Mac vs PC (primarily Vista)

[Shari]

Some of you already know that I went and bought a new laptop. Its been only a few days but I noticed two very substantial things that are making really annoyed with the Vista program.

1. Its rediculously fucking slow in booting up, and just in general use.
2. So many fucking safety checks. I know you can disable them but then you keep getting a little popup about how your "safety checks" are disabled and would you like to enable them again?

Someone I work with is raving about the use of Macs. I was told they are incapable of getting viruses? I've also heard that a lot of programs are incompatible with them. I can't use Stormfront for GS? I can't use Psinet? I know those shouldn't be deciding factors, but they are. (I'm lame.)

Thoughts? I have another week left to figure out if I want to return this laptop (with a 15% restock fee, no less) and get something a Mac (which my husband is pushing for.)

My computer is strictly for play, at this moment. I'm sure it will be more business oriented when I start sending my work of to potential galleries. (I HOPE) so I'd need a lot of space for photographs of my work. But then again, an external hard drive would do fine for that.

Any suggestions would be great.

[Parkbandit]

I just got a new computer and Vista is a buggy pile of steaming shit.

[Celephais]

There are a bunch of flame filled threads recently about Mac vs PC... it comes down to money, time, patience, aptitude and the trump of them all... personal preference.

If you're looking for help getting around quirks (slow startup/popups) there are ways to fix it, but I wouldn't try to combine the two requests as any "fix" is going to be met with all sorts of flames.

[Krinthalis]

I'm really hesitant to get involved in this, but my suggestion is that it essentially comes down to money.

I use windows vista, mac OS X, and linux on a daily basis, and I prefer to use mac OS X if I have a choice. I think it provides a smoother, prettier, and easier to use environment. Furthermore, if you get a mac, you can buy a copy of windows vista or XP and install it on your mac, allowing you to have both operating systems (you can either dual boot - which means when you start the computer up, you can choose whether it boots into windows or into OS X - or run them simultaneously using a program called parallels). This is particularly nice because, as you correctly say, there is quite a bit of software out there that only runs on windows (psinet and stormfront, for example). In fact, this is what I'm doing right now - I have a new MacPro that I boot into vista whenever I want to play games, but run in OS X normally.

As for the virus thing - its not that its theoretically impossible to get a virus on a mac, its more that virus writers target windows because it is a more common operating system. Some would argue that OS X is more secure than windows, but the point is really that it doesn't matter how secure it is if no one is writing viruses for it. However, with just a modicum of common sense, you can avoid essentially all viruses out there, so I don't think this should be a primary concern.

While I think there are some definite pluses to a mac, there's a real obvious minus: a mac will run you a lot more than a comparable PC will. Windows alone will run you 200 - 300 bucks on top of the price you pay for the laptop (which is generally already higher).

In short, I think its fair to say that you get more if you buy a mac, but that it will cost you a lot more. Its up to you to decide whether the extra features are worth the extra cost. Also, if all you want to do is play games that don't run on OS X, I think its a bit silly to buy a mac just so you can spend 300 bucks more to boot into windows.

As for the other things:

Its a little worrying that vista is so slow on your new computer. I'm running home premium (or whatever its called) on my MacPro and it just zooms. It starts up in about 30 seconds and everything is really super responsive, so I can assure you its possible for vista to run well. I've heard people are having problems with too little RAM. Can I ask how much you have now? You might see a huge improvement if you can increase that (people say 2 GB, which is what I have now, is the sweet spot). Something else you can do is go to control panels, select classic view, then click on performance information. It should tell you whats slowing you down, and hopefully tell you if there's anything you can do to fix it.

When you say "a lot of space" for your photographs what do you mean? 10 GB? 100 GB? 1 TB? I ask because if you're going to seriously need many hundreds of GB of space to store your photo's, you might be better off going with a desktop instead of a laptop. For various reasons, its far easier and cheaper to get a lot of storage space on a desktop than on a laptop. If its just a few hundreds GBs or less, then like you say, an external hard drive is probably fine.

Sorry for the long post, but I just struggled with this question not long ago, so I hope it helps!

[kheldarin]

Your new computer probably came with a shitload of preloaded crap. Use msconfig to disable them from starting up. I turned off EVERY notification in Vista and it runs smooth as hell. No problems whatsoever.

[Bobmuhthol]

If the first thing you do when you buy a PC is not format the hard drive and reinstall an OS, then you're not going to be happy with its performance.

[Celephais]

When you say "a lot of space" for your photographs what do you mean? 10 GB? 100 GB? 1 TB? I ask because if you're going to seriously need many hundreds of GB of space to store your photo's, you might be better off going with a desktop instead of a laptop. For various reasons, its far easier and cheaper to get a lot of storage space on a desktop than on a laptop.
External HDs are incredibly cheap/easy for desktop/laptop, I wouldn't make it a selling point, as someone posted yesterday, there was just a 500GB External HD for sale for $100.


If the first thing you do when you buy a PC is not format the hard drive and reinstall an OS, then you're not going to be happy with its performance.
That's for sure.