New Computer - Apple or PC ?

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Originally Posted by incisor

you need to factor more than that to get anywhere near a true comparison to a std pc user.

ease of use, apple is much more intuitive for the majority of people

% of hardware that fails

years you get out of it and the cost to run it

it might be true that apple uses pc hardware but it is how they put it together that makes the difference, rarely do you see a consumer pc with the same raw low level speed spec as apple get out of their designs. there are exceptions, but very few

mac might be seen as controlling but their product works out of the box, and it works well and rarely hiccups and thats what most people want. enthusiasts are drawn to that sort of philosophy, thats why they drive land rovers and the like.

not to mention bsd flogs linux any day. :D:D:D

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Agreed - there is more to it. However among my colleagues there are mac and high end pc (Dell, compaq and a few small shop builds) users. The pcs mostly run linux. All computers do a lot of modelling and simulation. The macs have the same or worse hardware reliability. One (macbook pro?) went through a couple of motherboards and 3 hard drives in the first few months after purchase.

p.s. - I was seriously considering a Mac for my latest machine, but having to justify a "business case" for a non-dell at work is a PITA these days.

p.p.s - yes I am sure it does!

p.p.p.s - I hate dells, despite the fact they have become very reliable in the last few years. Some of my colleagues run the new alienware machines for high end modeling and visualisation.

Buy Michelle a Mac and yourself a PS3 ;)

PS, don't be too sucked in by the big monitors though, they're cheap as these days.

FWIW, the wife's Macbook runs no faster nor crashes any less than my W7 laptop. Both have pros and cons. I'm not anti or pro either platform - they're all effin computers!

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Originally Posted by vnx205

???

I install Ubuntu (for free). It works. Nothing else needs to be done.

What is all this "time you spend keeping it running" business? :)

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Mucking around with drivers and settings etc maybe?

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Originally Posted by Ranga

PS, don't be too sucked in by the big monitors though, they're cheap as these days.

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No, they're not. Not for the same quality at least.

An iMac 27" can be purchased from Apple for $1,7000.00 - this is a full complete computer with a 27" monitor as part of.
The only equivalent monitor is the Dell 27" unit. They are actually the same LCD. The Dell unit costs $800.00.
So that additional $900.00 has got you a full computer (motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD, PSU, keyboard and mouse, etc.).

Yes, there are some other 27" monitors, such as an AOC offering for cheap around the $300.00 mark. The quality is terrible in comparison (I used to own one and now own the Dell unit), they are huge (the same size as the iMac despite not having the inbuilt PC) and they do not do the same resolution.

If your looking at smaller than 27" then yeah, there are more offerings and they are significantly cheaper. But I assumed by the term "big monitors' were talking about the big boys which are the 27" units.

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Originally Posted by Ranga

FWIW, the wife's Macbook runs no faster nor crashes any less than my W7 laptop. Both have pros and cons. I'm not anti or pro either platform - they're all effin computers!

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I personally have not had a computer freeze in the last 24 months since moving to Mac. Sure I've had Apps crash, a few random log offs (fixed that problem quickly and easily) and a couple of other odd things. But they've been rare and far between. My previous Windows laptops regularly froze requiring hard resets.


BTW - to the original thread started. Have a look at the Apple Refurb store online. Significant savings off the RRP. Still the same 12 month warranty. Can even extend the warranty. Items are generally brand new or like new. Both myself and friends have purchased laptops, iPods, iPads, etc from there and always been very happy with them.

At work I've been given a g4, and a Mac book pro, the boss has 2 pros and an air.

I hate the lot of em.

Build quality is nice, screens are nice but using the things is a PITA.

Networking issues, incompatibilities between OS's, the way everything feels assbackwards....... PC for me.

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Originally Posted by twr7cx

Mucking around with drivers and settings etc maybe?

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Only if you want to. Unless you have unusual hardware drivers are invisible as far as the user is concerned these days.

I am currently running Mint 10 on a netbook and a desktop, and have not needed to even think about drivers for either. The Netbook runs a Gnome desktop, but the PC runs KDE - so that I have more things I can fiddle with!

John

LOL - you had to ask, didn't you Mike :p

I'm sure this thread has totally helped you decide :angel:

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Originally Posted by twr7cx

No, they're not. Not for the same quality at least.

An iMac 27" can be purchased from Apple for $1,7000.00 - this is a full complete computer with a 27" monitor as part of.
The only equivalent monitor is the Dell 27" unit. They are actually the same LCD. The Dell unit costs $800.00.
So that additional $900.00 has got you a full computer (motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD, PSU, keyboard and mouse, etc.).

Yes, there are some other 27" monitors, such as an AOC offering for cheap around the $300.00 mark. The quality is terrible in comparison (I used to own one and now own the Dell unit), they are huge (the same size as the iMac despite not having the inbuilt PC) and they do not do the same resolution.

If your looking at smaller than 27" then yeah, there are more offerings and they are significantly cheaper. But I assumed by the term "big monitors' were talking about the big boys which are the 27" units.





I personally have not had a computer freeze in the last 24 months since moving to Mac. Sure I've had Apps crash, a few random log offs (fixed that problem quickly and easily) and a couple of other odd things. But they've been rare and far between. My previous Windows laptops regularly froze requiring hard resets.


BTW - to the original thread started. Have a look at the Apple Refurb store online. Significant savings off the RRP. Still the same 12 month warranty. Can even extend the warranty. Items are generally brand new or like new. Both myself and friends have purchased laptops, iPods, iPads, etc from there and always been very happy with them.

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agreed - surely most users wouldn't want a 27" though would they? Probably be good as a 2nd TV though, I guess.

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Originally Posted by isuzurover

The macs have the same or worse hardware reliability. One (macbook pro?) went through a couple of motherboards and 3 hard drives in the first few months after purchase.

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Doesn't match my experience at all. I've recently had two mac failures - a g4 Xserve power supply gave up the ghost and a hard drive failed in a 2 year old iMac. The G4 Xserve was a model which was discontinued in Jan 2004, and we have had it running 24/7/365 since it was installed. The iMac hard drive failure was the first I've had for a number of years.

This is based on a current pool of

15 * MacBook Pro's of varying ages
49 * iMac's (max 3 years old.)
2 * Intel XServes
1 * G4 XServe

Up until a year ago the organisation had about 10 eMac's (final model discontinued in October 2005) in service which were up to 8 years old and were still going strong, but were getting too slow to run recent versions of Office.

cheers
Paul

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Originally Posted by twr7cx

Mucking around with drivers and settings etc maybe?

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No, dealing with "dependency hell" when trying to update software which doesn't come prepackaged with the distribution, building kernels to access features that aren't in the standard builds, updating custom kernels each time a security fix is released and so on...

I've been working/messing with *nix operating systems for a long time - starting with NetBSD running on a Mac SE30 back in the mid 90's.