Convince me to go Mac

In that respect I think companies like Dell are way ahead of Apple. I've got 2 Dell XPS 7xx machines at home, and their service is outstanding. Dell even sent a guy to my house when there was a recall and replaced a part at my house, without me having to ask for it. Take that apple. You wont even take my complaints.

I've had Macs since 1986, and except for standard hard drive and RAM failure issues every few years, a couple of Mac Book screen issues,two trashed cases from dropping laptops, and an overheating NVIDIA graphics card issue on my MacPro, I've not experienced any other hardware issues. Between home and office,still run a G5 tower, 4 MacBook Pros, 3 MacPro Servers, a half dozen emacs, 6 iMacs of the last 2-3 generations, a Mac Mini, 3 iPads, 4 iphone 4's. ( I think AT&T is more of a problem than the antenna with iPhones) I've passed down probably a dozen or more still working but long in the tooth macs over the years to schools etc

I do agree that Dell are great with service; which is a bonus. I have had problems working with Dell only when the OS software was not an original Dell Windows installation so they could not help with the software hardware incompatibility issues, but they've always been great with hardware repairs.

But my issue with PC's has never been the hardware - it's with Windows which I am simply too stupid to understand and configure properly.

Well, I must be the only one of these forums who uses a 'pc' and loves it.

Use what you are familiar with. If you stay with Windows, get a top-end machine and it will serve you well.

For all those that use Macs, I'm please you are all happy with your choice. There is no need to get so angry about people who chose to use Windows.

Well said. Everyone has their own personal experiences which drive them in one direction or another. The tipping point for me was a three month project where I worked on the latest Mac Pro and I had to reboot every day after lunch because, by that time, it simply slowed down and often froze. We were running four or five applications at one time and it just didn't like it. We had three identical machines and it was the same story with all of them. For three times the cost of an equivelent PC, that's unacceptable. I've had an SE, IICI, G3, G4, etc. and in my experience, they crashed more than a well configured (and constantly updated) PC. Like I said, everyone has their own story and that's mine.

I recently got in big trouble with a group of Mac people because I dared to say that I've worked on both platforms side by side for over twenty years and simply prefer a Windows machine. You'd have thought I insulted their mothers. Sometimes the Mac folks seem a bit defensive when you question them about why they went the Mac route. I'm not sure why that is - it's just another freakin' tool. Maybe it's because Apple has done a masterful job at selling the Mac lifestyle?

I build my PC's myself and love my latest video editing machine with Windows 7, i7 chip, 12gb RAM, external 2TB Raid 0 HD for video, etc.

I recently got in big trouble with a group of Mac people because I dared to say that I've worked on both platforms side by side for over twenty years and simply prefer a Windows machine. You'd have thought I insulted their mothers. Sometimes the Mac folks seem a bit defensive when you question them about why they went the Mac route. I'm not sure why that is - it's just another freakin' tool.

Well Mac folks have had to deal with a whole lot of BS for years as to why we choose machines that supposedly can't do much, you can't get software for, are too slow, too expensive etc, etc. And it comes down I think not to lifestyle as you infer, but mostly Mac folks liking the simplicity and intuitiveness of using a Mac, going all the way back to when I preferred my point and click mouse GUI, and I was considered retarded by PC users because I did not want to learn a whole bunch of MS-DOS keyboard commands.

You are 100% right computers are just tools and everyone should choose the tool that works best for them. Apple over the years has done a masterful job of building tools that are plug and play, intuitive and easy to use , that's what their whole brand is all about, whether it was the first Macintosh or an iPad. That has simply never been an emphasis of the PC and Windows platform.

QUOTE (Poliwog @ Jan 18 2011, 09:47 AM) *

There is no reason to vilify MS Windows to justify your purchase.

 

No ones's vilifying users, just debating the merits or disadvantages of two product options.

Umm, maybe I'm slipping into speaking English as a second language, so to speak , but how do you get vilifying users out of me asking people not to speak badly of the operating system(Windows) they are foregoing in search of another operating system(Apple)? I'm perplexed.

Oh how surprising, a Mac vs PC debate. biggrin.gif

As soon as I read the title of this thread I thought we would be in another operating systems "free-for-all" and passed on the thread a couple of times before reading it.

Actually as far as these threads tend to go, it's fairly well behaved up to this point anyway.

I think I'll check back in a couple of pages just to see how far the conversation has degenerated and to see who has done what to whom.

Cheers.

Maybe a little bit above and beyond my purpose for posting the topic!! hahaha

Still going lol.

Parts all come out of the same factory.

I have used them and they just drove me nuts plus the lockups.

Maybe I was just asking too much from them.

I got 3 screens here, still on a old 2007 Quad core Win 7 PC and multitasking is a breeze.

HD NLE, Photoshop, illustrator all running at the same time plus email, browsers and heap of other windows...Does not miss a beat

Rendering out from a 60 min edited HDV timeline with AC3 audio to a high quality MPEG 2 DVD file takes like 15 mins...good enough for me.

But you have to have them set up correct or you will go off and join the others.

Perhaps after this we can move onto Split fins vs Blade fins

Well the past 2 days my Asus has been running like a dream!...Maybe I can save the money for a new mac and hit a nice live aboard!

Any tips on how to set my PC up correctly Wagsy!? I need all the help I can get hahaha!!!

Well the past 2 days my Asus has been running like a dream!...Maybe I can save the money for a new mac and hit a nice live aboard!

 

Any tips on how to set my PC up correctly Wagsy!? I need all the help I can get hahaha!!!

It's a well known fact you should threaten your computer with the dustbin occasionally to make it behave.

I don't even try to convince people to switch anymore. It's a painful debate that never ends.

I will, however, say that a well-configured PC is fantastic, just as a well-configured Mac is. The problem is when a person who isn't a computer user by nature tries to use a computer. A PC can end up being TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE really easily. I've seen some people's machines that are so screwed up that they must be completely reformatted to recover. And these people don't even do anything other than browse the web. They didn't know what they were doing, and so their computers were taken over (also, they have like 1000 icons on their desktop).

It is pretty hard to get a new-ish Mac to a state in which it barely runs. I've seen people take them down before, but it's rare (e.g. someone I know tried to uninstall an app by searching for every file with the app's name in it and trashing them -- and it was a generic app, like "word").

Any tips on how to set my PC up correctly Wagsy!? I need all the help I can get hahaha!!!

What are the specs? What OS are you running? What virus software are you running? What photo/video software are you running? How is your hard-drive partitioned?

What are the specs? What OS are you running? What virus software are you running? What photo/video software are you running? How is your hard-drive partitioned?

Asus G73JH

Windows 7

Intel I7 Q720 @ 1.60ghz

8 GB DDR3 667MHz SODIMM

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870, 1G GDDR5 VRAM

OS © 116G

Data (E) 329G

Sdata1(D) 232G

Sdata2 (F) 232G

Trend Micro Security

Adobe CS5 Photoshop/PP

That's a lot of partitions for a laptop. How many physical drives are there?

Well, in theory looks like a good setup to start with. Good OS, fast processor, loads of RAM, your OS is on a different drive to your data, and you're NOT running Norton or Mcaffee. Trend is probably not so bad, but I've always had great success just using the free AVG virus software.

I would explore what processes you have running and start weeding out those you don't need. To start with look at the icons bottom right of your screen and see what you can disable. <CTRL>+<ALT>+<DEL> will show you what processes are running and you'd be surprised what you don't need, but it's going to take some time to read up on each process to find out what it is and if it's needed. Be very careful. Download Autoruns to control what programs start when you boot your computer. It's more powerful than msconfig.

Get any garbage like Realplayer or iTunes off it completely. If you need Realplayer or Quicktime then install Real Alternative Light and QT Lite.

Now then, here's the part that the Mac fanboys are going to enjoy... I would run a series of programs on it every now and then as a health-check, usually before I do major backups:

- Windows Updates

- Full virus scan

- Spybot S&D

- Ad-Aware Free (horribly bloated these days but still finds lots of unwanted stuff)

- Tweaknow Regcleaner

- Windows Defrag

I also run Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware on potentially messy machines.

When you install/run programs like Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware, make sure to update them completely and be very careful not to install the live "resident" stuff ('tea-timer' etc.) or toolbars etc., which will just bog your computer down. You want to run them once in a while then have them not fire up any processes at all at other times.

Besides this there are stacks of tweaks you can do to Windows, but be very careful and don't over-do it. The Videoguys tips & tweaks hasn't been updated for Windows 7 but a lot of it will still apply. I implemented most of their old tweaks for XP.

Edit: On my XP machines I also nuke a lot of temp stuff with a program called CleanUp! I wouldn't recommend it for Windows 7 though, as it hasn't been updated for years. Some of that stuff is now included in Tweaknow Regcleaner. However one program a lot of people use to clean up temporary files is Ccleaner. Years ago I broke an XP installation by being over-zealous with an old version of it, but I get the feeling it's less risky these days and gets very good reports. I would run it occasionally instead of CleanUp! if I was on Windows 7.

Or you can go Mac and Run / Verify Disc Permissions every few months.

Sorry, could not help myself, but then the title of the thread is ' Convince me to go Mac'

But getting back to your problem.

1-When viewing video clips the on occasion the screen will go white and the computer locks up and the only fix is to power it down and reboot.

This is usually something like a driver a dll problem. If it's happening after the vendor wiped everything and started again it sounds like it's something you're introducing.

- Do you have any pirated software on there, especially for video?

- Are your codecs all up to date and working as they should. What video format are you using, ensure the codec for viewing that video type is up to date and relevant.

Take a look in the Event Viewer: Start-Run type "eventvwr" after the crash it will have some red exclamation marks giving you a loose idea of where the problem may have occurred. Things like "shell32.dll caused an exception at module xxx" then you know that that the shell32 driver crapped out for some reason. It won't necessarily tell you the reason, because it's a PC, but you will have a rough idea where the problem lies.

But then you say:

2-It took my 3 attemps to post my topic due to the computer freezing up. It will freeze at random times, internet on or off, starting the computer, shuting it off, at any given moment really. This has been an on going issue and the computer has been sent away 3 times wiped clean with windows recovered and starting from scratch.

This would indicate that it's not a video issue, if it's doing the same when you're just typing eMails. This is more like something is trying to run and crashing the subsystem in a major way. I would probably look at a virus or maybe disk hardware malfunction.

Again, look at the event viewer and find out what was happening just before the hang.

But at the end of the day it just maybe a simple hardware issue and the only way you can cure it is replacing the hardware.

Back on the note, you do have to spend to get a decent laptop. I owned a Sony Vaio for years, it finally threw in the towel last year after seven years hard use. It travelled around the world with me and back, I loved it.

I bought my gf Advent for Christmas and it died of severe death before it got to see it's second Christmas.

I bought a Macbook to replace mine and it corrupted the disk, I lost most of my stuff. I was running Vista on it. Since I loaded Snow Leopard, I've not had one glitch. I don't have to worry about spyware, anti virus, DLLs.... it just works.

I come to this discussion late but here is my experience. I have been using Final Cut Pro since version 1 and have been Apple certified for FCP since Studio 1 and teach it via iChat or in person. I truly believe that Final Cut Pro is an NLE that one will never outgrow. While there are times I need to use a 3rd party plug in or go to another app like Apple's Motion or Adobe After Effects, the great majority of what I need and want to do can be done in Final Cut. Add that to the Macs basic stability, its integration with Apple's other applications and its fairly easy learning curve (thought this was not always so), as well as the fact that a great many major studios all use either AVID or Final Cut Pro, you can trust this example from others. Am I experienced with PCs? No. So I can not talk about the bugginess of PC applications or the virus's that they seem to get; all I know is anecdotal from the many PC users out there. Some PC users in this forum are very advanced and are better prepared with their years of experience and knowledge to deal with PC problems that may come up for them.

So ask yourself, are you prepared to test the PC power knowing it may very well blow your budget and frustrated head clear off? Well do ya punk? You gotta know your limitations!

Steve

I am pretty opinionated on this topic and have finally come to the conclusion of building my own hackintosh.

Apple charges a 40% mark-up on all of their hardware. This bothers me something terrible. For a 27 inch iMac the cost is $1700. You could build the exact same computer (sans the beautiful aluminium case) for $1000. I would rather do that, take a day to get OS X installed and save $700 for another z240 strobe.

If you want to build one, it's not the easiest thing in the world but there are lots and lots of guides on how to do it.

I am a tinkerer and also love to save money so this type of project is perfect for me.

Good luck on that. Hope to hear about your final results.

Steve

It is pretty hard to get a new-ish Mac to a state in which it barely runs. I've seen people take them down before, but it's rare (e.g. someone I know tried to uninstall an app by searching for every file with the app's name in it and trashing them -- and it was a generic app, like "word").

There are two very inexpensive apps I reviewed a long time ago, one called App Zapper and the other App Delete. Both of them do a great job at deleting an application and all the hidden plists and folders that may be associated with them( and often there are many). Dragging an App icon to the trash does not fully delete the app. I highly recommend using either of the 2 apps I mentioned.

Steve

I am pretty opinionated on this topic and have finally come to the conclusion of building my own hackintosh.

 

Apple charges a 40% mark-up on all of their hardware. This bothers me something terrible. For a 27 inch iMac the cost is $1700. You could build the exact same computer (sans the beautiful aluminium case) for $1000. I would rather do that, take a day to get OS X installed and save $700 for another z240 strobe.

 

If you want to build one, it's not the easiest thing in the world but there are lots and lots of guides on how to do it.

 

I am a tinkerer and also love to save money so this type of project is perfect for me.

I've had a Hackintosh desktop for over a year. It's great fun if you like to tinker. Plus, you can roll your own like my quad-core 8gb, 2tb storage, ATI 5770 video card unit with dual 24" monitors for about $1200.

I tried doing a Hackintosh laptop, but it's just way too much trouble and Macbook Pros and Airs are so sweet it's kind of a "why bother" type of thing.

As I say, great fun though and very instructional. However, I would also say it's easy to introduce incompatibilities into the system if you don't use EXACTLY the correct motherboard, CPU, RAM, Video card, Sound card, drivers, etc. Just don't expect this to be a panacea to the Apple Tax. With all the time and effort you will use to do a Hackintosh, it's not really saving you much money. The true blue iMacs are pretty darn bulletproof and will update to new versions of the OS flawlessly and is a true plug-and-play, quality solution.

I have my Hackintosh setup to dual boot Win7 and OSX with each OS on it's own SSD and it absolutely ROCKS. Mine is bulletproof, hasn't caused me any issues at all. Let me know if you want specifics on the exact hardware/software/bootloader I'm running.

Oh yeah, and of course I purchased my version of Snow Leopard at the Apple Store for my Hackintosh because I don't like stealing software.

JP