| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | To Mac or not to Mac Thread poster: Eva Marita van Peet
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| I love my Rolls Royce | Feb 9, 2012 |
But what's so wrong with a Rolls Royce, if you can afford it?
When I needed a new laptop in 2009, I had not originally intended to buy a Mac. I had checked out a large number of laptops of various brands, with a checklist of specs that were important to me. I was not primarily looking for processor speed/size of harddrive, but rather for a good quality screen that is bright enough for use in a sunny room, a comfortable backlit keyboard, long battery life and a generally stylish loo... See more But what's so wrong with a Rolls Royce, if you can afford it?
When I needed a new laptop in 2009, I had not originally intended to buy a Mac. I had checked out a large number of laptops of various brands, with a checklist of specs that were important to me. I was not primarily looking for processor speed/size of harddrive, but rather for a good quality screen that is bright enough for use in a sunny room, a comfortable backlit keyboard, long battery life and a generally stylish look. The look and feel of my laptop are important to me – not because of what others think, but because I have to look at my computer and use it every single day. And I have always thought it good business to invest in proper work tools. Anyway, to find a laptop with the qualities I sought, I needed to look at the higher end of the PC laptop market, and I discovered that the mac was quite competitively priced. Of course, this was in 2009 – things may have changed by now.
Even though I primarily bought my Mac because of the hardware, not the software, I was pleased to discover that the unix-based Mac operating system is very stable. It hardly ever crashes, and I don't need to reboot it my system very often. When I do experience a crash, it is nearly always limited to the Windows system. And because I can reboot the Windows partition without having to reboot the entire computer, I can keep writing emails, organising documents, etc while Windows restarts in the background. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it works very well for me.
Kind regards,
Johanna ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:24
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Note that the colleagues recommending a Mac all bought their Macs before Lion came out.
I would not buy a Mac now. Macs were great until OSX Lion was released a few months ago. Lion is a real mess and has been described as "Apple's Vista" in the Lion discussion forums. I struggled with Lion for about a month and then went back in disgust to the previous operating system, Snow Leopard (no longer available for sale).
As a long-time Mac user, it pains me to say this but I ... See more Note that the colleagues recommending a Mac all bought their Macs before Lion came out.
I would not buy a Mac now. Macs were great until OSX Lion was released a few months ago. Lion is a real mess and has been described as "Apple's Vista" in the Lion discussion forums. I struggled with Lion for about a month and then went back in disgust to the previous operating system, Snow Leopard (no longer available for sale).
As a long-time Mac user, it pains me to say this but I can no longer recommend the Mac OS.
For some of the issues afflicting Lion users, see the Apple Discussion Forums here:
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.7_lion
Note the headings of some of the topics, such as "How do I Remove this awful OS I want Snow Leopard back"
Etc.
Since Steve Jobs left the stage, I fear Apple has begun to lose its way (as it did the last time Jobs wasn't there). I'm now looking closely at Windows 7 as a possible alternative to the MacOS.
[Edited at 2012-02-10 09:02 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Michael Beijer 
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:24
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| I've forgotten what a crash even looks like. | Feb 10, 2012 |
I really can't remember the last time my Windows 7 crashed.
Windows XP used to do it almost every day, but I honestly have yet to experience even one crash so far on my Win7 64-bit desktop.
Michael
| | | | | Apple's control over hardware is what makes the difference | Feb 10, 2012 |
Michael Beijer wrote:
I really can't remember the last time my Windows 7 crashed.
Windows XP used to do it almost every day, but I honestly have yet to experience even one crash so far on my Win7 64-bit desktop.
You've just been luckier with your current hardware. Sorry, but daily crashes with XP couldn't be XP's fault, it had to be crappy hardware, flimsy drivers etc.
The strength of Macs derives from the fact Apple has total control over their hardware. Because of the very limited number of hardware configurations they have, they can thoroughly test everything. Microsoft can't do that, because they have no control over hardware.
XP didn't crash on me, and neither did W2K before it, and Win7 after it. But I've always ran Windows on quality hardware.
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Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 15:24
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
| Can just add... | Feb 10, 2012 |
Dominique Pivard wrote:
Michael Beijer wrote:
I really can't remember the last time my Windows 7 crashed.
Windows XP used to do it almost every day, but I honestly have yet to experience even one crash so far on my Win7 64-bit desktop.
You've just been luckier with your current hardware. Sorry, but daily crashes with XP couldn't be XP's fault, it had to be crappy hardware, flimsy drivers etc.
The strength of Macs derives from the fact Apple has total control over their hardware. Because of the very limited number of hardware configurations they have, they can thoroughly test everything. Microsoft can't do that, because they have no control over hardware.
XP didn't crash on me, and neither did W2K before it, and Win7 after it. But I've always ran Windows on quality hardware.
that quality hardware is not the only key to non crashing PC.
Exactly as important is keeping the machine clear from all this "useful tiny applications" you can find everywhere, many of them for free. And from my experience many cause major problems.
Just today I installed a sort of filters which I hoped to help me to convert a sort of file to XLF, but instead of this the filter created the ominous "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error message and my SDL Trados Studio 2011 stopped reacting on shortcuts. After I uninstalled the other application everything got back to normal.
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 15:24
French to German
+ ...
| Points taken, Jerzy... | Feb 11, 2012 |
thank you very much.
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 15:24
French to German
+ ...
I sadly have to agree with Tom's post. For the moment, I am staying with OS X 10.6 which works fine for me although I never tested OS X 10.7.
There are also people out there (among them professionals) who will still use OS 9.
-edited for typos-
[Edited at 2012-02-11 06:53 GMT]
| | | | | poorly designed / badly behaving apps vs. inherently unstable OS | Feb 12, 2012 |
Jerzy Czopik wrote:
that quality hardware is not the only key to non crashing PC.
Exactly as important is keeping the machine clear from all this "useful tiny applications" you can find everywhere, many of them for free. And from my experience many cause major problems.
You have to make a distinction between poorly designed / badly behaving apps and an inherently unstable OS. Michael was implying that Windows XP was inherently unstable and would crash on a daily basis. This doesn't match my own experience: in fact, I believe that Windows (since NT) is just as stable as OS X, and that NT-based Windows were actually more stable than OS 9.
Yes, there are lots of poorly designed and badly behaving Windows apps that will cause conflicts with other applications and/or terminate all by themselves in the middle of a task. But that shouldn't bring the entire OS down (the filter mentioned by Jerzy didn't cause his Windows to crash). Applications that crashes every now and then aren't limited to the free ones, btw: just have a look at the SDL forum and you will see plenty of reports of Studio crashes.
There are also poorly designed applications in the Mac world. Take Office 2011, for instance: there are many occasions when Word 2011 will crash all of a sudden when using it with Wordfast Classic. It's the same Wordfast with the same VBA code that works just fine in Windows, but Microsoft's VBA implementation in Office for Mac just isn't on par with the one found in Office for Windows. But again, when Word 2011 crashes, it doesn't bring the entire OS down.
So I'd say that, used on the same, quality hardware, Windows (since 2000) is just as stable as OS X. Nowadays it's easy to verify, since Macs are Intel-based: just install a copy of Windows on any recent Mac and I'm quite sure it won't crash. That OS X has a fancier interface, cooler features etc. and that Mac's are typically better designed and built than the average PC is another matter.
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Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:24
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
I wasn't trying to imply that XP was inherently unstable. All I wanted to say was that, for me, Windows XP crashed quite a lot, and had a lot more problems (anyone remember 'NTLDR is missing'!!!??? ) than I have had since I switched to Windows 7.
Also, I have run XP on terrible hardware and on very good hardware, and in both cases I still had more instability than I have had since I moved to 7. Then again, I have... See more I wasn't trying to imply that XP was inherently unstable. All I wanted to say was that, for me, Windows XP crashed quite a lot, and had a lot more problems (anyone remember 'NTLDR is missing'!!!???) than I have had since I switched to Windows 7.
Also, I have run XP on terrible hardware and on very good hardware, and in both cases I still had more instability than I have had since I moved to 7. Then again, I have only really used 7 on my current desktop, which is as close as I could afford to get to a business grade PC, so the fact that it is stable is not much of an argument in favour of 7 being more stable than XP.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that XP had been around for a long time and over the years acquired too much crud. Maybe the tangle of ancient apps and drivers just got too much for the OS. Who knows?
On a side note, I do hate 7's explorer, and miss the good ol' Explorer in XP (in classic mode). But I have since switched to Directory Opus, and haven't looked back.
Michael
[Edited at 2012-02-12 16:26 GMT]
[Edited at 2012-02-12 16:26 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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