Well Put !!!

It's funny how all Mac users know loads of people that waste their time messing with spyware and virus protection on a Windows machine.

I don't know anyone (short of a few here on FT) that spend any amount of time keeping their machines running.

For a typical home user, that's true (home users don't use hardly any featureset). For corporate users, that statement is so far off the mark as to be laughable. There are tons of complex spreadsheets and documents that will not interchange effectively with any open source solution on any platform.

And that has less to do with any proprietary MSFT design than it does with the fact that particular features don't exist in the Open Source versions.

It's like dismissing Outlook. Outlook just makes your life that much easier, because it puts everything into one place. Email, tasks, calendar, notes, etc. -- I routinely assign tasks to others, and mark emails for followup (which then generates a reminder both in Outlook, and on my phone at the time I specify). Not to mention that we use Exchange 'Public Folders' for a ton of things.

I don't consider my wife a massive technogeek, by the way, and she has yet to ever get nailed by a piece of spyware, etc.

Steve

Be that as it may, one of them that has had trouble is the OP ;)

It is a little hard to compare price point by point. You are maybe getting less memory, but a better OS, probably better customer support and manufacturing QC with a Mac. Get a Mac MapleLeaf! ;)

Yes I have been having problems with my pc, not sure if it is the OS or the age of the computer... this is really the first time I have had major problems with windows.

That is still something I have to figure out. My 2 friends with Mac's say that for my use, it is a waste of $$ and I should just stick with a PC. If I was rich I would buy both LOL

The macs I've worked with (a sample set of about 20, as an IT manager) have all had worse build quality and more hardware issues than the Dell and Lenovo systems we have.

As far as better OS, I've run a number of tasks on my Dell D820, which is functionally identical to a MacBook Pro -- and for video and audio encoding, for example, my laptop is faster. If I spent the same amount of money -- which would have gotten me the 2.33Ghz CPU insteda of the 2.0) -- my laptop would have truly whooped the Mac's behind.

Steve

Ive had less than spotless experience with Dell but I agree about Thinkpads being good, although my experience with Thinkpads have been in the IBM days. I never said that a Mac was faster with some applications than a PC. I said it had a better OS. And yea, I think the Unix based OS on the Macs is better than XP.

Yeah, but this is shared memory. Neither system has more or less actual video memory; they have none. The more memory used by the graphics subsystem in the shared setup, the less will be available for the OS. It's far more likely the right balance is having the OS use the memory, not the graphics subsystem, for almost any use other than heavy graphical gaming. For gaming, a shared memory video setup is not the choice you'd really want anyway.

In other words, there would be no advantage to whatever that oddball spec is on the HP (288MB? Very strange, sounds like a marketing spec not the real one that needs to be compared.) vs the quoted spec for the MacBook. Neither one of these is telling you the story anyway. The MacBook says 64MB, but if you look at the specs page, it says that the memory usage varies and is a minimum of 80MB. Not sure why the 64MB is the quoted spec. Obviously it's not the maximum, and it would appear that 80 is not the maximum either, so comparing the 64 to 288 is meaningless.

Agreed. I'll stick to dedicated video though.

I didn't see anywhere that the OP posted that he was having problems with spyware of virus protection. The OP's computer is 2 1/2 years old and is having some issues, it could simply be a bad application, or a hardware problem.

Claiming the Mac has better quality control than a PC is like comparing apples with oranges. There are $300 PC notebooks, and there are $3000 notebooks, if you compare the QC of a PC notebook in the same price range as a Mac I'm sure you'll see they are very similar. Of course the high end PC's will have better QC than the cheap ones, even Apple has quality differences between their cheaper machines.

And lets not pretend that Apples are perfect, plenty of people have had issues with the new generation machines.

Care to elaborate? I thought you were one of the Apple fans in the forum, but I'm not lurking here every day.

From what I've read, the typical PC user - by my definition to inculde internet surfing, email, word docs, excel spreadsheets, perhaps some simple photo and music file management, and maybe a wireless home network and/or wireless travel use - will be far better off with a trouble-free, virus-free mac. Not to mention great customer service from local Apple stores for those of us lucky enough to live close to one.

But maybe I'm missing something.

The antivirus industry is worth $4B a year, and the anti-spyware industry another $2B a year. Somebody's buying that stuff, and it ain't Mac users.

I think he's referring to typical manufacturing defects, flawed parts getting into the consumer pipeline, that sort of thing. I have a MacBook Pro (2GHz Core Duo, not the newer Core 2 Duo) from, oh, October I think it was, repaired twice for hardware failure. This isn't the same thing as the software which typically works quite well for me. And I don't know for certain that hardware failure is any more common with this model than others. It may well not be, but it was enough to lead me to suggest my boss not get one of these when he was considering getting one of these previous version models recently.

Overall, I don't think hardware failure is any worse with Apple than other computer manufacturers, but I don't really think it's any better either. Hardware failures happen, and when they happen under warranty they get fixed. Apple also has a reputation for better support, but you can find horror stories for this as well when you poke around. (My recent experience with their warranty repair was so-so, not stellar, but not awful.)

I certainly fall on the side of suggesting a serious look at Apple and not falling for the still-common misconceptions about such a choice, but I don't believe it's the panacea for all computer ills.

Going to just have to agree to disagree there.... Spreadsheets are nothing but math operations and with the exception of VB script I've found OpenOffice to be 100% compatible with Excel...

In terms of the outlook thing... there are plenty of opensource, standards complaint packages that have the same kind of integration. I dont have any particular problem with outlook (except its lack of IDLE support). Its my lifeblood on my work laptop... but I'd never recommend for someone outside of a corporate environment who has to use it. I think there are more elegant solutions...but thats just my opinion.

Anytime I am posed the question as to which platform one should go with (MAC or PC), I alway offer them my take on it which is as follows:

MAC: IMO Its hands-down the best choice for the computer newbie or intermediate user (ie internet, email, music management and basic docs). VERY easy to hook up new hardware. Best choice for professional musicians (like myself) and many graphic designers would also concur.

PC: Best choice if you want to play lots of video games, also may be more pleasing to use for an advanced user who is very hands-on and doesn't mind the extra "hassles" that come with adding devices/hardware/drivers etc. Definitely seems to be the logical choice for "Corporate America" whose office files will typically be PC friendly.

The price difference is obviously a factor although I find that if you really want a MAC and you aren't in a hurry you can find some great deals on the Apple Store's "Sale" section (online).

I have been using Apple products since I was in grade school and have never owned a PC however I have some time on them. My GF has a Dell laptop thats about 2 years old and it is in rough shape. All she uses it for is email, web, photos, and some music. My Powerbook is almost 3 years old and I haven't had any of the headaches she is experiencing right now. The only problem I had with this machine was a bad Superdrive after 2 years and Applecare took care of that for me.

It just seems to me that the MAC UI is much more friendly to the average user. I would never argue that MACs are faster, better, etc because its all apples to oranges and a well tuned PC can crush.

Just my .02!

Craig