Members mobobog Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 OK, could we focus on the costs of the mac vrs pc issue? I was looking at this guys http://www.gearwire.com/gearwire-crosstalk-025.html They are a lot of fun. But they said that windows is a cheaper software that lets you have cheaper hardware, and i though what???? I really good laptop pc costs the same as the macbooks, and of course there are $10 MOBO's but you cant compare them with apple's hardware, plus the cost of the software alone is high. I dont know any applicacion for pc as comprehensive as iLife, and I indeed dont know about one costing what iLife costs, to give an example. So what do you think? is pc cheaper computer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gdoubleyou Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 I own both platforms, from my experience cross platform apps cost the same and are often released on a hybrid CD/DVD. In my my opinion Macs will allways be slightly more expensive because Apple must maintain the OS, and design the hardware. Most people don't factor in the cost/time you must spend researching hardware on the PC side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deanmass Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Part of the cost is your time over the life of the computer. What software do you KNOW? What OS do you KNOW? Pick your software, then pick your hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dylan Walters Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 The cheapest Mac is the Mac Mini and it's $600 with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor. Comparably, you can pick up a budget PC from Dell, HP, etc., for about $450 with all of the above. That being said, I have the Mac Mini and it's a great PC . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mobobog Posted December 21, 2006 Author Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Originally posted by Dylan Walters The cheapest Mac is the Mac Mini and it's $600 with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor. Comparably, you can pick up a budget PC from Dell, HP, etc., for about $450 with all of the above. That being said, I have the Mac Mini and it's a great PC . Yes, of course, mi point is... with the man mini you got more out of the box than a calculator and a clock... oh and a notepad. And how much costs mac os upgrades, how much do windows upgrades? In the long term it seems to me that Mac is cheaper, maybe not if you see the amount of money, but if you see what you get... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Geoff Grace Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Originally posted by Dylan Walters: I have the Mac Mini and it's a great PC . There you go -- Macs these days are both Macs & PCs. Buy a Mac and you get a PC for the cost of Windows OS. Best, Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 FIRST AND FOREMOST: I think the costs are close enough that someone should use the platform he feels most comfortable with. I've been using computers for business for 21 years, for MIDI since about '89 or '90, for DAW work since 1996 and I've observed a lot on both sides. I know a fair bit about how Macs work, a bit about the architecture of OS X, and the history of that platform at this point. And I have a LOT of friends who use Macs for pre-press work, for video, and for music. I don't think there's any question in my mind about which platform is more expensive or more fraught with potential gotchyas -- I have a bulging bookmarks folder called "It Just Works" filled with them. But for those who want to use the Mac platform, I think they should just buck up and get over those gotchyas. Yes, Apple hardware has had a number of big design problems in the past. Yes, Apple has treated its customers at times with imperial disdain. Yes, there has been stalling and stonewalling when systemic problems have been found. Yes, there has sometimes been footdragging on recalls and company-supplied fixes. Yes, there is a fundamental design flaw in the way the Darwin layer interacts with the Mach 3 microkernal core that has complicated OS X network and multi-thread application design greatly. Yes, Apple charges a lot for their top tier applications like Logic and Final Cut Pro -- and then charges two arms and a leg for support. Yes... when you have problems that Apple can't or won't fix, you have little recourse but to buy a new Mac... But if you want the OS X platform, the Aqua interface, and whatever extrinsic values one gets from having a Mac, Apple is, indeed, the only game in town. I'm wondering how long it will be before I chicken out and delete this post? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members franknputer Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 You could say most of the same about Microsoft & many of the other companies you'd have to deal with on the Windows platform, too (for instance, Adobe). Mac hardware may be a bit more expensive, but it is generally very good quality, and thus very resilient. Truly, comparable Windows hardware is going to cost you as well, and that narrows the price gap. (Comparing a Mac Mini to a regular tower PC is inaccurate - compare it to a mini-form factor PC & again, you'll see a much narrower gap.) And if you think Apple's customer service is bad, try calling Dell, HP, or any other big manufacturer & see if your blood pressure doesn't rise just as high, if not higher. I don't like everything that Apple does, but in the long run they aren't really much worse than any other major player in the biz. The one big advantage now is that if you buy a Mac you can run anything you want on it - but if you buy a Dell, you'd have to run OS X illegally if you were inclined to run it at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mobobog Posted December 21, 2006 Author Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 can you run linux on macs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Oops... looks like I waited to long to chicken out and wipe out all but the first line of my post. Now I'm in trouble. I can't argue with much you say, franknputer. [Although I've always thought of Adobe -- at least until the not-that-recent-falling-out beween them and Apple -- as an Apple/Mac-centric company. I do rather hate them though, even BEFORE they bought Macromedia (a company I had something along the lines of a love-hate relationship with ever since they bought the technology that became Dreamweaver -- and another Mac-centric company, in my mind).] My feelings about Microsoft are mixed and tend to be a bit on the wary side, to be sure. I think they have an enormous capacity for screwing themselves as I'm afraid we'll be seeing upfront and personal with the resource-draining Vista and its numerous and frankly embarrassing Mac-me-too-isms [just spare us the freakin' Swoosh, okay, Bill?]. But (at least aside from my legacy MS-Access clients) I really don't have to deal with MS much. I'm VERY comfortable and happy with their existing OS, XP. I take that back, a little... I've recently started using their free Visual Studio development tools. There certainly have been some minor frustrations with online documentation -- as always -- but, for free, I've been semi-delighted at the range of multi-language tools.] Not counting the implicit cost of Windows in the purchase of my last two machines, I think I've spent MAYBE $200-$300 on MS products/upgrades -- in the last 7 years (and that is ocunting the $100 OEM XP I put on the last machine I built.) And, as I pointed out, I'm still developing biz apps using MS tools for MS app platforms like Access even as I increasingly devote my time to web applications running MS's ASP.NET. (Of course, I ALSO develop for MySQL in addition to SQL Server. I don't like putting all those egss in the same basket.) Now... if MS ever built a computer... you can bet that would probably be about last on my list. Even if it was reputed to be a good computer. Why? Because I've seen what can happen when you put too many eggs -- or all of them -- in one basket. I've built my own computers -- very satisfying and surprisingly easy. And I've even done what I thought I'd never do, I've bought a non-laptop from a major vendor, Dell. My Pentium M Dell laptop has been such a great machine that, when I was a bit cash-poor and needed some-kinda-tower right away I bought a 2.8 gHz P4HT, refurb, for $340 with the notion it would just act as an occasional server for a 1/3 GB of hard drives I needed to host. It's no rocketship but it was surprisingly quick and so quiet I decided to make it my primary. For $403 to my door, I have to say I've been more than delighted. Did I mention it was very quiet? I've had almost no contact with Dell, once calling them on the laptop because it lost a rubber "foot" somehow. They Fed-Exed a new one the next working day. But I DID have one moderately nightmarish hour on the telephone with them on the next machine... When I bought the tower, I neglected to order an OS disk along with it. My problem was that I had called SALES instead of Customer Service... the sales staff, focused on selling systems, kept shunting me around. THAT was BAD. When I finally got a connection so bad I could hardly hear, I called back -- only THIS time to Customer Service. After patiently hearing my tale of frustration, anger, and woe, the CS guy sent me out a free OS disk, Fed Ex. But -- yeah -- I'll never get that hour back. But it did give me valuable insight into why some other folks -- including at least one guy who bought a Dell laptop [that he likes fine] because of me who, after what he describes as a nasty runaround will never buy Dell again. So, point taken. But I'll buy from them again, I strongly suspect. [i'll (mostly) spare y'all the story of my two very-deep into computer music Mac pals who, when I set up my first 8 ch DAW rig on my Windows machine in 1996, couldn't believe I had 8 channels of simultaneous audio i/o on (and I quote) "that overgrown adding machine."] I'm less convinced about Mac hardware -- particularly in the past. I won't go through it all, the noisy fans, the overheating, the 800 gHz G4 mirror door thing... but I think the design problems with the G5s' disk, FW, and USB controller systems was part of the wake-up call that finally got Apple to farm out mobo design to Intel. And I found that very instructive, as well. Unfortunately, Apple's insistence on sexiness of form factor -- and the MacBooks ARE very sexy and slim -- resulted in overheating and "sudden-shutdown" problems with the first generation of those sexy little notebooks. And, according to at least some anecdotal reports, units shipped back to Apple did not always receive fixes that fixed the problem. But, yeah, if you WANT to run OS X, there's no other legal way to do it. And you do have the option of running Windows, as well, if you've got a full copy to throw into the mix. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Originally posted by mobobog can you run linux on macs? Absolutely. There's Linux support for Macs and generic PCs going way back. You can tinker Linux onto a 16 mHz Mac SE-30. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Originally posted by blue2blue Oops... looks like I waited to long to chicken out and wipe out all but the first line of my post. Yeah, I usually post some two liner that I go back to edit some typo out of and the edit turns into a War and Peace (as written by Mike Muir). And I love my Dell Dimension 4550. Dell can build me a machine for just about the same money I can. And I don't have to expend any effort at all. An hour of tweaking XP and removing spam and I'm good to go. The chassis on this machine is wonderful, too. I've done extensive expansion to this machine with ease. Everything has also plugged and played without error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mobobog Posted December 21, 2006 Author Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Originally posted by blue2blue Absolutely. There's Linux support for Macs and generic PCs going way back. You can tinker Linux onto a 16 mHz Mac SE-30. We are talking under boot camp right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members jjbraunius Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 I am a system admin by day and support mainly Windows 2000 and XP systems. I really don't buy that it is the cheaper system.My reasoning is that the hardware is definitely cheaper but does it always work? There are so many incompatibilities and they show up silently in the back. What I mean is that you install a new say graphics card that is supported by your system. That crashes another driver and it hangs your system or maybe just increases your latency. From there on you go into this troubleshooting hell that *maybe* fixes your problem. If you buy a stock machine it doesn't come with a full version of the OS but with a restore partition on your main drive. Your drive locks up and you have to either buy the full OS at full price or get ripped off by Dell or other manufacturer to get the restore disks. They charge what they feel like. I've had clients that paid up to $100 for their restore disks because of hard drive failure. This is all hidden somewhere deep in your user agreement when you purchase the system and most of the public is not aware of it until the problem is already there. The Mac on the other hand just works. Backup and drive imaging is almost automatic and there are several freeware programs that make an image of your hard disk. I work on Windows but I use Mac for my work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Well, stranger... it's what happens sometimes when I have a little free time and a little too much coffee... I think it would be hard to get me into a "war" over that, though. Once Apple got serious about abandoning their in-house OS development (thank you Steve Jobs!) and got serious about catching up with Windows on OS level support for multi-channel audio, MIDI and a plug-in API, I decided they were headed in the right direction and most of what I've seen since then I've seen in a positive light. So I absolutely give the "new" Apple big props on not just saving the platform but turning it back into something at the forefront of personal computing technology. By focusing on what they do best -- user interfaces -- and abandoning what they historically had problems with, core OS and hardware design, Apple has managed to show up a lot of folks who, at the end of the 90s, had all but written them off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Originally posted by mobobog We are talking under boot camp right? Certainly not on the SE-30! AFAIK, BootCamp is strictly about running Windows on the Mac, but I'll admit I'm a bit hazy about running Linux or other *nix variants on Mac, vis a vis the onboard DRM in the Intel hardware Macs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members jjbraunius Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 so there is DRM built into the chip? Yikes! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Originally posted by jjbraunius I am a system admin by day and support mainly Windows 2000 and XP systems. I really don't buy that it is the cheaper system. My reasoning is that the hardware is definitely cheaper but does it always work? There are so many incompatibilities and they show up silently in the back. What I mean is that you install a new say graphics card that is supported by your system. That crashes another driver and it hangs your system or maybe just increases your latency. From there on you go into this troubleshooting hell that *maybe* fixes your problem. If you buy a stock machine it doesn't come with a full version of the OS but with a restore partition on your main drive. Your drive locks up and you have to either buy the full OS at full price or get ripped off by Dell or other manufacturer to get the restore disks. They charge what they feel like. I've had clients that paid up to $100 for their restore disks because of hard drive failure. This is all hidden somewhere deep in your user agreement when you purchase the system and most of the public is not aware of it until the problem is already there. The Mac on the other hand just works. Backup and drive imaging is almost automatic and there are several freeware programs that make an image of your hard disk. I work on Windows but I use Mac for my work. Dell charges $10 for the system disks when you buy the machine. They Fed-Exed mine out for free since I'd had a runaround when I called Sales instead of Customer Service. I have no idea what other vendors charge. (And, actually, last time I was poking around in the boot manager utility, I saw what I recall as about a 1/2 GB partition not set up for drive access that I have a hunch is a mirror copy of the install disk. I'll have to check that.) " There are so many incompatibilities and they show up silently in the back. What I mean is that you install a new say graphics card that is supported by your system." Yeah. That's the first thing I look for when I'm shopping for new hardware. I want to make sure I've got something NOT supported by my system. "That crashes another driver and it hangs your system or maybe just increases your latency." I guess I'm just not doing the right things... maybe not buying exotic enough hardware. And just what kind of latency are we talking about? About the time I bought my refurbished Dell Pentium M notebook, I helped a friend set up a PowerBook that cost approximately 150% what my Dell would have cost had I bought it new. My Dell ran CIRCLES around the PB, even though they both had 7200 rpm drives. You want to talk about latency? That PB was one sad little $2800 machine. (Happily, the new MacBooks and all the Intel-based Macs seem to have sprightly performance.) I'm NOT someone who keeps his DAW machine a "pure" audio machine. Both my machines have all my application development tools for desk and net based apps. They have multiple audio and video apps and editors. I download apps and utilities from the net. It's been a long, long time since I've had the kind of troubles you seem to suggest. "The Mac on the other hand just works." http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=99674 http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1411454 http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G5/quad_G5_cpu_temperatures.html http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=74075 http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=76102 http://silvermac.com/2006/dvd-stuck-in-macbook-pro/ http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/06/20060630173015.shtml http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=81875 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=81875 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=83969 http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=84636 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=85803 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=87349 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=87422 http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=88587 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=88821 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=92975 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=92975 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=85398 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=98062 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=98959 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=99556 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=99222 http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=97982 Etc... Now... obviously, there are a lot of folks who really don't have much in the way of problems with their Macs and for whom they DO "just work." And, if you do sophisticated, challenging things with computers, sooner or later you probably DO run into the occasional head-scratcher and even the kind of provocation where you want to take your machine out and shoot it. Or maybe Bill Gates or Steve Jobs... (Just kidding! I've never harmed a computer giant CEO and I probably never will!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rabid Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 This summer I spent $2000 of my company Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Originally posted by blue2blue Well, stranger... it's what happens sometimes when I have a little free time and a little too much coffee... I think it would be hard to get me into a "war" over that, though. See edit. War and Peace...the book. That's the sound of sarcasm going thud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 I was gonna say... I got a set of restore discs with my computer. Who is paying $100 for a set of restore discs? And my machine "just works". I've done extensive hardware expansion, including multiple hard discs, FW card, controller card, and multiple install/uninstalls of various this and that...all on the original install of XP. How many years ago was a 4550 new? I had a couple of crahes that were directly related to my 2 year old son trying to do some computing. Other than that, my machine "just works". Now, my previous HP with 98 was a different story. I usually reinstalled Windows twice a day. And the hardware was junk.My first hard drive failure was six months into it. The sound card died. The processor sounds like it's grinding coffee when it does it's thing. Or maybe that's the replacement drive they sent that ahd to be special ordered by Comp Usa because of some HP voodoo. Which was a total lie, the truth was HP wasn't gonna pay for a decent drive off the shelf when they could send me some more of that cheap garbage they stockpiled. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 FWIW, when my friends, as they occasionally do, say they're thinking about buying a Mac, I typically say "go ahead." If a person has the money and wants a Mac, I say it's best they do it. Otherwise, in the back of their heads, they'll always be thinking "I could have bought a Mac." I've known people who regretted it but they probably would have found something to regret about the PC, as well. And I'd personally rather not hear it. But I figure we're all adults here and I can actually say what I'm thinking. (More or less. ) PS to stranger... I really liked Win98 and I suspect most of the problems were related to your h'ware and drivers. HP was going through some bad times a few years back. I loved that company once but... FWIW, I had ENORMOUS, just HIDEOUS problems with Windows 3.0 and 3.1 -- until I got rid of the very expensive boutique '386 I'd bought in '89 and nursed along because I had so much money in it... I replaced it with a cobbled together '486.. even before I took the RAM up on the '486 from 4 to 16 MB (those were the days) Windows "suddenly" became amazingly (to me at the time) stable... and I had to realize that for years I'd pored every ounce of hatred in my heart into hating Win 3/3.1 when, in reality, it was my hardware that was creating 95% of my sudden lockups and crashes. PPS... I just looked above and there are ALL THESE POSTS from this blue2blue jerk... I'm outta here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members jjbraunius Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Talking about HP/Compaq - I have a 3 year old PC that sits in the corner...dead. It turned out it was the mobo and out of warranty Compaq mobo costs as much as a new machine. Next new Windows PC I am building myself. To answer your question for restoration disks - it was actually Dell that charged a client of mine $100 for the disks. They turned out to be the wrong disks too so she had to get them to send her a new set. Several users that I support have gotten different prices for the restore disks - some for free even but most home users and non sys admin PC buyers are not aware of this issue and the downtime you'd have alone for ordering these Cds costs something as well, doesn't it? As far as recording apps - I learned from working at studios that if something is stable and runs fine and your clients are happy, DON"T CHANGE IT! I don't upgrade any of my software until the need really arrives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 21, 2006 Members Share Posted December 21, 2006 Interesting. The $10 (aprx) figure is/was for purchase along with a consumer system last spring. I'd definitely be ticked off to be charged $100 for something I apparently could have had for $10, even if it was me that dropped the ball (as I did when I ordered my sys... it had just never occurred to me someone would sell a system with no reinstall discs. Actually, that alone pisses me off. ) I'll say this, despite the mostly good luck (at least minus that horrid hour on the phone with their sales bozos) I've had with Dell that I am VERY wary when dealing with any big vendor, not the least of them Dell. I don't think they are malevolent. I just think they're big and unwieldy and there are undoubtedly at least some people working for them whose "best interests" are not yours -- even if, in the long run, the companies best interests are... OK... this time I'm really out of here. Really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Geoff Grace Posted December 22, 2006 Members Share Posted December 22, 2006 Originally posted by blue2blue: I am VERY wary when dealing with any big vendor, not the least of them Dell. This is an important reason why I have trouble with "Mac vs. PC" threads. Any company of this size -- Apple, Dell, Gateway, etc. -- is going to provide a varying degree of quality, in something of a hit and miss fashion. For anyone who wants to play the partisan game, it's possible to construct list upon list of glowing qualities in support of your platform and troubles with the other side; but that's because both sides have inconsistent strengths and weaknesses. I've had more Macs that "just work" than I've had with problems, but that doesn't mean my Mac experience has been trouble free -- and my experience is just a random sample. When I've had Mac problems in recent years, I've been very disappointed in Apple's phone support but very pleased with the support I've received from my local Apple store's "Genius Bar." Hit and miss. I'm glad that Macs now have "Intel inside." It signifies to me that if the Mac vs. PC war isn't over then it's at least fading away. Now for a nominal fee, Mac users can try Windows, and vice versa, on the same computer. Both platforms offer features and applications that the other doesn't have. Now maybe some of us can get a taste of what the other side has been enjoying without having to buy a second computer. Actually, I should say "soon, some of us can get a taste of what the other side has been enjoying without having to buy a second computer" because (as Robert mentioned above) Mac third-party transition to Intel is still incomplete. And that has been a downside of being a Mac user of late. We've gone through some major migrations -- first from OS 9 to OS X and now to Intel hardware -- and it's taken third-party vendors awhile to get onboard. Nonetheless, it's been worth the wait for me. I've been a happy Mac user since 1990; and now I look forward to being a happy PC user as well. Best, Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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