I'd make the argument that OS X very well suited to the advanced user

I'm also on a roll today... I have 4 "servers" home and ScottC is always giving me a hard time about the power consumption...my wife hates the space they take up and I'm not partial to their heat output... So I replaced them with 4 Mac Mini's today... of course 1 us running Tiger server and 2 are running linux...but needless to say, I'm pretty partial to the hardware and OS X

Scare tactics.

Scare people enough into buying your crap, and they will.

And don't forget; a very large portion of that software is in preinstalled stuff that people don't renew anyway.

Now Im curious. I was thinking of getting a fairly beefy system for personal use, mainly for photo editing. I like Aperture and will get Photoshop soon enough. I would prefer a Mac (due to aperture) but was thinking of getting a Macbook Pro which is pretty pricey for a loaded one. Maybe I should go with multiple minis? How well can you make a cluster type arrangement out of them? Thanks.

I'm using them independently... But you can cluster macs. All macs include Xgrid software which allows you to share the processors. While Xgrid does work quite well, there are some drawbacks. First the setup can be a little tricky. Secondly, the applications need to support Xgrid and I'm not sure if Aperture does...but it may. Finally to get great performance you'd have to make some other significant investments like a faster hard drive for the minis, a gigabit lan setup...

In the end, I think you'd spend more for 2 or 3 minis and the setup than you would for a decked out MBP or MacPro... Its actually a very good question. I've used Xgrid to help transcode video files and it does help a lot, so it really might be worth pursuing!

Well...I would as well but I had to leave myslef at least one positive point for the PC j/k

Craig

If I only needed a desktop and didn't do the work I do, I'd go with a mini hands down. Unfortunately I could do with a MacPro or a well speced up refurbed G5 (now that is an idea) but mostly I can not live without my MacBook Pro.

Even on a business trip I am still working. Like last night I took 1600 pictures at a concert. I now have to sift through those on the flight back to UK and get them back to the band manager ASAP.

2 days earlier, I took 500 pictures of a band of which 200 went to the band.

I also need to do websites, video editing, proposals, contracts etc. My MBP is my life. I back up to hard drives and DVDs because if I lose what is on this machine I'm up creek paddle no sh*t. I have no choice.

A PC that can do the same would cost more. Also, I often deliver sites at clients office. I NEVER want to go through the same thing as I did a few years ago in Luxemburg. Walked in with my laptop, a win2000 server installation on it, flipped lid open, plugged ethernet in and 5 mins later shut everything down and walked off. Got a virus on the system that infected ALL html files in my local server setup. The site was dead. If I'd had the install disks with me it could have been saved but nah... Home I wenrt to start again.

You can not beat the reliability of the Mac. It has never failed me. Not even a hickup. Even now after dropping it rather badly on the floor (luckily in a sleeve) and it landed on the corner all that happened was a small dent in the corner of which most I managed to fix. Superdrive runs fine, nothing wrong with the screen. All perfect. Apart from that tinsy little dent.

*phew*

Aperture on the Mini is a bad choice. Minis have onboard video and limited ram - the two things Aperture likes most. If you're going to be using it wioth large raw files, you're going to want more machine.

So you don't think it really exists? You don't think it's really a problem? Would you run a corporate mail system without antivirus protection?

Stop twisting my words. I never said anything like you turned my words into.

Of course people should run AV software, but my response was about the size of the industry, IMHO people should just run one of the countless FREE AV packages. Symantec and McAfee are in the business of scaring people, scaring people is what makes them money.

Just look at the Symantec and McAfee websites, they even have a "Global threat level indicator". Everything they do, from their red and yellow boxes to their websites is done to scare people into spending >$100 on their crap.

Or, do like I do and don't run one at all but know what you do when you surf, dump IE and Outlook and never open files from an unknown source.

I've NEVER had a virus or any kind of spyware because I keep my system up to date and don't do anything stupid. 99% of all infections are caused by stupidity or just being too damn naive about what you do, like the person that posted that she hooked her laptop up to a network and got infected. If you are going to hook a machine up to a lan you don't know then you'd better make sure you are well protected, you can hardly blame Windows if you get infected if you don't have basic protection, even the most basic of firewall/AV package would have stopped that problem.

I looked up the MBP 17 inch at the Apple Store. It costs $2799. I have a Dell e1705 (9400) with very similar specs (differences noted:no camera on the Dell, I have a 7200 RPM drive, 2 Ghz Core2duo vs 2.3 on the MBP, I have the 3 year service with complete care/ MBP none, I have a 256 MB ATI video card / MBP doesn't say) Total price for my Dell was $2500 (not exact, but much less than $2600). That's a big difference to me. If I add the Apple Care and upgrade the hard drive on the MBP it would be an extra $449. The MBP is significantly more expensive than the Dell that I'm using right now.

Your original post was :"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."

I say, unless you don't know anyone who admins a Windows network, this simply isn't true. Evaluating, purchasing, installing, and maintaining antivirus software is neither free nor cheap for companies.

Can a home user protect themselves for free with AVG? Sure? A knowledgable user like yourself is likely able to remain clean even without antivirus. For the vast majority of users, though, antivirus and antispyware are a fact of life. And a large number of users still wind up at the geek squad getting their machines cleaned because the mcaffee that was bundled on their Dell was a trial version, or didn't protect against spyware.

This is generally a result of a user doing something stupid, sure, but software is supposed to assume that users will do something stupid. Having a machine become unusable because someone wanted a pretty comet cursor is an unacceptable situation. And claiming that this doesn't happen, and is just a figment of Mac users' imaginations is disingenuous at best.

Here's a quote from one smart windows user:

If upfront price is your most important criteria when buying a computer, Apple is probably not going to be the best choice for you. They've shown no desire to get into the low margin, high volume computer business. I will point out that historically, Mac resale values have been very high. This somewhat offsets the initial cost differential.

The person he was replying to (Emma65) said a PC that could do the same would cost more. He's showing that's not true.. The original poster made it sound like a PC laptop couldn't sort pictures or do HTML. My Toshiba does that fine. I think people, from both sides of the aisle, believe they're type of PC is best, and both sides buy propaganda that their "provider" puts out. Some of the MAC/PC ads are cute, but some are downright wrong. Same with some of the propaganda put out by Microsoft.

Macs are known for being better at graphics, but that doesn't mean a PC is like an etch a sketch when it comes to graphics.

Actually I think while most people dont renew their pre-installed crap, their profits come from the people who dont know better and do renew it.

Common sense and a firewall on your router is pretty much the only antivirus you need. I dont know why people insist on touting Firefox/Apple/you-name-it as a replacement for that.

Macs are fine but they are not more stable than PC's. That was true before XP. But XP is rock solid. Lets put it this way when we had Win 98, XP was a relief as it was stable and better. Few complained about that change. But XP is now stable enough that many people cannot see stability or security as a reason to upgrade to Vista.

So give credit where it is use. Win XP aka NT 5.1 has elimated any advantage Macs had with respect to stability of platform.

As for MacBooks they are fine, but its just a consumer choice of what device you want to use at this point, Dell, Mac Panasonic, IBM, whatever. Pick your device. Let no one fool you into getting caught up in the hype of "this one is a better platfrom, the other one is evil" etc...

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