Heartland

As someone who has owned a PC and worked with one over six years I find myself curious about what a Mac has to offer. Largely because I've just bought an iPod and I'm impressed with the overall design, and I'm really sick of downloading XP updates!
Message to Mr Bill - Get the OS correct the first time round, motherf*cker!

The downside is that I've just:

a) Bought a new PC.
b) Have grown really attached to Microsoft Word.

The questions is can anyone tell me the real differences between the hardware/software, and if it is possible to covert btween doc files, so I
could still do a spot of writing in my luch hour using a PC?

Bear in mind I never use my PC for games - I'm purely interested in word processing, internet access and burning the odd CD/DVD.

Cheers.

Oh Gawd! this could take me a month....

Right! in my profession Macs are the standard platform, I have been using one since 1985. In 1989 I switched jobs and all they had were peecees, without a mouse, I may add. It was an alien landscape to me, so much so that I used to drive back to my old employers to use their Macs.

>>>>FFWD to the next century>>>>>
I know peecees are a lot more use friendly and intuitive than they were in the mid to late 80s, but IMO they would never have got there without first, Xerox for the GUI, then Apple for picking up the GUI and expanding it. Peecees still look and operate in a less sophisticated manor IMO. They will always be playing catch-up with Apple.

I run OS X version 2.8 at home and work. At home my G4 Quicksilver hasn't crashed or frozen on me in the 10 months I have had it, however our TurboNutterBastard G5s at work are very unstable.

I suggest you go to an AppleCentre and try one out Eru, OS X is a Unix operating system and a bit different to previous Mac Systems.

Phew! I got through that without swearing or cursing oaths upon Mr. Gates (of Hell)

... and if you absolutely insist, you can get Microsoft Office for Mac, so you can use your .doc files.

In my experience, Windows 2000 is utterly rock solid (far more so than XP), and any crashes I've seen have been solely the fault of misbehaving applications or device drivers, which is the fault of the app/driver vendor, not Mr. Gates.

To me, Mac OS looks and feels very alien. The lack of a right mouse button for context menus (which I have become rather dependent on), no real command prompt (although I haven't seen OS X so can't comment there) and other small but significant things make it a chore to use. I wouldn't consider it a "power user" OS, but it's certainly great if you want something for just word processing and web access.

I've been a Mac user since the early 90's, mainly because I'm no computer wizard and the mac always told me when I was doing things right and when I was doing things wrong. Whenever I was put in front of a PC I would start to sweat and not know what mouse button to click. On a PC I couldn't drag things around and move them about Mac-style, and there was also always the fear, the sheer terror, of ending up in DOS.

These days things has gotten so user friendly that it really doesn't matter, to me at least. I find Mac very good when it comes to working with images and PC very trustworthy when it comes to writing long texts in a hundred different documents, but that's probably just because I've grown used to work that way.

Right now I'm doing all my creative thinking on an iMac and a standard PC, some Dell-thing (wich is black and very sci-fi) and I have no trouble swapping documents or files from one to the other.

I think the general consensus is that neither is really "better" than the other, so stick with what you know, and if you know both then well done! It's horses for courses really. For a serious network, I really would not consider anything other than Windows Server 2003 cos of the power and level of integration Active Directory provides (and if you've seen SharePoint 2003 you really would not want to touch anything else, we have us a real "killer app" here folks). For a games machine, Windows is really the only serious option too. For commercial quality DTP and graphics work, the Mac is probly still king, and it's certainly a viable option for people who just want to point and click. If you like getting under the bonnet and fiddling around, and - especially - if you're not too concerned about breaking anything while doing so, by all means go for Linux.

People who own MACs these days are just being awkward;

they seem to be technically better but all my work lives in PC world so I just use the MAC as a door stop.

Hope that helps.

I don't trust anything where you have to drag your files to a trash can to eject the floppy disk. Took me hours to figure how to get my disk back. Damn graphics people with 2 macs in a company of 300 PCs. *grrr*

Prejudiced MAtT

MAtT wrote:I don't trust anything where you have to drag your files to a trash can to eject the floppy disk. Took me hours to figure how to get my disk back. Damn graphics people with 2 macs in a company of 300 PCs. *grrr*

Prejudiced MAtT

Er. You don't have to. Try the confusing sounding "Eject" option from the ever-present Special menu or even just press the 'Apple' key and 'E'

Anyway we don't have floppies and haven't for years...

Moz Magister wrote:People who own MACs these days are just being awkward;

Anyone who still hasn't figured out that Mac is not an acronym isn't much of a genius either.

Unless, of course, you actually mean Media Access Control, which we all use, or the cosmetics line, which I imagine some here might use.

MAtT wrote:I don't trust anything where you have to drag your files to a trash can to eject the floppy disk. Took me hours to figure how to get my disk back. Damn graphics people with 2 macs in a company of 300 PCs. *grrr*

Prejudiced MAtT

Since your website indicates that you're a Cure fan, maybe you should enlighten them concerning their poor coice of platform.

Bloodflowers was recorded using Macs? It all makes sense now!