OT: Apple Mac computers

I am getting more & more hacked off with my PC. It was bundled with Microsoft stuff & has become a right PITA.

Freezes all the time, daft error messages etc.

Are these Apple machines any better? All my stuff is in Word, Excel, FrontPage etc. Would they convert?

What sort of software do Apples come with?

Be gentle with me, I can just about drive a computer, let alone understand how it works. Words of one syllable please :-)

Reply to
The Medway Handyman
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Deep question and the subject of many a holy war! Shall we discuss combi boilers instead?

The short answer is they are more of a "walled garden" environment. Vastly fewer hardware configurations to worry about, and built on stable underpinnings with not as much requirement to lower reliability with support of old hardware. So what they do, they will do well and reliably. Generally non techie users will find them easier and faster to learn.

The old criticism that it was harder for experienced users to get "into" them and tweak etc, is also less founded these days.

The down sides are they typically cost more (but that is only purchase price - lifecycle price may well be lower), you will find fewer people able to offer support on them, and some classes of application are far less well supported (games being the big one).

You can get MS office on the Mac as you can Open Office - so yes. Not so sure about FontPage though (but to be fair there are any number of better web authoring tools available anyway that will import your site etc)

OS, networking, Internet, Media players etc. Much the same as windows, although some of the "Toy" apps supplied are actually a bit more useful.

blue touch paper lit, wait for fireworks

Reply to
John Rumm

They are much better. They just work reliably and without dramas. All of the time. I switched to Apple Macs about 5 years ago and it's the best IT related thing I have ever done. I still use Windows notebooks for work (because it's a project supplied machine and so I have to) and it drives me up the wall. I have a couple of Mac notebooks (an older PowerBook and a MacBook) at home and have them connected to external displays with wireless keyboards etc. The best of both worlds in terms of portability and rock solid reliability too.

Check out

formatting link
or go along to one of your local Apple shops.

There is no need to convert your files - they will open regardless of whether you created them on a Windows or Apple Mac computer. You will need to install approporiate software on your Mac - MS Office for Mac is what I use for word processing and spreadsheets, but there are others and some of them are free too.

Here's a 101 for Windows switchers

formatting link
you have any Windows only software that you want to continue to use

- you can do that too via Boot Camp (which boots your Mac as a Windows machine) or via the variety of Windows emulators. I only need to do that for some Uni specific software that requires a Windows environment. I use Boot Camp and it works perfectly.

Go on - make the switch - you won't regret it.

-- Nige Danton

Reply to
Nige Danton

Hose it, install W2000 ( or XP if you really need specific compatibility ) and Open Office - sorted.

If you want to tweak it a bit, check out one of the many guides to Windows Services ( system programs that run in the background ). Many of them are unnecessary for the average user and the response of the system may be much improved by disabling some of them.

formatting link
lot will run on anything down to a 500Mhz machine, though with

1Ghz and above it'll fly nicely.

Might be worth checking in the inside of your machine for dust - overheating typically results in otherwise inexplicable error messages/freezing, as does faulty RAM ( memory ) or a dodgy contact on one of the PCI boards ( give them a wiggle or simply remove and refit ).

If you decide to reinstall, I'd recommend splitting the hard drive into at least three partitions; one for the operating system, one for your data and one for backup. Buy a copy of a drive imaging program ( Acronis and Paragon both produce good examples - and earlier versions can be found for free on computer magazine cover DVDs ). Once you've got your system installed and updated, and your data in place, image the partitions so that you can re-install in mere minutes if the system gets iffy. If that sounds too complicated there are programs ( again by Acronis and Paragon ) that can partition your drive for you once you've installed your operating system.

Regards,

Reply to
Stephen Howard

At the risk of starting a flame/pc/software war you just need to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Alternatively look for Ubuntu....an alternative operating system based on Linux. Will run on the same hard drive as Windoze and provide FREE an operating system and OpenOffice Suite (Amongst other useful stuff) to enable you to carry on regardless, albeit looking slightly different but just as intuitive.

You are welcome to email me for assistance to sort out the PC if you like.... Email sent

Reply to
RW

Stephen Howard coughed up some electrons that declared:

Not at all... Times have changed.

First time I installed Ubuntu, which was about 3 years ago (having used Debian, RedHat, Mandrake/Mandriva and Slackware) I thought it had gone wrong. Answered the questions on disk layout, fell asleep (this was laptop on train going home), woke up to see it asking to finish up and reboot.

I *was* expecting to be asked to interact with it a lot more. Anyway, rebooted it, it was all there and the hardware just worked. All the best[1] programs installed and ready to go.

[1] "Best" is subjective, but a new user would be unlikely to have any issues, eg firefox for web, thunderbird for email, OpenOffice for documents/spreadsheets etc.

In my time I've run Windows and Linux systems professionally on a medium scale (300-1000 machines) mostly for universities.

For the last couple of months I've had to run my home PC dual boot between linux and windows due to needing one particular floor-plan program which really can't manage live 3D under VMWare. I can honestly say that using and looking after the Linux side is half the pain of Windows, and that is a fair view, not a religious one.

The only applications I have left that *need* Windows are TurboFloorPlan Pro, two car service manuals and once in a blue moon, the software to manage my Garmin GPS. All bar the floorplan program run under Windows in a VMWare session.

Cheers

Tim

Reply to
Tim S

Linux? For the computer novice??

Hmmm...controversial!

Regards,

Reply to
Stephen Howard

That would be safer.

I think that that's fair comment. There are not the issues with unstable drivers and Apple manages to have a much tighter control of the environment. Another result is that there is a better performance for a give hardware spec. than is achieved by Windows. Thus a 2.6GHz Macbook Pro runs substantially faster in terms of user experience than an equivalent Windows machine.

I have provided MacBook Pros to non technical users with little time or patience in dealing with technology and not the time to do it and having to be self sufficient. All of them had had the typical problems of Windows in the past - instability, deterioration of operation and performance over time etc. The switch to Macs has eliminated all of these issues - essentially they just work for the non technical user and don't break. Remote diagnosis and access should they ever be needed is easy and far better than provided in Windows.

For technical users, it's possible to get in and make changes if wanted and to have complete development and compilation environments that are quite generic. For example, I can take a wide range of different Linux and BSD software in source form and it will compile and run with little or no modification.

Yes it certainly is. For example, a complete operating system upgrade to Leopard (OS/X 10.5), with all functionality - not home and pro versions - is £85. This is before considering the hours wasted on having to reload Windows when it breaks.

True, although my experience is that Apple dealers and the service arrangements are far better than those of the PC world. They are better trained and can offer beter service because the range is smaller.

Yes, you wouldn't buy a Mac if the primary use is gaming.

The Home Edition of MS Office for the Mac costs £84 - same price range as the Windows equivalent. It doesn't have Frontpage, but there are better authoring tools anyway.

Documents, spreadsheets and presentations are exchangeable both ways. without problems.

I have a very small number of legacy Windows applications. For these, I run VMWare Fusion with a copy of XP as a virtual machine. The initial virtual machine is saved away on another drive and when XP eventually breaks, it can be ditched and reloaded in a minute or two with no faffing around.

Safari is very good as a browser - far better than Internet Exploder, which I think has become less usable recently in terms of how to do simple things. I tend to prefer Firefox because I am using other platforms such as Linux sometimes and the user interface is essentially the same.

Apple Mail is excellent and makes Outlook and Outlook Express look like a sick joke. Especially powerful are the search capabilities which span messages, folders and the whole machine.

At the care and feeding level, the important basics are well implemented. For example, the built in firewall, while it has a simple to use setup interface has the underlying Unix network security and does not suffer the almost daily vulnerabilities of Windows.

The backup facility, Time Machine, included in the OS, does what users actually want from a backup facility - i.e. simple to use and automated and an interface allowing easy retrieval of anything. Basically all one has to do is to plug in an external hard drive and the setup for backup is about three mouse clicks. After that, it's a case of plug in the drive when a backup is wanted and it all happens automagically.

There's no contest really. Just visit the Apple dealer or better an Apple Store and sit and play for a while. Then buy the Mac and live happily ever after.

Reply to
Andy Hall

With Ubuntu, this is pretty much true. It does work well out of the box and remains stable.

It doesn't have quite the polish of the Mac and because it runs on generic PC hardware may have issues on some. Having said that, Ubuntu is reputed to have the broadest driver support among the distributions.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Indeed! Just to add (having switched a few years ago) the iMacs are whisper quiet and comparatively energy efficient, and significant discounts and warranty extensions are available if you buy using the education discount - 18%/3yrs in my case.

Rob

Reply to
Rob

Partner switched at the beginning of the year to a MacBook, and the fan hardly ever cuts in. Except when running Microsoft Windows (in VMWare Fusion - not BootCamp). Even that is moderate and intermittent. But when she runs Microsoft Money the fan runs at high speed and continuously until she closes Money. Does not happen like that with any other software. (Thank you, Microsoft.) Both my and her Windows laptops love running their fans quite a bit of the time.

My assessment? I will buy one for my next machine unless some major reason presents itself.

But there are some wonderful oddities to get used to. Such as fewer keys (quite often need keyboard combinations for simple things like hash symbol). Default single button mouse. (Partner uses her Logitech mouse very happily.)

Note: Partner's machine came with 1GB of memory. We bought and installed

4GB of Crucial memory in the few days after buying it. Very much cheaper than Apple's own, and recommended.
Reply to
Rod

In article , The Medway Handyman scribeth thus

What operating system are you running ?

e.g.

WIN 2000 PRO, XP or Vista?..

Their OK but seem to me to be rather expensive for what they are..

Reply to
tony sayer

================================== Ubuntu Linux is worth considering as it has gained a good reputation for reliability and ease of loading / use. Since you've recently bought a new PC one solution to your problem would be to buy a second hard drive (a reasonable one for about £50-00) and then create a dual boot system keeping Windows on one drive and using the new drive for Ubuntu. The Linux CD (cheap on Ebay) will talk you through the dual boot setup. Total cost will be the cost of the new HD and a CD from Ebay - about £55-00 in total.

The CD is 'live' so you see how Ubuntu looks and how it recognises your hardware before you make any changes to your computer.

Cic.

Reply to
Cicero

M$ stuff doesn't freeze, come up with daft error messages, etc. unless there is something wrong.

It may be a lack of RAM, how much do you have, has it always done this?

If it is doing this but didn't when new its usually user error or a virus (also user error) although there are hardware faults that can cause problems. You can put linux and open office on if you want, if its user error or a virus this will cure it for a while as would reinstalling windows and office. If its the hardware it will probably make no difference. Dying hard disks give the symptoms you describe as the disk pauses to correct errors, do you have S.M.A.R.T. turned on? If you do it will report disk errors, if not you may have to look.

Reply to
dennis

I'm going to ask you to find an hour to just *try* something.

It's Ubuntu, the thing several other people have mentioned.

Go here:

formatting link
is a complete replacement root and branch of all the microsoft software on your machine - but here's the magic bit - for trying it out, it's possible to install it *inside* of windows - as an application you can just try out and remove if you don't like it.

G'wan - try it.

Reply to
dom

Lifecycle price is likely to be higher.. apple produce annual upgrades to the OS, these cost about £99. If you don't go with the upgrade you will eventually stop getting fixes and then you are running software that may have known, unfixed vulnerabilities in it. Add to that the fact that apple stop supporting older machines in their newer OS releases and eventually you have to buy a new machine or run hackable software.

AFAICS you effectively rent an apple and the OS even though you are responsible for all the hardware maintenance, etc.

You can get open office for the mac.

formatting link

Reply to
dennis

No it isn't when everything is included.

You can obtain new versions for around £85

Apple supports 2-3 releases back.

That is the case for all software vendors. Try running XP on a 386.

Clearly you have never owned one.

Reply to
Andy Hall

I can do that and run them on windows, easy really.

However apple produce an upgrade every year, M$ are still producing fixes for XP which is seven years old. So if you upgraded your Mac to the new build each time it would have cost you more than a new PC with windows on it by now (about £500). (Yet more of Andy's flawed logic at work. He will change his tune if Lidl offer a Mac for sale, then they will be the spawn of the devil.)

It doesn't break, I have machine running for years with the original windows on them. This windows breaks is just a myth used by users *without a clue* to explain how they screwed it up.

Those of us that know a bit about computers know when we screw it up and find out why so we don't do it again. Apple of course just don't let you change anything to screw it up, which as you say is OK for the none techy, but you do pay extra for the upgrades despite you saying you don't.

Reply to
dennis

It had show stopping driver issues on two of my laptops, and 7.10 didn't like my 256M vaio as it would start to install and then hang. It needed to alternative install disk as although the install would start in 256M it wouldn't finish. I eventually found this out after asking in the ubuntu groups for help and getting the usual oh he's posting from vista he must be a troll response all windows users get. Very friendly these ubuntu users! I haven't put 8.04 on as Ubuntu just isn't any better at anything than vista is AFAICS.

Reply to
dennis

No it isn't, while OSS may have a lot of functionality there is still software that only runs on windows and/or Mac, if you need that Ubuntu cannot replace windows or anything else. despite what linux zealots say.

WUBI doesn't do that, it sets up a dual boot environment, you don't run ubuntu inside windows at all.

I have run ubuntu inside a M$ VPV2007 BTW, it does work but not something for the novice as you need command line edits.

Reply to
dennis

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