PC vs. Mac

[baldeagle]

I use Macs, PCs and Unix machines at work. Macs represent the best of both worlds. All the power of a unix platform with the ease of use of a PC and great graphics. Our entire department (computer security) has switched to Macs with the exception of the Director and Assistant Director and a handful of others. There is precious little you can do on a PC that you can't also do on a Mac, but the Mac is going to cost you at least twice as much as the PC, maybe more.

Switching from a PC to a Mac is an experience in frustration. You will have to learn the OS all over again. Some things are similar, like Cmd-A instead of Ctl-A, etc., but some things are completely different. Not having a right mouse button will cause you no end of frustration, until you figure it out. Getting the CD to eject will drive you batty.

Bottom line? If you want to spend a lot of money and start learning computers all over again, by all means, get a Mac. Once you learn how it works, you'll never look at PCs the same way again, especially if you're a computer power user. If all you want to do is browse the internet, engage in social networking, do your finances and handle documents, stick with the PC.

I use a 17" Mac Powerbook at home, but I also have a PC. The Powerbook is for work. The PC is for fun and personal use (finances, etc.) The PC cost me a little over $700. The Mac cost you (I'm a state employee) about $2200. (But don't worry. It's worth every penny you paid for it.)

[E2P989]

Certainly are of the potential war and absolutely do not want one. The pros you mentioned are why I'm considering a Mac. I've been lucky for years or all the precautions I've taken have been effective or both.

MagicGlock, do you have any experience with any of the MS Office suite products on your Mac?

Since you'll be spending a good chunk of change by purchasing a MAC, you can save some money and earn some street credz by trying either OpenOffice or LibreOffice:
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/?nodetect
http://www.openoffice.org/porting/mac/

Yeah, that's going to be an issue if I stay with a laptop and may be a deal breaker. That's one reason why I'm considering an iMac, probably the 27". It'll cost more than the PC laptop I'd get, but might be worth it in a desktop.

Well, at least iMacs are somewhat portable for being a desktop. This reminds me when I was back in high school and another student brought in his whole iMac to plug into the classroom's projector, because the school computers ran Windows and didn't have software to play his presentation.

[baldeagle]

Certainly are of the potential war and absolutely do not want one. The pros you mentioned are why I'm considering a Mac. I've been lucky for years or all the precautions I've taken have been effective or both.

MagicGlock, do you have any experience with any of the MS Office suite products on your Mac?

I use Office 2011 on my Macs. Outlook on my workstation at work is a nightmare. I hate it. At home it works fine. I've had zero problems with Word, Excel or Powerpoint.

[SATX-Scrub]

C-dub, I've been a iMac convert for three years now. My mother bought a MacbookPro four years ago, and when I visited her I fell in love with its simplicity (and lack of hard drive noise and rebooting and clunky black boxes under the desk, et al...).

I run Apache Open Office and save my files in Windozer formats that my clunky PC at work has no problems with, and its running Office '07.

I love my 27" screen, and it plays games and surfs the interweb thingy just fine, I use Firefox for that, and it even helps me tune my guitars.

As a bonus, you get some really cool Apple stickers for your safe.

[E2P989]

Not having a right mouse button will cause you no end of frustration, until you figure it out. Getting the CD to eject will drive you batty.

I haven't brushed up on my MAC knowledge recently, but I believe the "mighty mouse" has a right click button. It's just not evident because the casing on the mouse is one piece. Also, I think on MAC laptops, there is a finger gesture for the multitouch trackpads that will be interpreted as a right-click.

The last time I used a CD in a MAC was in elementary school. Do you still eject it by dragging it's icon to the trash bin?

[C-dub]

Switched from PC to Mac about 6 months ago. I'll never go back. It was a bit of a learning curve, but now that I'm used to Mac OS, I love it. This is coming from a student-turned-salesman. I use my computer for emailing, Internet research, and paper writing. Did I pay a premium for Apple product? Yeah...I did. But I don't regret it one bit!

I am a little worried about that. My dad, retired 30+ year IBMer just might disown me if I go over to the dark side.

[E2P989]

Certainly are of the potential war and absolutely do not want one. The pros you mentioned are why I'm considering a Mac. I've been lucky for years or all the precautions I've taken have been effective or both.

MagicGlock, do you have any experience with any of the MS Office suite products on your Mac?

I use Office 2011 on my Macs. Outlook on my workstation at work is a nightmare. I hate it. At home it works fine. I've had zero problems with Word, Excel or Powerpoint.

Have you tried Thunderbird (by Mozilla)?
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/all.html

[E2P989]

As a bonus, you get some really cool Apple stickers for your safe.

Just please don't stick them on your car! A couple days ago, I saw a car with 11(!) Apple stickers on the back window. If I was a bad guy, I know which car I would be breaking into first.

[baldeagle]

First, in response to the idea that MACs are less susceptible to malware, that's because Apple is relying on the idea of "security through obscurity." Macs are only a small percentage of the whole market share, so a cracker (malicious hacker or script kiddie) will get his/her biggest bang for the buck by targeting computers running Windows. If you want the best "security through obscurity," go with Linux.

Thanks for finally jumping in and welcome. Iv'e read these reasons for the apparent increase security level of Macs. However, isn't their OS and basic firewall structure at least a little more difficult to break into?

No Mac's security is not security by obscurity and neither is Linux/Unix. It might be obscure to Windows users, but that's understandable since they know little about it.

All software has flaws. Mac OS is no exception. The important question is does the manufacturer fix the flaws quickly. Apple is doing a better job lately than they have in the past, but they have a way to go. Microsoft has gone from completely miserable to the industry gold standard. That's because they've focused very hard on fixing flaws, they've hired very smart security people and given them the power to get things fixed, and they've been responsive to the marketplace's demands for performance. Oracle, OTOH, is abysmal, and it shows. All the "newer" Windows and Mac exploits use Java almost exclusively, and Oracle seems completely incapable of fixing the problems.

The reason you use a firewall on a host is because you are running a service that can be accessed by "foreign" computers (meaning not your own) and you want to limit or deny that access. They're not magic talismans, and they won't protect you when you engage in dangerous computer behavior (which these days means connecting to the internet.)

[magicglock]

You will get a lot of emotional back and forth over who is better, who is more secure blah blah blah. MAC is secure and you should take the same precautions you would with your PC. The issue is that the majority of malware, virus, hack attempt target the PC market and thus don't impact us MAC users as much.

I do have experience with the MS products on both platforms. It really depends on what you are doing with the software. I can't think of any issues I have encountered with Word. Excel has limitations if you are more than a basic formula user. Many macros written in the PC version are not supported in the MAC version. My work depends on some very complex workbooks that simply will not run in the MAC environment and any Access databases that tie to Excel worksheets are problematic in the transition between the two platforms. I don't remember all of the specifics because I just don't attempt to run that stuff on in the MAC version of the MS suite. I have had more success running that stuff in the windows environment using an emulator than in the MAC environment. I look at it this way, get a iMAC and enjoy all the niceties of MAC and the ability to run your PC environment too! Otherwise, you are stuck with just the same old PC on the latest version of windows that is full of bugs. I am not a self proclaimed expert on either platform so knowledge here is limited to my experience. In my opinion, you won't ever regret a MAC purchase. I have plenty of PCs I regret including the laptop I am using right this minute.

[baldeagle]

Not having a right mouse button will cause you no end of frustration, until you figure it out. Getting the CD to eject will drive you batty.

I haven't brushed up on my MAC knowledge recently, but I believe the "mighty mouse" has a right click button. It's just not evident because the casing on the mouse is one piece. Also, I think on MAC laptops, there is a finger gesture for the multitouch trackpads that will be interpreted as a right-click.

The last time I used a CD in a MAC was in elementary school. Do you still eject it by dragging it's icon to the trash bin?

For a PC user those things are, shall we say, less than self evident? Most will reach for the button on the front of the CD and then go huh????

[C-dub]

Certainly are of the potential war and absolutely do not want one. The pros you mentioned are why I'm considering a Mac. I've been lucky for years or all the precautions I've taken have been effective or both.

MagicGlock, do you have any experience with any of the MS Office suite products on your Mac?

I use Office 2011 on my Macs. Outlook on my workstation at work is a nightmare. I hate it. At home it works fine. I've had zero problems with Word, Excel or Powerpoint.

Interesting. I will have to remain on a PC at work. There's no way they are going to spring for an iMac for me at work. I also work fromhome quite frequently and will have to save files that are compatible with the PC versions. I work heavily with Excel and have some files that are 50-60 Mbs in size.

[baldeagle]

Certainly are of the potential war and absolutely do not want one. The pros you mentioned are why I'm considering a Mac. I've been lucky for years or all the precautions I've taken have been effective or both.

MagicGlock, do you have any experience with any of the MS Office suite products on your Mac?

I use Office 2011 on my Macs. Outlook on my workstation at work is a nightmare. I hate it. At home it works fine. I've had zero problems with Word, Excel or Powerpoint.

Have you tried Thunderbird (by Mozilla)?
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/all.html

I use Mulberry. I'm forced to use Outlook for some things at work. I don't like Thunderbird for the same reason I don't like a lot of other MUAs.

[C-dub]

You will get a lot of emotional back and forth over who is better, who is more secure blah blah blah. MAC is secure and you should take the same precautions you would with your PC. The issue is that the majority of malware, virus, hack attempt target the PC market and thus don't impact us MAC users as much.

I do have experience with the MS products on both platforms. It really depends on what you are doing with the software. I can't think of any issues I have encountered with Word. Excel has limitations if you are more than a basic formula user. Many macros written in the PC version are not supported in the MAC version. My work depends on some very complex workbooks that simply will not run in the MAC environment and any Access databases that tie to Excel worksheets are problematic in the transition between the two platforms. I don't remember all of the specifics because I just don't attempt to run that stuff on in the MAC version of the MS suite. I have had more success running that stuff in the windows environment using an emulator than in the MAC environment. I look at it this way, get a iMAC and enjoy all the niceties of MAC and the ability to run your PC environment too! Otherwise, you are stuck with just the same old PC on the latest version of windows that is full of bugs. I am not a self proclaimed expert on either platform so knowledge here is limited to my experience. In my opinion, you won't ever regret a MAC purchase. I have plenty of PCs I regret including the laptop I am using right this minute.

I guess I'm not really concerned about the arguments over which one is better. They are both good and that really is a Glock/1911 or Ford/Chevy issue. I'm concerned with compatibility across both platforms. If I go Mac I must be able to create and edit files in Excel and Word and work with Outlook. Maybe Outlook is not that big of a deal since we're really just talking about a program to handle e-mail and a calendar.

I don't think I use any macros in any of my spreadsheets, but I do have some complex formulas. Most of those are if/then and statistical in nature, though.

[magicglock]

In that case you should be fine and .doc, .xls, .mdb, etc. is compatible across platforms. Files will open from a jump drive and save just fine from platform to platform. The MS document specifications are not dependent on OS, they are MS Office specific. Someone else mentioned OpenOffice which works well too. Most of my MS office docs open fine in OpenOffice and will save as MS Office files for use on other machines. That software is free.

Take the plunge....I promise you won't regret it. Heck, if you hate it you probably can sell it on Ebay or Craigslist for more than you paid for it anyway.