Tuesday, April 17th, 2007...2:22 pm
THE COMPUTING MACHINE, IT IS GETTING REPLACED
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The old one is pretty much over – a relic after three years.
So what should I replace it with? We’re tossing up whether to get a Mac or a desktop PC, although I’ve just got this shiny new (Billion VOIP) modem and I don’t know whether it loves Macs or not. The absolute max budget for everything is $3000. I wish to read blogs and process the words, and Owy wishes to do tricky things with his music.
Tell me why you love your machine …
29 Comments
April 17th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
What are you crazy?……oh yeah. Mac of course. Why do I love it so? Well…….ooooh, look! A Mac! Shiny…….and it does all those little things I like……like…..like…….ooooohh, shiny and such a happy face…..
But seriously, for me simplicity and reliability and a new Mac gets you Front Row, I use my big 24 inch iMac as a media center in the living room.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
I have a Mac because the friend who organised getting me a ‘puter was a Mac fanatic. I love mine but I’m not a partisan on principle though. The only drawback I discovered was that you can’t buy cheap computer games for it but that got solved when I discovered World of Warcraft.
Doing everything is exceptionally simple. I understand arty music-y people find macs the dog’s bollocks.
April 17th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
You have less virus hassles with a Mac. That and they’re frigging beautiful. And easy to work with. And you can do PC stuff on a Mac but not the other way around. Isn’t that enough?
April 17th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
I’ve been an Apple fanboi for a few years now, but I think it’s hard to go past an iMac for a reliable, powerful, all-in-one computer. You can get a wireless (bluetooth) mouse and keyboard and not have to worry about cables (except for a power cable).
Probably the best value is the 20″ iMac. Nice big bright wide screen, and a pretty fast computer, well under your $3,000 limit. That’s what we’ll get when we have to give back out 24″ iMac (which is great, but the extra screen real estate is probably not worth the $1000 or so you’d add to the price of the 20″.
I can’t see any reason it wouldn’t work with your VoIP set up, but don’t have any practical experience with such matters myself. It should work with most modern printers, however (we have ours hooked up to a cheap Samsung laser printer and it works great). And you wont need to worry about things like anti-virus or spyware programs, as they don’t tend to affect Macs.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Don’t be so quick to dismiss security issues for Macs people. Things on that front are changing for the worse, but it’s still light years ahead of the PC camp.
For me the Mac/PC choice comes down to the upgrade path. I can upgrade my PC myself, one bit at a time. Can’t do that with Mac.
I think you’ll be quite taken with the iLife suite if you go with Mac. I’m willing to bet that Owy will dance a jig when he starts to play with Garageband – I know I almost did.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Mac.
They are cool and pretty.
April 17th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Upgrade, schmupgrade. For what you want, Zoe, go Mac. Who with a child has got time for DIY upgrades?
April 17th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
MAC. Also, get a laptop.
What are the music things Owen wants to do? Sampling, mixing, manipulating recordings? Dorian does that sort of stuff on his mac. Maybe he could be asked for more information? I don’t know much about it myself. I do think he would like to be asked – bored at home on sick leave at the moment. afufkin@gmail.com
April 17th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I am, so far, sans child, but I would’ve thought that an incremental upgrade option would be something to consider given how much whole computers cost, especially macs.
I reckon you should go play with a mac, Zoe. They work pretty much out of the box & that’ll give you more time with Mr J.
April 17th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Macs seem good.
I want a laptop with wireless so I can blog again, with evenings being spent recovering on the couch cuddled up to beloved comparing spew stains.
But maybe even then it’s a pipedream.
April 18th, 2007 at 3:00 am
Dean’s possibly on the money with the upgrade option. Depending on the age and build of the relic PC (I’m assuming it’s a PC, otherwise you’d not be asking about Mac’s. People don’t switch back, go figure…), you can improve its performance by dropping in new bits, for much less than the cost of a new PC. Failing a hardware option, a complete wipe and rebuild will have it feeling like a new machine. Windows PCs suffer bit-rot; as they get older performance (mainly file system) degrades, so a fresh install of Windows can improve things, but only if it’s a complete format and rebuild. So there are options other than complete new purchase.
On the other hand, if you’re just looking for a good place to drop Mr. Howard’s baby bonus, the long and short is the Mac will work out of the box and looks aside will be far less of a nuisance to own. PC’s are cheaper and play games. Both read blogs, and both do music. There’s a bunch of free software for PC’s to do music things, but they don’t hold a candle to the Mac’s free music offerings. But with the money you save on a PC, you could potentially buy software which does better. It depends largely on what Owy wants to do music wise.
All said, I’d probably go with a Mac. If you know your upper limit and are willing to blow the lot, it’d be overkill on a PC system. Check Dell’s aus website for prices, full systems start from under $1k, so you could get one each, and have money left over. But drop into the shiny new Mac shop in the Canberra Centre and kick the tyres of a few Macs, you may get hooked.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:11 am
We have to take the littlest guy to the doctor outta town today to look at his wocky hips, but will follow up all these leads, thanks.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:28 am
If you do want to go down the PC path, come talk to me
You know why.
(I geef you good price, yes?)
April 18th, 2007 at 8:56 am
MAC. MAC. MAC. MAC. MAC. Wireless, ultra-adaptable (sure to take your modem).
I think iMacs are an incredibly cheap and robust computer, given what you get. I bought an iMac in 1999 that only just began to feel dated in 2005, when the broadband revolution meant people were using much bulkier software that it couldn’t handle. It is still running!
The upgrade facilities of PCs are overrated. I remember one of my exes saying ‘the beauty of a PC is that you just have to stick a screwdriver in the back to fix it’ and another ex saying ‘the beauty of a Mac is that you don’t have to.’
If you choose the MacBook option, there are a few things to watch. You must buy extra memory to make them run without freezing – this costs about $250 so adds to the price. They don’t have a phone line outlet, which is annoying (only a broadband plug – they probably have adapters – but broadband is really worth it, particularly if you want to download regular free software upgrades, which you do, or you can just use the internal wireless modem). They can overheat, which is easy to fix.
The black DVD MacBook, including extra memory, will cost close to your budget limit but the burner is worth it. However, I have a sexy little white MacBook (watch for discolouration on the case) that is 100% gorgeous. It handled my 90 meg PhD thesis without sweating, whereas the eMacs at work groaned and puffed and huffed.
Oh, and they have a neat power supply, which is magnetised, so if a kid trips over the power line it pulls out, meaning your laptop will not crash to the floor!!
I love my MacBook.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Wocky hips?
Poor lil guy, here’s to your hips being ok dude…
April 18th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Hope his wocky hips are ok. Dear little guy.
April 18th, 2007 at 10:08 am
We like macs at our house – you can buy a mac mini for only a little bit of money and hook it up to a cheap monitor. If you already have a mouse and keyboard, you’re set. We have one we’re about to sell on ebay for cheap.
The Squeeze has a powerbook he takes to work on his bike with him, uses a flash imac for all sorts of work related things and to handle his zillions of photos and photographic work at home, a linux desktop machine for programing/hardware nerdery and a crappy windows laptop we use for testing but hide away under the bed otherwise. I also have a bullshit pc box I hook up occasionally for testing websites.
So the type of computer you buy will really depend on your needs and interests.
I use an ibook g4 (with some added memory and stuff to fit all my music) which is fine for all my needs (word processing, blogging and other internet writing, emailing, keeping an electronic calendar, designy/imagey stuff for website and pamphlet/flyer design, basic AV footage editing and DVD making, listening to music and cataloguing my music collection, etc), except DJing. If you’re into DJing, macs aren’t anywhere as good as windows machines, as all the neat shareware and DJing software is windows.
I am a big fan of airtunes (basically a little wireless modem thing that hooks into the back of your stereo, so you can play music (or podcasts) on your itunes that has the sound coming out of the stereo). I use that every single day.
I would like a small windows laptop for DJing (I can’t believe I said that!) but wouldn’t use it for anything else – you never get viruses on macs, they’re really easy to use and you don’t have to install drivers (it all just works out of the box). And they have a really sensible approach to making things work – if you can click and drag, you can run a mac.
When I work at home I hook my laptop up to a large monitor and good keyboard on the desk so I don’t go blind or cripple my hands.
Good luck with the doctor action.
April 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
yes, fingies and toes crossed Zoe.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Why are you asking us Zoe? You didn’t take our advice about baby names Ms “Oh thanks, but I think I’ll call him Jethro after all” did you? So what makes us think you’ll listen to our suggestions about a far more valuable investment?
Oh alright then, since you asked.
Mac.Mac.
MacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMacMac…….Mac.
Mac.Mac.
Mac.
I have both a Mac and a Vaio laptop which I do find superior to the Mac for some very specific tasks but I reckon a Mac would best suit your current circumstances. eg:
Cruising on the web in a Mac kitted out with some decent virus and firewall software is like having a Swiss passport and flying first class. On Swiss Air. You just don’t pick up a fraction of the nasty shit out there that those unwashed hordes of economy-class PC travellers do.
Macs are pretty and more intutitive to use so therefore more kid-friendly. As to whether kids, with their mucky little paws, are more computer-friendly, that’s another question.
Cats also prefer Macs as the clean white lines display shedded hairs to their full advantage.
Sure you can’t get under the hood easily but are you likely to say “well, nothing on the box and the boys are asleep, good time to up upgrade my graphics card”?
Also you can get programs like “Boot Camp” that allow you to install Windows OS and so run a virtual PC on your Mac.
Basically, my recommendation is…
…Mac.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
oh yes he’s right, I forgot, the newer Macs can somehow magically run Windows and all your other blighted pc stuff as well, on demand.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Strip the OS out of your current computer and run a decent linux distribution on it, which’ll almost certainly run faster and more efficiently. There are equivalent applications for just about anything you’ll care to run, and routers are platform-independent. You’ll save yourself a bundle of cash and extend the life of your machine, unless the actual hardware is playing like Allan Border’s busted arse. The best bit is that your kids will fucking hate it and leave it well alone.
The Devil spruiking open-source? Yeah, don’t look so surprised.
April 19th, 2007 at 3:55 am
Not the way to seduce her to the dark side, DD. Temptation should be easy, smooth and jargon-free.
‘Pouuf!’ and a tiny Nabakov (in an ambivelent tux) appears on Zoe’s right shoulder whispering…”Mac…Mac…Mac.., easy, painless, time and kid-friendly”
Good luck DD, hissing into the other ear “Ubuntu…Ubuntu…Ubuntu…only a day’s set-up time and a manual almost as small as the Canberra phone directory.”
April 19th, 2007 at 9:38 am
The fuck are you talking about, N. There’s no manual.
Having thought about it a bit, if Zoe’s asking the question:
She’s quite obviously in the marketplace for a lovin’ brand, whether it cost her a couple of thousand dollars upfront for a basic machine or a few more thousand for the optional extras. The black kittycat’s right. Go and give Steve Jobs your money.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Mac. Because otherwise you’ll have to spend time and money upgrading your virus software all the feckin’ time.
I would only recommend PCs for large number crunching programs such as reporting tools.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Do.Not.Attempt.DYI.Upgrade. Believe me, you do not want this in your life. A new small person, hip or otherwise, is quite enough of the unexpected.
It may be cheaper but it’s a chimera. I know.
Trust them – fly Mac, especially for music fun & games.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
I bought a new computer a few months ago and it was a laptop (Windows) – my first one. I can’t see myself ever going back to being restrained by a desktop.
It’s so good to sit in the backyard on a nice day (I’ve got a wireless modem). Or just simply move to another room when the kids are too noisy.
As for PC/Mac, never owned a Mac but once worked out the cost of switching my Windows programs such as Photoshop to Mac versions (there is no crossover deals s/w deals) and it was prohibitive. Also there are so many little utility programs that I am now used that are not available for Macs.
As for paying to update virus programs, never do it: just use the free AVG program which is automatically updated (again free) daily.
April 19th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
They’re exactly the same but macs are better. for music you can’t get acid on mac but you can get ableton. Pro tools and pro tools plug-ins can’t be hacked any more – yet (as far as I know) – but with your favourite bittorrent app pretty much anything else is available. Plus, macs look better. But Steve Jobs is a tool.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
No, Dorian, Steve Jobs is an application.
Zoe, I think the answer is clear. Go and cheer yourself up with a mac.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
And don’t worry the money difference between the Mac and PC which probably would’ve got you a whole new winter wardrobe!
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