mac or pc

[Donnie]

pocket calculator + can/string

[Faark Orff]

Doesn't anyone want to give me their views on questions I asked in a previous post?

I have decided to go for a Mac for several reasons:

My main question is:

There are two machines I am considering. A 13" Macbook Pro 2.7 Ghz dual core i7 processor or 15" 2.2 Ghz quad core i7. I found an article from PC World where they benchmarked various models. Here is a link:


http://www.pcworld.com/product/817761/a ... l?p=review


As you can see from the two models I am comparing, there is about 25% difference in performance. Is it worth paying 600 euros more for a 25% performance boost? Part of me says no.


Do you really get 7 hours battery life? My Sony VIAO claims it gets 6 hours, but in reality I'd be lucky to get half an hour, if that, with just a very basic setup.

I know a dedicated graphic card is better, so would it be better to go for 15" 2.0 Ghz quad core instead of the 2.2? It will cost about 300 euros more compared to the 2.7 13", but the article in the link shows that there isn't even a 10% performance boost. Seems a lot to pay for a graphic card and an extra half a kilo weight to lug around.

What about things like Apple care? Is it worth paying for 3 years coverage. I hear that if a computer screws up, it usually happens within the first year if not within the first month. Again, will the transistion from Windows to Apple be smooth? Should I stick to what I know? I know XP, but now it is Windows 7. I am not that familiar with it, so if I have to learn operating systems, maybe it is time to change to Apple.

Decisions, decisions.

Please. At least people's opinions on Apple Care. I am totally ignorant of all things Apple.

[jezjonson]

wow eee wee wah (is that the proper borat phrase?).
I knew i would get people "going" with the mac vs pc scenario - that was not my intention tho', altho it was quite good fun...!

It was my intention, just to find the answer - I think because of all the decisions and opinions here I am gonna buy the iMac 27", and maybe forget about macbooks completely, although still not 100% - I might still get the PC - more comments in their favour please..... I am worried to go down the PC line, cos I have to say I LOVE THE command J for consolidation and would hate to move to control J - what a bummer would that be - tired fingers!

I would prefer a laptop mac, but it seems they are much lower specs that the iMacs for the same price - so mad innit?

manoeuvrability of a computer is maybe not important? i Have my old maclaptop anyway to keep for emergencies - I am not gonna scrap it - I do not believe in throwing away old computers !!

[jezjonson]

pocket calculator + can/string

i considered that, but then i found it annoying to clean out the beans and the boolean logic gates

[perplex]

mac all the way. coming from a person who is not bias (windows all my life)

i got a mac pro and couldn't have been happier.

[Tarekith]

I would definitely get Apple Care for a laptop, a new screen or main board will be close to $1000 to fix should anything ever happen. Normally I never buy extended warranties, but Apple stuff is expensive to fix, so it seems like a safer bet. PLus, good or bad, I've noticed people who have Apple Care seem to get much better service when taking their products in for repairs. I've had three MBP batteries (which were no longer holding proper charge) replaced no questions asked right on the spot, even though they technically were no longer under warrenty.

[McQ714]

mac all the way. coming from a person who is not bias (windows all my life)

i got a mac pro and couldn't have been happier.

ummm... that is being biased! in fact, i don't think there is any possible way this could be answered without bias. unless you went to some remote jungle and asked a tribesman, who has never even seen a computer, which computer to get. that would be like going to guitar center and asking the "help" for advice on anything in the pro audio department. they have no clue.

[H20nly]

mac all the way. coming from a person who is not bias (windows all my life)

i got a mac pro and couldn't have been happier.

ummm... that is being biased! in fact, i don't think there is any possible way this could be answered without bias. unless you went to some remote jungle and asked a tribesman, who has never even seen a computer, which computer to get. that would be like going to guitar center and asking the "help" for advice on anything in the pro audio department. they have no clue.

*drum roll*


AND THE WINNER IS....

[friend_kami]

well, apple vs pc is just screaming with biased opinions.
ask yourself this; what will you be using it for?

if you like to get gritty, then osx is great because it is based on freebsd so you can drop down to the terminal and pretty much configure it all you want (with some restricitons ofcourse) and the way it handles services and deamons is just.. well. one of the things that will make you switch from windows to a unix based system, once you understand how that works heh (depending on what you do, ofcourse.)
the other thing to consider is the filesystem.

a good look at the hackintosh community is a good look at how customisable it is, the way they can take a stockdriver and customise it without much hassle at all.

for me a computer running osx for a musician just makes sense; in windows, if you load up your daw and your usb device cracheses you have no other choice then to shut down your daw, plug it back in, and start your daw again. windows locks the drivers to certain processes, it wants to take them over at all times.
the problem with this comes ofcourse when you have a daw that doesn't like when something suddenly crashes in your system, like an usb device suddenly crashing. very often you will find your daw crashing aswell (Live, anyways). with osx it rarely does that because in osx you can unplug your stuff, and replug them and it goes "hey, i found this thing here, i guess this program wants to use it", and so it gives that software permission to use that device. woot, problem solved.

if you do alot of media related things, osx is to consider because of the filesystem; an ntfs filesystem which handles large amount of files have a tendency to degrade pretty fast, whereas an ext filesystem or the hfs/hfs+ filesystem doesn't do that. (opinions may differ, but in general they don't). this is a very good reason to choose a macintosh over a windows pc, or a linux system at that. in osx you have the option to use your devices as you want, including aggrevated devices (audio then) so you can use several audio cards at once.

osx has preview. windows has preview too, but osx has a preview that requires you to push space and it previews just about ANY file, whereas windows preview sits in it's own pane in t he expliorer window and, ofcourse, requries an extra action to preview, like pressing the play button. you might not think it's a big deal but dealing with 100's or 1000's of audio files, continously moving your mouse to the rfar right and find and press that little button is just horrible + it doesn't always work; it depends whether the service wants to work for the moment or not.

see, windows services can be set to enabled, disable, load on demand and so on, but they also have a tendency to requires alot of dependencies + they aren't always doing what they are told/crashing and refusing to restart and things like that, depending on your hardware setup. osx does this too obviously, but since it's a unixbased system (somewhat), killing a process or restarting a deamon is way easier and rarely requires you to restart your computer, or similar things (kill your xserver, or whathaveyou).

i like to get down and dirty with my computers and getting down and dirty with the terminal with osx is incredibly powerful, whereas in windows you are on all occasions restricted, even in freaking safemode with full administrator rights.

not sure what you are to use your computer for but if you know a thing or two about computers you would probably be better off with a more openended operating system, ie osx or a linux distrobution. if you have a computer that you use to email, surf the web and occasionally do a music noodle or two, then windows is for you.
the only reason i am sitting on windows with this piece of shit laptop is because i haven't been able to hackintosh it properly yet. in the meantime it has crashed on me an incredible amount of times, and most of the time it is because of hung process (usually live crashing because of.. well. whatever it fancies), and the only way to resoolve it is to restart the computer; you can't even kill it with pskill.

your call, but yeah. if you are somewhat of a poweruser, windows will make you scream and possibly throw your computer out the window, no matter what "optimisations" you might have done.

[camoz]

defently mac! coming from pc but never ever pc

[dancing Ray]

mac

[dancing Ray]

pc

[dancing Ray]

.
.
.
and so forth...

[friend_kami]

amiga.

[H20nly]

take it from the top