I have a mac at home but it is starting to get creaky and i guess it is time to start looking for a new laptop.

Firstly i much prefer the Mac OS,
Secondly usage is email, word, internet, streaming media etc, i don’t play games or similar so the demands on the machine won’t be great.

I also have a number of programs that are Windows only.

Looking at prices, macs are for what i need to do a fair bit more expensive. If i buy a windows machine what am i likely to encounter. I know that the SOs Vista laptop is a temperamental heap of junk.
Is this a one off?

I know i can buy a mac and then buy a copy of windows, getting very expensive at this point…

Would i regret getting a windows laptop? As i said i need windows, because the applications i need to use are windows only. Or would i be better off accepting the price hit and getting a refurb macbook and a copy of windows? (can you still buy XP?)

Windows 7 will be out in the Fall.

* I’ll put the kettle on *

In your heart I think you know the right answer already, don’t you.

Fact is, you are Steve’s now. There is no going back.

windows 7, do you really think i am that much of a glutton for punishment, MS’s track record on releasing new systems….. maybe when windows 8 is about to be released it’ll be ok.

Love Macs but cross compatibility was a pain as was hooooge cost of everything.
Moved over to a PC but hate everything about MS
So ended up with a PC running Linux – love it, absolutely love it, loads of opensource software – office application, photo editing, video editing, email, browsers, etc, etc.
Quick to boot, reliable and virus free – if you have a little know how it makes heaps of sense. Also, no illegal software, all free.

Would i regret getting a windows laptop?

Yes.

Windows 7 will be out and Fail.

Because Vista was such a success…

As someone who uses both, there is no contest. Macs are better, simple as that. I consider the extra premium at purchase time to be well worth it, just to have peace of mind.

Why are you even asking this question?

Get yourself a macbook with OS X you know it makes sense, bootcamp for all your old windows stuff 😀
I really enjoy my Imac and i would love to replace my old windozer laptop with a macbook, was unsure at first when i changed but i dont regret it at all

Secondly usage is email, word, internet, streaming media etc, i don’t play games or similar so the demands on the machine won’t be great.

Given the use of the machine, in what ways are the superiority of the Mac OS over MS OS apparent?

Want to pick up mail, click email program. Want to surf click browser etc. Not having a go I’m genuinely interested (the last time I used a MAC was in 1992)

Secondly usage is email, word, internet, streaming media etc, i don’t play games or similar so the demands on the machine won’t be great.

Sound like you getting a Mac is for luxury rather than necessity, nothing wrong with that. You’ll not regret buying a laptop if you get the right one.

My 2001 Mac is still a better, faster, more reliable machine than my 2007 laptop. There are compatability/availability issues but they don’t hinder me on a daily basis like the clockwork PC does.

No brainer really.

A friend of mine is developing some software for Windows. His software guys reckon that his MacBook Pro is the best machine they’ve ever run Windows on!

Get a Mac and if needs be run Bootcamp of Parallels for your windows stuff. If you spec a PC to the same level as a Mac there really isn’t much in it, price wise.

Drac, not so much as luxury, i just want a machine i can rely on and to be honest my experience of windows hasn’t been that good. But i need to have it.

Things like MS Office i need windows, yes i know that it exists on the mac but VBA between platforms is different. things like iPhoto are free and work, i guess there is a windows equivalent?

I know that the SOs Vista laptop is a temperamental heap of junk.
Is this a one off?

Many people seem to bitch about Vista. But in my experience it is notably faster than XP and perfectly stable.

A new laptop with Vista should be free of an legacy issues and run it just fine.

If you spec a PC to the same level as a Mac there really isn’t much in it, price wise.

Absolute bollox. Macs are heavily under-specced compared to similar price PCs. Mac-philes will justify this by telling you that this because the Mac is less resource-hungry (which is probably true).

Mac every time. No argument.

I would always buy Macs for myself now, but I don’t reckon there’s much wrong with Windows XP if you run it on decent hardware and take suitable precautions.

Pretty much grew up on PC’s, but 3 years ago bought a Macbook Pro and never looked back. If I was ever to get a new laptop/computer it would be 100% another Mac. It has nothing to do with “mac fanboys” as some people would put it, but simply because the operating system is much more stable, reliable and comfortable to use, and design of the laptop is very thin and sleek.

Want to pick up mail, click email program.

Want to close down, click Start.

If you really feel the need to be niche and holier-than-thou, linux. Otherwise a PC, everyday of the week. And Vista’s fine, has been for ages…

Want to pick up mail, click email program.

Want to close down, click Start.

Want to maximise a window, double click the menu bar, OOH bugger where did it go?

I would take bluebirds suggestion. Get the Mac so you look cool, install bootcamp or a virtual machine if you need to run software that interacts with the rest of the world.

Just as a matter of interest, on Vista can you see the contents of a file without launching an application to open it? This is a huge time saver on a Mac, when you are looking for a document, but you can’t exactly remember which one it is. You can preview it at full screen size, scroll through the pages, etc., without having to launch Word, Acrobat, whatever. This is especially useful when you use the “coverflow” option. It does not seem to be available on xp (at least on my work pc), but maybe Vista caught up with that?

you can do that in XP

you can do that in XP

how? (genuine question – if it’s possible I’d love to know how!!)

+1 for Linux

If you don’t want to play PC games then it will do everything you need for a fraction of the cost of a Mac.

i’ve been running Vista on a Dell Precision M4300 for a year and a half and have not had any probs.

If you get a reasonable spec PC there is no reason why it shouldn’t run Vista fine. I know several people with Vista and they all have no problems at all.

Even some PC’s look ok now 😉

you can do that in XP

how? (genuine question – if it’s possible I’d love to know how!!)

File viewer

😳 😯 😆

File viewer

Not part of the OS then? Hmmph – can’t install add-ons on work pc

Just as a matter of interest, on Vista can you see the contents of a file without launching an application to open it? T

Yes.

Aah yes – looks great

Funny I just went to Layout and enabled it.

It doesn’t matter.

Really, honestly in the greater scheme of things it will make eff all difference to your life.

If you choose Mac, applause will not spontaneously appear, nor will girls find you more attractive, if you choose a PC bad things will not happen to your pet.

Not part of the OS then? Hmmph – can’t install add-ons on work pc

Vista shows you proper thumbnails of documents – that is usually pretty sufficient to identify the one I need if I can’t remember the filename. Or I can just use Search to find it based on the text it contains.

If I get to the stage where I actually have to open documents and flip through them to figure out if they are the right ones or not then why not just use Word (or whatever)?? Not sure what your (DrJ) supposed advantage is of launching some other app to flip through it and then starting the full application to edit it?

Absolute bollox. Macs are heavily under-specced compared to similar price PCs. Mac-philes will justify this by telling you that this because the Mac is less resource-hungry (which is probably true).

Not really.
For example.

Not sure what your (DrJ) supposed advantage is of launching some other app to flip through it and then starting the full application to edit it?

The advantage is that you don’t have to launch an app at all, so it’s immediate. You can see the document straight away, without waiting for anything. So, for example, I have a folder with all my bank statements in it. What month did I pay the car tax? Hmmm. I could open an app and then open each document in turn (how many clicks to do that? how long to open each docuemnt in turn?), or I can just skim through the documents at OS level (one click, no waiting) and find it very quickly.

Seems a simple thing, but it makes a difference. In my case it makes it feasible to scan all my home documents and then find stuff in them as quickly as flicking through paper.

PMSL at the Gay test…

now we just need a DH vs XC bike for the jey test

+1 for Linux

If you don’t want to play PC games then it will do everything you need for a fraction of the cost of a Mac.

More like “it will do only a tiny fraction of what the Mac will (and waste lots of your life trying to get it to do those things properly)”.

Linux has it’s place, and that is in a server room.

If you choose Mac, applause will not spontaneously appear, nor will girls find you more attractive,

That’s Apple’s latest marketing campaign screwed then, back to the drawing board lads.

The advantage is that you don’t have to launch an app at all, so it’s immediate.

Hopefully you realise that an app is getting launched either way, the only difference is that on the Mac the OS is launching it for you.

Hmmm. I could open an app and then open each document in turn (how many clicks to do that? how long to open each docuemnt in turn?),

Are these spreadsheet files? Why do you have each months bank statement in a separate file??

To my PC-oriented mind that seems like a pretty typical example of Apple supporting users who are doing things in the wrong fairly odd way to start with. I guess in some ways that’s probably the key to the Macs success and why people go on about it being so easy to use.

Meanwhile in PC-land I would have taken the saner approach of putting my bank statements together in a single spreadsheet – so I’d have found it just as quick (plus I’d also be able to do other useful things like compare monthly spending etc).

Wait a little bit longer and Snow Leopard will be available on Intel Macs, although you can upgrade from Leopard at a later date. Snow Leopard drops all the legacy code for PowerPC machines, which will speed things up. I believe it is a provable fact that Macs and PC’s of equivalent spec cost similar amounts. This includes supplied software as well as the hardware. The most important factor, though, is lifespan. My Powerbook is now six years old, and continues to run perfectly happily. It probably needs a new battery, but I usually run it tethered anyway, ‘cos it’s 80Gb h/drive can’t cope with around 150Gb of music and photo files. At work there is a Mac Tower that I used to use at a previous company that was saved from being dumped by the Administrators which is now fourteen years old, and is still being used as a server. In that time I’ve lost count of the number of Wintel boxes I’ve seen scrapped. Also, I just find Windows to be such a miserable, shonky piece of ‘ware; I just don’t know how people put up with it. I started using PC’s in 1990, moving to Macs in ’95. I would never, ever, go back to using Windows out of choice, the occasions I have to use a work PC just makes me more and more aware of how much easier OS X is to use.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\regfile. Once you are there, create a new key called shellex under it, and then create another key under that one with this name:

{8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f}

this is the reason i will never own a P.C.
it’s o.k for geeks to be familiar with this stuff but not everyone understands all that. i couldn’t imagine trying to explain stuff like that to one of your parents over the phone as they try to get a P.C. to work properly.

only once have i had to go into terminal and type a short bit of code in to get something to work properly and it was so long ago i have forgotten what it was i was altering the o.s for.

as for macs doing things in an odd way what is all that C:drive D:drive nonsense?
actually don’t answer that.