Thinking about ditching my PC for a Mac

[morcar]

I have to say I have gotten major bored of my PC over the last few days and its got me thinking about getting a Mac.

Problem is I don't know much about them and i would trade my i5 gaming PC for one.

I am guess i could get a good deal on trading my PC for one but without being in the know about Mac I am too afraid of getting royally ripped off.

Is there anyone on here who can help me in getting me in the know or even guide me in getting the right Mac for my trade ?

cheers

 

[mjnurney]

Does anyone do trade in's? You maybe better off selling the pc private but second hand pc prices are usually not so good...

 

[morcar]

I was also thinking about maybe doing a swap on here.

 

[woodycool]

I have to say, over the last year or so, I'm getting really miffed off with Windows and PCs in general. I've considered defecting to the dark side and getting a Mac, but they are so pricey for what they are. At the moment, I've stuck with XP on my laptop and run Linux desktops.

 

[Wolfy]

If you have an i5 why not just install mac os on it?

 

[morcar]

I tried the hackintosh on it and it wont install it freezes

 

[woodycool]

Hackitosh is a bit fussy about what hardware it's installed on. I've had problems on some systems.

 

[morcar]

is there any other different distros of hackintosh around ?

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Theres a good hackintosh support site, Im sure you know which one it is.

If you have any issues drop me a message either on here or in private and I'll help you out if I can.

Ive been successfully running a hack for a few years now and wouldnt go back to any other machine/system now, well apart from my Amiga projects of course

 

[quarkx]

I just took the leap last fall, and I can honestly say, I have no regrets. I just bought the "basic" i5 Imac and it is incredible. It handles everything from 3D rendering to movie editing just great. The only issue I have had is the DVD drive has died and I will have to take it in at some point.
I though it was over-pricy too, but the quality of my iMac is great, I doubt if I could build a simular quality PC for the price of the Basic i5 Imac (since I got mine, they have come out with a "Budget" i3 iMac.
The nice thing is everything "Just works" out of the box and the screen is phenomenal! I have seen many of PC screens and the thing has just so much nicer colors, probably, because it is all calibrated at the factory.
The only reason, I dual boot to Win7 is that I have tons of PC software, and every once and a while, I need to use something that the Mac doesn't have.
The learning curve is not too bad, and there are a few things that still frustrate me thinking of how to do it the "windows way", but all and all, I am hooked.

This coming from an Anti-Mac guy a few years back. Best of all, no pesky anti-virus software bitching every 5 minutes to update or something. No slowing the start to a crawl, while things go out to the net to update. No tons of start up software by the clock, No MSconfig to worry about.
just so many things work, that really never worked in Windows. I can actually put my Mac to sleep, never worrying if it will actually wake up without re-booting. Things just work.
If your a unix guy, the shell works with most unix commands nicely.
Things don't hang at shut down, though they might stop it, but you never have to worry about the Windows is shutting down screen lasting over night..
just too much to list.

 

[commodorejohn]

If you want to get a feel for it before taking a multi-thousand-dollar leap, you can get used PPC Macs for cheap or free from your local recycle center or someone's attic; anything G4 or later you're likely to find OSX installed on (well, PPC 7450 G4 or later, anyway, I dunno about earlier G4s,) or you could (erm) borrow a copy for testing purposes. Once you're done with that, throw OS9 on that sucker (where applicable) and you've got a primo gaming machine for Marathon, Spin Doctor, or Myst

I'm not really enamored of it, myself, but I wouldn't say it's bad - at least not 10.4, I hear mixed reports of newer versions being dumbed down to match iOS or that not being true at all.

 

[drwho]

I bought a G5 PowerMac a while ago because I do all of my software development at work on Linux boxes and, now, Mac's.

I loved the machine so much, I expanded it to 8GB of memory, installed 2 1TB SATA HD's and bought a couple of really nice monitors for it. It's a dual G5 2.3Ghz machine, and even though some people would laugh at that because they are no longer supported, I find that the machine does absolutely everything I need and then some, and it's fast, AND they are cheap used.

I think it's important to add here that my Amiga's aren't supported anymore either, and that hasn't stopped me.

I recently purchased a 17" MacBook Pro Core i7 as well.

I have basically gotten rid of all but 2 "PC's" in my house at this point. One is a server that runs a forum for some friends and the other is a Sager gaming laptop that I pull out and dust off when LAN gaming Starcraft II with my friends.

My experience with the Mac has been very positive, OS X is essentially BSD Unix underneath a really slick window manager. It's nice to open a terminal in OS X and be able to just do stuff using commands that I have been familiar with for 20 some odd years.

You are correct though, Mac's are pricey, no mistaking that. However, in my opinion it's with really good reason. I find that the hardware and construction of the machines is second to none.

Keep in mind, I'm not an Apple guy. I make fun of friends who have bought iPhone 4s's, but, I have to be honest and say that they make good stuff.

Don't kid yourself either, if there were a company out there who attempted to make a PC with a similar quality level (running Linux of course), they would be charging about the same amount.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Dying optical drives are very common on Macs. It does vary a little in terms of which model they use; Mat****a/Panasonic/Sony and a couple of others.

Ive had around 5 or 6 die on me now.

I kept taking mine back to the Apple Store, and credit to them, they were very friendly and helpful and replaced the optical unit each time. The fact is that they were just very poor quality to begin with.

In the end I took to replacing mine with the Sony Optiarc models. Ive always had good use and long life from these and can highly recommend them. They dont cost any more than your regular units either.

The most common ones I had fail on me were the Mat****a UJ-8xx series.

Edit : Nice blocking there for obscene/profane words. The model of course is 'm-a-t-s-h-i-t-a'.

 

[Tajmaster]

I keep hearing you yanks saying "pick up a free Mac at the local recycle centre" and such but they dont come by for free often in the UK that Ive seen Im afraid :roll: Unless someone here can point us all to a good source??

 

[quarkx]

I keep hearing you yanks saying "pick up a free Mac at the local recycle centre" and such but they dont come by for free often in the UK that Ive seen Im afraid :roll: Unless someone here can point us all to a good source??

Herein Canada, (well here in Edmonton) it is illegal to TAKE anything FROM the recycling center, so all the computers and such are grinded up and the metals separated from them. Same with the dump/landfill. the sad thing is that at the local dump there are rows of pallets at least 8 feet tall and about a hundred feet long FULL of old computers, and you have to drive by them to get to the dumping center. It just breaks my heart each time we take a load in.

 

[commodorejohn]

I keep hearing you yanks saying "pick up a free Mac at the local recycle centre" and such but they dont come by for free often in the UK that Ive seen Im afraid :roll:

Yeah, I have gathered that - here in the US Apple was omnipresent in schools well through the G4 days, so there's a hell of a lot of 'em laying around, and it was also the brand of choice for a lot of old folks who just wanted to check their email or use a word processor, back when Windows was still arcane and creaky (though I do know some little old ladies who are still using Windows 95 and Outlook Express to this day...) I suppose you guys had the educational niche more filled by Acorn at first; what came after that?

Herein Canada, (well here in Edmonton) it is illegal to TAKE anything FROM the recycling center, so all the computers and such are grinded up and the metals separated from them.

icard

Because reducing electronic waste only counts if you're doing it the way that means you have to buy new equipment, of course...

 

[Tajmaster]

Ahhh, the Apples in schools thing explains a lot

Thank god we didnt have em in our schools :run:

 

[morcar]

Ahhh, the Apples in schools thing explains a lot

Thank god we didnt have em in our schools :run:

When I was in school we had RM Nimbus computers all on a network. I used to love hacking into the master computer and messing about

 

[iainjh]

Hi

I got fed up providing a Pc maintenance service on the wife's/ family Pc just to pick up email and surf, and had the same thoughts a couple of years ago.

And when it died of course I was looking at swapping the motherboard, then processor, then new ram.. New fan... Reinstall windows...oh god it went on. The list went on. I no longer feel I have time to waste on such Pc rebuilding nonsense, never mind the cost

I bought a used intel mac mini off eBay , came with a new mac keyboard and mouse. Haven't looked back! Totally reliable in two years..no fuss, no crashes, time machine for backup is amazing, altogether totally satisfying really



Ok the less good stuff:

it's no use for games really

By default the right mouse button is disabled, that's weird, but an easy option to change

Ntfs support isn't standard ( but free once you know to google for it)

Lack of start menu takes ages to get used to

I still use a Pc to do more complicated stuff - even moving files rather then copying baffles me still

But that's all outweighed by the good. A mac mini can be a good way Into mac as you use an existing screen.

Suggest looking at VMware fusions if you already have licenses for windows and office, this works superbly to run windows stuff under os x

Since bought an apple refurb MacBook pro, delighted with that too !

Give it a go, unless you really need loads of Pc games.. Using the mac is the first time in 15 years I've actually enjoyed using a modern computer, seriously.

Hope some of that helps

 

[morcar]

I think thats my problem I dont enjoy using the PC at all. I can sit by it for 10 mins and i feel myself slipping away into deep sleep.

I never did that with any of my other computers i have owned since 1981.