Question:
Am considering buying a new PC as old one is dying.
Don't have great demands as most use is from internet use and word processing, with some sorting of digital photos etc.
Have come across the Mini Mac which seems pretty cheap and does not take up much space. Have never owned a Mac, and wondered what pros and cons where versus PCs?
Any advice?
Thanks
BFJ
Answers:
Have quick look here
Owners of different machines will argue the case for each. Many users I know who have made the switch to mac have never regretted it.
Answers:
Am considering buying a new PC as old one is dying.
Don't have great demands as most use is from internet use and word processing, with some sorting of digital photos etc.
Have come across the Mini Mac which seems pretty cheap and does not take up much space. Have never owned a Mac, and wondered what pros and cons where versus PCs?
Any advice?
Thanks
BFJ
Go Mac. For what you want it will be perfect, especially the photos bit. All the software you want is included. The only con is that if you use Outlook for email (not Outlook Express), it's a pain to move your email to the Mac, though perfectly possible. The other is that you may have to re-buy Office, which is basically £100 for consumers, though you can get the Apple version for half that which is fine for home use. It will even cost you less to run - those big box PCs gobble electricity. At risk of complicating a simple story, I would say you should wait as long as possible - I know you say your PC is dying, but it's likely the Mac mini will be replaced in the next couple of months. To be honest the current one will do the job just fine for years to come, but if you're the kind of person who gets annoyed by a newer faster machine coming out shortly after you've just put your money down, it's worth bearing in mind. This actually applies to PCs too, though less dramatically: the new chips being put into Macs are being put into PCs too, and are also worth waiting for - it's just the change is more subtle on the PC side.
Too much waffle: go Mac. Go Mac in a couple of months of you can wait; go Mac tomorrow if you can't. By the way if you have an Egg Money card you'll save 5% if you click the link from the Egg Money site. For what I'm guessing you want the bottom of the range machine is probably fine - it's not fashionable to say it, but 40GB is a plenty unless you start getting into music (like hundreds of CDs-worth) or video editing, and it's unlikely you need wireless networking.
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Mac Pros:
1 Lack of viruses, spyware or malware.
2 Integrated 'digital life' products let you concentrate on creativity far more than you can on the PC.
3 Some really amazing programs coming out that are Mac only (check out , , anything by and )
4 Very high build quality and the way that thanks to Apple's vertical model, peripherals etc work as you'd expect.
PC Pros:
1 Games
2 Better personal finance software.
3 It's possible to buy cheaper PCs.
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Definitely go Mac - I've worked on PCs for years, switched to an iMac about a year ago and have never regretted it. Why? Everything the two previous posts have already mentioned!
I luv my Mac.
RoCas
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PC,
Unless you want to wait about 3weeks on average for a repair or parts
and to pay over the odds,
I have nowt against Mac's, its just the truth.
Get a PC, and have some problems but can be fixed relatively easy
and quicker than a Mac
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get a mac if you want it to work for you
get a pc if you want to work for it
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If you decide to go for a Mac, try their own refurbed store
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I love my mac mini. I got one of the silent upgrades with 1.5 GHz G4 more video memory (64mb) and faster hard drive (5400rpm). I just stick it in my bag, and carry it to uni everyday. Small and convenient.
Had it built to order with a gig of ram. COnsider this, because it really is a performace increase from the standard
Forget games... but i installed the entire adobe creative suite 2, macromedia studio and a few other toys on mine and they run great.
That said, you might be better to hold out for Intel minis!
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Mac's are nice, very much an out of the box experience which is good for a novice user, or someone that just wants a computer that works with the minimum amount of fuss.
Personally I'm still a PC enthusiast. If you could get OSX on a pc (which will most likely be possible with the switch in architecture) then I think you'd get the best of both worlds.
If I had £500 to spend though, and could get a top mac mini or a custom built pc, I'd probably go with a pc. Maybe even put Ubuntu or FreeBSD on it for any of those Windows bashers.
Macs are basically machines that work very well and without much time/effort. PC's are more diverse, and require time/learning but give you full control over your system.
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PC,
Unless you want to wait about 3weeks on average for a repair or parts
and to pay over the odds,
I have nowt against Mac's, its just the truth.
Get a PC, and have some problems but can be fixed relatively easy
and quicker than a Mac
I know I'm being trolled, but really! This is complete nonsense. Macs are now made by the same people in Taiwan and China as the other reputable PC brands like Toshiba, IBM / Lenovo, and Dell's laptops. They are specified to a high standard - no higher than IBM, I'm sure - and use virtually all the same parts. Because they're higher specified, there's less chance they'll need to be repaired at all than some dodgy machine put together on an industrial estate - and that's not just my BS, that's what customer satisfaction and reliability surveys say. You're maybe thinking of the old days of SCSI, ADB, and even different monitor connectors. The inside of the new Intel Macs is exactly what PCs are going to start looking like in 2007.
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The inside of the new Intel Macs is exactly what PCs are going to start looking like in 2007.
Eh? PC's are ahead of Mac's if anything.
Dual core has been around for a while, and AMD is the better of the two to go for. The Intel Duo may not be available, but they'll be around soon. PCI-E, DDR2, SATA, they've all been about for ages, so if anything mac's are slowly becoming more like pc's.
Plus there isn't much support yet for the Intel based architecture. It's good in once sense to buy something newer, but you may be waiting a while until everything is fully supported. And code will need to be optimized for the new archictecture as code compilers will be different, so performance gains won't be really noticeable straight away. Instead you could pick up a cheaper ibm mac, but at the risk it may be sooner dated. I'm not saying you should, just pointing out the pro's and con's.
With regards to Intel's comments, I kind of agree if he's referring to sending your mac off to Apple for repairs. PC's are a lot more common so repair options are much wider spread, often more competitive, and you have far more users who can offer help.
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1. This isn't about who got where first - e.g. Macs have had quad-core.
I'm referring to EFI as an alternative to or replacement to BIOS. I don't know (or care) whether it will be mainstream in 2007, but Windows Vista will support it. With a standard Intel motherboard the point is that the hardware will be completely comparable to similarly-specced PC hardware. Therefore, there is no mileage in saying that parts for the one will cost more than the other when clearly they won't.
2. Sending off to Apple? Well yes. Equally if you are under warranty and there's a known flaw you can often get an instant on-the-spot replacement from an Apple store. Your local authorised dealer may turn it around next-day. If you send something back to IBM (comparing like with like - not a corporate plan) or Dell it will be much the same - I don't think the DHL people drive any faster for them! Watchdog have done horror stories on the likes of Tiny taking months. So, not only do I not think one can reach the conclusion that repairs take longer, Apple's record is pretty good in an industry known for being pretty bad at customer support. Survey after survery bears this out. Personally I've had great experiences, whereas my now-local guys in Edinburgh are slow. That said, I've seen what PC World did to my parents PC, and it was a joke. There's not a lot you can conclude from all of this except that some companies offer good support - and I would include both Apple and Dell in that - and some don't. Even those that are good will drop the ball from time to time, and the crappy people may inadvertently hire someone who has a clue from time to time - you know, like people in Dixons who actually know what they're talking about who quit after a week as they realise they meant to go and work in John Lewis.
3. Number of users? Not convinced. Maybe on your street or at your pub but one you get online and measure these things in the millions, it ceases to make any difference. You could even argue with less variability in configuration, it's easier to get help. Not only is Google your friend but some of the most comprehensive bug reports and fixes are hosted by Apple.
4. The focus on repairs anyway is misleading. Most electronics equipment dies either through mechanical failure at the end of its life, or heat failure quite early in its life from badly seated or assembled components. "Random" problems mid-life are quite rare. (Bit like people, really.) If it's the latter, use the warranty. If it's mechanical failure, being honest most people will chuck it out and get a new one. You might not; I might not; most people do. It is a fact that most people never open the PC case even once. Get it repaired? Forget about it. So, getting some sort of lemon aside, focusing on repair costs as a reason to get or not to get a computer is just a distraction. A Mac mini is £360. If it starts to go wrong after say four years - by which time it will probably not be the main household computer - is the average person really going to agonise over replacing say a dodgy connector, or are they just going to toss it (hopefully taking it to recycling as it is toxic but that's another topic!)? If it happens after 13 months, well that is just annoying. But then see number 2. Anecdotal experience is useless, really, but to share mine anyway, I had a Mac where the power supply died after 15 months. I was furious as that was the old days where their parts were all custom-designed and did cost more. I called Apple and they replaced it, with labour, for free. Not so much as an angry letter required. I had a problem with my iPod mini and they whisked it off to the iPod spa in Holland, picking it up and dropping it back at my office, for free. I have a lot of time for both IBM and Sony and a grudging respect for Dell as an orgnaisation (though I have to use their PCs at work and hate them) and I suspect a lot of the above would apply just as much to them. But to Packard Bell? Any number of other no-name brand PCs? I don't think so.
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1. Ok you didn't make it clear, you just stated that pc's would look the same by 2007. I was merely disagreeing as pc's generally are further ahead being modular and built to a price, rather than built to a spec. Every example I mentioned was accurate.
2/3. My point was that pc's are more common. There's a lot more support for them, and a lot more issues raised. Like you said Google (groups) is a good example, so many different problems have been experienced due to the large user base that you're more likely to find a solution. And applying this across millions does make a difference. It's basically a bigger community spanning Windows/Linux/BSD.
4. Had a few beers at lunch, too much text to read
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2/3. My point was that pc's are more common. There's a lot more support for them, and a lot more issues raised. Like you said Google (groups) is a good example, so many different problems have been experienced due to the large user base that you're more likely to find a solution.
In some ways, yes, but I know that if I have a problem with my PC, there can be a number of potential causes of problems that could be found in software, BIOS, sound card etc. Finding a PC user with an identical setup is a far, far rarer experience, so given so many variables, troubleshooting my PC ends up as a question of trial and error.
I've found that one perceived disadvantage of Macs - their relative lack of configurability - is a positive advantage when it comes to troubleshooting. I'm fairly confident that any problem I've had with my Mac will have been experienced by someone else and that their solution will help me too.
Mac support is generally excellent. Apple's own discussion boards is a good place to start, but the growing number of Apple Stores with their wonderful Genius Bars is an amazing customer support experience that is hard to translate into cash terms.
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True, very good counterpoint. Although that's beginning to define more between software and hardware between the two.
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bit of fun, but this is a video of mac vs pc lol -