6 is not bad on a powerbook. I have it running on my 12" 1.33ghz 768 meg of ram and have win2000 on it so I can use Autocad. I tried the 1ghz PowerBook for 4 days and decided that I wanted the 1.33ghz with the superdrive. In some rough times I found that it is not that much slower then my Athalon 1800 desktop with 1gig of ram and much faster than on my old toshiba portable (P1-266). The change to the 1.33 ghz was even better, and could load a large drawing (a drawing of the site and elevations of the sydney opera house) and have it finished and redrawn where the older 1ghz is still drawing the graphics on the screen. In reading they say that v6 is around 25% faster then previous versions and with win2000 is very usable.

I friend has a 900mhz iBook with VPC and WinXP and win98se installed and 98 is fine but XP is to slow to be usable.

 

[witeshark]

WinDoZ?

Virtual I friend has a 900mhz iBook with VPC and WinXP and win98se installed and 98 is fine but XP is to slow to be usable.

And you expect What? It is leave the worms to the birds time!

 

[TylerMoney]

well I made the switch..though still use the pc, and now have a new favorite comp.... Apple.....or the Mac. I have no desire to run windows emulators on my mac....I guess that could be because I have a pc?

 

[Snuffy]

Thanks for the reply, Larry!

Got my PowerBook today and can't wait till try it out when I get home! Funny enough my old PC is an AMD Athlon 1800 with 1GB memory too so it would be interesting how my new PowerBook compares once I whack in the 2GB!

Planning to use Windows XP Pro to make life work easier at work though do have a copy of Windows 2000 if it makes Virtual PC faster.

Just can't wait to get home!!!

Alex

 

[Mouse26]

After years of PC and PC laptop ownership, I recently bought a 12" powerbook.

Good Points

1. Stability - My PB has yet to crash. At all. Bimey...
2. Portability - The 12" PB is uncompromisingly powerful for such a small computer, works through any Microsoft office task with ease. Unreal Tournament 2004 also silky smooth.
3. Simplicity - No PC suite of programs can compare to iLife, managing music, photos, documents, calendar etc, it really is so beautifully easy to use.
4. Looks - Yes ok so I'm shallow, but the design of Mac's is unrivalled, the design and build quality puts all PC's (even Vaio's) to abject shame.
5. Battery life - It's like the duracell bunny....
6. Customer service - My ride to Mac ownership was a slightly rocky one, but at each step of the way the service I got from the Apple sales and after sales support was tremendous.

Bad Points

1. Get ready to buy all your software all over again.
2. Apple, make an official mouse with two buttons, just admit you were wrong and give up the design aesthetic...we have more than one finger!
3. Very memory dependant, my PC's operate much more efficiently with less memory, but the Mac's really need alot of it. Make it your first Mac upgrade.
4. Few games, those that do exist can have very high system requirements for the graphical niceties (result of baaad porting of PC games)
5. Simply less variety of software.
6. Software extortionate to buy.
7. Apple charge for Operating Systems upgrades every year, and they're not cheap. The last time I had to shell out for Windows it was XP, and not another windows operating system is planned until 2006. Why so often, Apple??

Overall though, the powerbook was one of my best purchases I've ever made, and I now understand the near-fanatical loyalty to the Apple brand.

 

[lzasitko]

Same here

Thanks for the reply, Larry!

Got my PowerBook today and can't wait till try it out when I get home! Funny enough my old PC is an AMD Athlon 1800 with 1GB memory too so it would be interesting how my new PowerBook compares once I whack in the 2GB!

Planning to use Windows XP Pro to make life work easier at work though do have a copy of Windows 2000 if it makes Virtual PC faster.

Just can't wait to get home!!!

Alex

My desktop is a Athalon 1800+ 1 gig of ram, a 30gig hd and a 80 gig hd, 64 meg video card. I did some tests using a progra, called Floorplan (home design) and tests were interesting.

XP is a hog for memory and I have had my share of issues with it, I find that I have to reboot as XP with some programs does not release memory. I can't really compare now as I have Autocad 2005 on the desktop and 2002 on the PB. When I find some time I will install 2005 on the PB and see how threy compare. I will be out of town on business for a couple weeks and using both the desktop and portable so will know in a few weeks how they really compare. But under 2000 AC2002 is alright. Where you will notice the difference is that VPC will only emulate up to a 16meg video, evan though my 12" PB has 64. I have tried setting VPC to allocate more ram but seems to make little difference.

 

[witeshark]

After years of PC and PC laptop ownership, I recently bought a 12" powerbook.

Good Points

1. Stability - My PB has yet to crash. At all. Bimey...

Bad Points

2. Apple, make an official mouse with two buttons, just admit you were wrong and give up the design aesthetic...we have more than one finger!

Overall though, the powerbook was one of my best purchases I've ever made, and I now understand the near-fanatical loyalty to the Apple brand.

All right click functions are on the keyboard, Apple C copies, V paste. Control + mouse click copies images, very easy. Mac doesn't need third party firewall, adaware, spyware, spy search and destroy, virus scan needing to update daily So, what is the question now?

 

[Strider]

Bad Points

1. Get ready to buy all your software all over again.
2. Apple, make an official mouse with two buttons, just admit you were wrong and give up the design aesthetic...we have more than one finger!
3. Very memory dependant, my PC's operate much more efficiently with less memory, but the Mac's really need alot of it. Make it your first Mac upgrade.
4. Few games, those that do exist can have very high system requirements for the graphical niceties (result of baaad porting of PC games)
5. Simply less variety of software.
6. Software extortionate to buy.
7. Apple charge for Operating Systems upgrades every year, and they're not cheap. The last time I had to shell out for Windows it was XP, and not another windows operating system is planned until 2006. Why so often, Apple??

Yea the point about the mouse or trackpad buttons is so true. I use a two button mouse and find it so annoying whilst travelling to use the single button trackpad.

The best feature about the powerbook is its smooth looks