Well, I went out this weekend with the bride, looked around and bought a Macbook.

So far, very nice. I still have to learn how to use the darn thing but some things have really impressed me so far- networking especially. And customer support is unreal - About 90 seconds on an Auto-Attendant, then off to a live person - here in America! And they got my wireless working in about 4 minutes.

I'll report more as I learn more.

Sam

just think, if you'd bought a Dell you could still be holding for a college kid in Manila!

Apple really knows how to make you feel like the extra money was worth spending.

I'm proud of you, Sam. As you know, I use both Mac (system X) and a PC (Win XP), but have run into tears and disappointment with Microsoft's newest OS and release of MS Office. Combined, both products have led me to abandoning Microsoft for the while. I know that this is something that I've recommended to you as well as others. I sincerely hope that you find this to be a superior product; I'd hate to think that I steered someone wrong.

Yup. Microsoft can only blame themselves when customers defect to MAC. Take your Vista and shove it!

-Hal

We bought a Vista box for our test bench as soon as it was released and haven't had a great deal of difficulty with it. However, it is really a let down in terms of the flimsy benefits it brings to the table. The vast majority of our system sales are still XP Pro boxes and once you throw on the free Desktop Search add-on and a few other tweaks, you're just about matching Vista for 'features' and you need a lot less hardware to have a useful machine.

I'm a lot more on the fence about Office '07. It's a rough learning curve but it does get you a lot of cool new stuff. I personally like the combination of XP and Office '07 as long as you don't need any speech-to-text features. Those crossed product lines recently: where they used to come with Office, now they come with Vista. Hence, an XP/Office'07 setup has NO speech-to-text tools. Gotta stay with Office'03 if you need speech-to-text and don't want Vista.

It's a cluster, no two ways about it.

Actually I kind of like Word '07. Makes it a lot easier to access things that were buried in earlier versions. I'm no "power user" though and I never saw Office '03 or the speech to text feature.

-Hal

If you want to witness software bloat, try running Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups) on the kind of hardware required for Vista. It's so fast, it makes your head swim.

Sure, there's no security or prettiness to it, but my basic premise about unnecessary extras and bloat will stand clear.

Just for kicks, I still have an old copy of Microsoft Excel. It will give you a complete installation on six floppy disks, and I bet it does most or all of what the typical user does with spreadsheets daily.

The only problem with Macs that I could possibly discuss is that most security camera DVRs, and PC-based DVRs use ActiveX controls for remote access and configuration over the internet. Does anyone know of software that doesn't use ActiveX so that someone with a Mac can view his security cameras remotely over the net?

I was a big OS/2 user till IBM abandoned it. Everything ran on a 512MB Hard drive. OS, apps, user data - everthing. If you had two hard drives you could drag & drop an application from one drive to the other and it would work. I still can't do that with Windows.

Oh and Lotus 123 for DOS installed on one, 256K, 5.25" floppy.


Sam

Hope it goes well for ya Sam, as you already know what a fan I am. Did you get the "Apple-care" warranty/support extension?

Got the extended warranty and because I teach I got the educational discount on MS Office - so I won't have to bother you for that.

Much appreciated.


Sam

Sam, congrats on the purchase. My school (K-12) used macs fairly extensively. Most of the network infrastructure runs on Apple X Serve servers. I have seen a lot of very cool stuff that they can do.

The first time I saw networked personal computers was at my son's kindergarten.

They were Commodore 64s.


Sam

I've considered a mac for my next computer but to be honest with you I'm kind of scared of them because I know nothing about them.

I've only been at the keyboard of one or two and I couldn't make heads or tails out of anything on them.

But if things keep going the way they are with MS I think I can learn. I discovered the other day that MS Office XP is not compatible with Windows Vista. You have to go buy a new version of Office according to their website.

Personally, I would not be a happy camper if I paid my hard earned money for a new computer with Vista on it only to learn I can't use the software I have on the hunk of junk.
My redneck side would probably prevail and make me send a nasty-gram to Mr. Bill G.

Sam, right after my wife and I married I found a Commodore 64 in a box and hooked it up. That was the first computer I had any real dealings with. Man, I was a Pac-Man playin' fool for a while there. She had a Q-Bert game but I never liked that one.

"They were Commodore 64s."

your showing your age Sam

That was my first 'puter when I went out solo in 1986 or there about.

Can a MAC run Q-Books? My wife uses a mac and so does my daughter but the wife is a teacher and the daughter a college student, if I could use one as my office PC I'd switch.

Congratulations Sam on buying a Mac. I love my MacBook & dread having to use the PC at work every day.

I think you will be VERY happy with your purchase.

I was a Commodore kid all through the 80's with a Vic 20 up through the C64/128 and even had a couple Amigas. I can't remember ever having so much fun with my computer since then. Now it's just part of the job.

My father is an accountant and he's used QuickBooks on the Mac. He uses QB a ton on the PC but absolutely hated the Mac version. I forget most of his complaints but I remember he said it was extremely different from the Windoze version - like he'd have to re-learn it completely.

Of course you can always run Windows on a Mac - or vice versa, if you have a lot of time and patience to set it up.

You know what they say...Vista runs better on a Mac than on a PC!

they might say it, but i'll put a $1000 dollar PC running Vista against a $2000 dollar Mac running Vista and i guarantee the PC will blow the doors off the Mac, even to the untrained eye. not even close.

[Ed - if i can't talk politics, am i allowed to start computer wars? =) ]

that being said, i really was impressed the first time i saw Leopard and Vista running side by side on a Mac. very cool stuff.

:toast:



sorry, had to... it is now a three prong attack, let the wars begin!

cool a war... I'm of the opinion that whatever works for you - use it. If it isn't working look for something new. I support all three platforms[*nix, Mac, and Windows], as well as a few odd hardware platforms as well. I've avoided supporting Vista as of yet mainly because it breaks the VPN setup my customer needs.

I started on Commodores (loved them, but....) then went to DOS. From there to Windows 3.1 and then to OS/2. 3.1 ran better on OS/2 then it did by itself.

Along the way I messed around with Xenix and SCO Unix (that's what ran our ACDs). I liked it and for a while thought that it might be the future, but it was not ready for the desktop.

When IBM dropped OS/2 I went to Windows. 95 was better then 3.11, but it was no bargain. 98 was a little better and XP was better than that.

Vista sucks. It's a hog and brings nothing to the table.

My XP machine at home has been crashing and it was time for something new. Vista was not going to be it and going back (or "upgrading" as some say) to XP seemed stupid.

I looked at what I did everyday on the computer, researched the MAC and bought it.

The learning curve is not bad.

It is FAST and elegant.

Perhaps a lot of the speed is the lack of anti-virus, anti-spyware etc. Maybe that will come to the Mac someday.

For now I'm just really enjoying computing as I haven't enjoyed it in a long time.


Sam

love me macbook

Well the need for AV on the mac is now being claimed at recommended if you are operating in a mixed mac/win environment....not because you can be infected, but because a file someone mails you could be infected and you could pass it along to a third party who then gets infected. I think this is still a stretch myself, and just a way for the AV companies to sell product.

Or it could be like this note I saw back in the early 90's....

********* ALERT ********** ALERT *********

*! ! ! ! ! This is a Unix Virus ! ! ! ! !*

* Please randomly delete some files and, *

* then mail this to all of your friends. *

********* ALERT ********** ALERT *********
(Of course it looks better in a fixed width font like Terminal/Courier)
:bang:

So you liked playing with Unix? Did you know that your Mac has a Terminal app? The path is Hard Disk > Applications > Utilities. Double-click on the Terminal applet to access Unix.

The Unix in OS X is called Darwin, but it's similar to Linux or FreeBSD. There's a whole bunch of stuff about it on Apple\'s developer site .

I tried some of the old commands I remembered on Terminal. Some worked, some didn't.

I take it back, Unix IS ready for prime time - but only with the Mac software running on top.


Sam