[atomico37]

it's around three a.m. here in otherwise sunny georgia. in about ten hours i will be going with my brother and father to buy a new computer for my brothers entrance into college. my dad uses a pc, and has used one for years. eventhough he hates bill gates. i bought my first mac about two years ago and am typing on it right now (ibook 500). been trying to get my dad to switch for a while.

anyways,

my brother is needing a computer to use at college, basic stuff. taking notes, email, internet, music. all stuff that can be done on a pc. i need some reasons why a mac would be better.

i've explained things like rendevous and airport. need some more.

we're definitly going to the mac store tomorrow and if the salesperson can't give my dad good enough reason to shell out extra cash for mac, i'll simply pull up this post on a nearby ibook.

thanks much,
-p

[atomico37]

my brother is in the market for an IBOOK.

[dragonbong]

Show him OS X, and the fact that the new Ibooks can use Quartz Extreme. The stability of OS X, ease of use, looks (comeon you'll get way more stares with the ibook than on a pc), the fact that it can take a beating and keep on ticking, (mine was smoked by a car and still worked until it got jacked), the size really is awesome, i'm on my PB right now and sometimes i wish (for portability reasons) I still had my old ibook kicking around. MACNN LOL. Some pc books still need an external pc card for wireless, while ibook airport is underneath keyboard, ummm windoze is bunk, gates is too rich, widgets, gui customizing, yah well ummm that's it for now. Hope he goes the the light side haha.

[radarbob]

Don't let them give you any krap about incompatabilities. Ethernet, wireless networking cards, CD players, hard drives, USB, file formats like gif, pdf, ms word, txt, CD file formats, etc. All the same.

I've been exchanging files between PCs and Macs for years. MS Office files in particular are directly compatable between PC and Mac - version for version that is. I mean, Word 95 can't read word 2000 file format - that is not a Macintosh issue!

True story... Once a co-worker received a data file from another PC that he could not open (they started using a newer version of the app). I copied it to a PC format floppy and put it in my macintosh, converted the file and returned it on the PC format floppy. Now he could read it.

Appleworks can handle MS word and excel files.

For computer programming classes I wrote the programs on my macintosh then transfered them to the PC at school to run them.

Here's one I love... PDF format is native to OS X. That means ANY mac application that prints - has a print dialog box - can save a document in PDF format. What PC user doesn't have the free copy of adobe acrobat reader? PDF format solves lots of issues with complex documents like foreign language fonts or odd-ball characters or special graphics not being available - and thus not displaying on the receiving PC. Also very handy if you need to distribute any file w/ a virtual 100% guarantee that everyone receiving it can open it. Oh, to create PDF documents on a PC you must buy Adobe Acrobat - costs $200+.

Battery life is **significantly** better on iBooks. Notice how the PC laptops don't specify how much time but amp hours - whatever the heck that is! Do PC laptops have a sleep feature? Just close the lid and it's asleep? That's absolutely essential when you're in and out of your computer all day.

Since day one the macintosh mouse, and now track pad, is much easier to maneuver. Notice how the cursor accelerates and decelerates *smoothly* in response to movement. The PC mouse.. it's either full throlle or stopped. For me it's a BIG BIG BIG deal.

OS X has native, built in support for certain kinds of windows (NT, 2000, XP I think) PC networks. Samba. Don't know anything really about it.

The Mac OS interface is still much more consistant than windows. On the Mac cmd-P is ALWAYS print. cmd-S is ALWAYS save, cmd-Q is ALWAYS quit. BTW I've never seen a PC app w/ a keyboard command to "exit".

Ever have a document open in a PC app and somehow you have two or three different menu bars? There's always only one on the mac. More than once I've shut down a PC app when I thought I was just closing the window. Oh, and there's no keyboard command for closing a window in windows. I use cmd-W all day long on my mac.

The only character not allowed in Mac file names is the colon. There's a bunch - a lot of the special characters - not allowed on windows.

Try this trick on a pc. Open MS word (or any app that creates a unique file format) and create a document and save it. Quit Word. Now dbl-click the file icon to launch it. Word opens it right? Now shutdown word again. Now RENAME THE FILE W/OUT A FILE EXTENSION. you'll get a scary dialog about file association. Ignore that. When you change the name you'll notice the file icon changes from a word doc to a generic icon. Now dbl-click the icon. Won't open! PC file association is dependent on the file extension. W/out it windows doesn't know what files go with what apps. NOT SO ON MACINTOSH. No matter what or how you name files the Mac OS always knows what Mac app created it.

MS Windows (3.1, 95, ME, 98) has always crashed 10x more (no exaggeration) on me than any Mac OS - and I've used them all.

There are over 56,000 known PC viruses (ok, a lot of them are obsolete on newer windows versions I suppose). I believe mac viruses number in the hundreds (could be wrong). That sounds like a lot, but I've not used virus protection on my Macintoshes since 1997. Of all the virus scares over the last few years, NONE of them affected macintosh. To be fair - MS Word macro viruses have the potential to affect your mac if you have MS Word.

One final thing I like about OS X - non-modal dialog boxes. Ever notice how on Windows and "classic" Mac OS that when you have certain kinds of dialog boxes open you cannot do *anything* until you dismiss that box? No so w/ OS X. This is a subtle thing, granted. But there in lies the elegance of Mac OS, the subtle niceties. Anyway with any dialog box open I can jump around to other apps. I've found that to be very convenient at times.

[darcybaston]

Also tell him the multitasking in OS X kicks WinXP's butt. Been a Mac user for about 5 years now and have been using XP for about 6 months. I've noticed a HUUUUUUGE difference. Run a Winzip process on an XP machine (2.4 ghz intel, 512mb ram, winxp pro) and it takes 20-30 seconds to just switch windows or do a windowskey+E to open an explorer window.

The multitasking in Winxp really sucks. I was copying a few gigs of files from my local machine to our dual xeon dell server and the computer virtually crawled and thrashed its virtual mem quite a bit, even with half a gig of ram! And just this morning on the ol' iMac, I was creating a 4 gig SIT stuffit archive and I could still switch apps, copy files across a router to other computers and still browse/email no problem and this on a 400mhz 1999 iMac with 256 MB RAM!

OS X is where it's at. Extremely fast, threads properly managed, and it more often then not lets you the interface user have the cpu regardless of tasks so that you can at least do something else while an intensive process is taking its time.

Also, WinXP has these annoying issues with it. It has the worst multi-user setup I've ever seen. You can setup multiple user accounts, but they spill into each other because software has to explicitly use the different user-session hierarchy or things get dumped as public. You can play content in Real Player or Windows Media in one account, and the other accounts will show the history of accessed media in the one account! DOH! And some apps that you install in one account will be accessible to everyone while others won't and so on. It's just so inconsistent. In OS X, you get to choose where things go and are accessible to whom with just drag and drop. WinXP does the central registry thing and you have no control unless you annoy yourself with digging through tens of thousands of hex keys trying to find a path to change for an installed app.

Also, WinXP has a BAD BAD BAD habit of not letting you delete folders because a flag can get set that you used a file within the folder once. This happens to me at work all the time and my searching through Windows message forums has revealed this problem is a serious plague. You create a folder, put a file in it, open that file, close it, and although you can choose to delete that file, you can't delete the folder until you log out and log back in, or always run the computer as administrator. Grrrrrrrrr. Our computer/network admin team know how to set permissions, they're good at what they do, and even they know of this bug and curse at it.

WinXP drives me crazy. I have to work twice as hard to get anything done. One time on the Mac, I had 5 folders with similar file names. I wanted to append each with just a number. So I clicked on one and using the enter key and arrow keys, renamed the 5 folders in less than 10 seconds. With Windows, you have to click and pause to change or right click, click on rename, then make a change. CRAZY! On my iMac with OS X it was just Enter-key, make change, enter key again, then arrow key. I didn't have to interrupt my workflow and grab the damn mouse.

Ok, ranting done. OS X and Apple technology just rocks. Work gets done with less hassle.

[zewm]

Originally posted by radarbob:
... The Mac OS interface is still much more consistant than windows. On the Mac cmd-P is ALWAYS print. cmd-S is ALWAYS save, cmd-Q is ALWAYS quit. BTW I've never seen a PC app w/ a keyboard command to "exit". ...

not true. on a PC running any windows version, you can simply hit ALT + F4 to quit any program. No matter what program, even fullscreen games.

[radarbob]

Originally posted by zewm:
not true. on a PC running any windows version, you can simply hit ALT + F4 to quit any program. No matter what program, even fullscreen games.

Uh, ok. Alt-F4. got it.

I gotta admit windoze has been improveing over the years - after all there's lots of room in that department. While alt-f4 is a consistant way to quit a PC program (which windoze version(s) BTW?) it still illustrates how windoze is still playing catch-up to Mac OS. Alt-f4 to quit a program? That's intuitive

I guess I didn't know that because I don't recall seeing that on the typical pull down menu. On some apps, I think so. But not consistantly - and I'm talking Win 2.0, win 3.1, Win 95, wind 98 ... tell me when to stop!

Oh, and BTW I just took a look at the FILE menu for internet explorer (v5.5). It says "close". Not exit. And no keyboard command shown. Again, consistancy.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by radarbob:
Oh, and BTW I just took a look at the FILE menu for internet explorer (v5.5). It says "close". Not exit. And no keyboard command shown. Again, consistancy.

Quit is Alt+F4. Close is... Ctrl+F4 I think (mostly). But only appear in window in window like environment like Opera, or mIRC if I am correct.
The PC keys are a bit lame on the pc keyboard. Like ie often used keys like @ or "copy" (Ctrl+c), "close", "quit" and more, is placed a bit inconvenient compared to a mac keyboard. I have no problems switching between mac and pc keyboards, but the PC key setup feels very 80'ich. Back than it didn't matter so much where the @ key was hidden as hardly no-one used e-mails anyway. This is of course minor things. But as your brother is going to study he will probably get his typing done faster on a mac.

[atomico37]

my brother wanted an ibook the whole time but my dad bought a sony vaio desktop anyways. even though he hates windows he just has too much software to give my brother.

they're regestering windows xp right now.

[Nawoo]

Originally posted by atomico37:
it's around three a.m. here in otherwise sunny georgia. in about ten hours i will be going with my brother and father to buy a new computer for my brothers entrance into college. my dad uses a pc, and has used one for years. eventhough he hates bill gates. i bought my first mac about two years ago and am typing on it right now (ibook 500). been trying to get my dad to switch for a while.

anyways,

my brother is needing a computer to use at college, basic stuff. taking notes, email, internet, music. all stuff that can be done on a pc. i need some reasons why a mac would be better.

i've explained things like rendevous and airport. need some more.

we're definitly going to the mac store tomorrow and if the salesperson can't give my dad good enough reason to shell out extra cash for mac, i'll simply pull up this post on a nearby ibook.

thanks much,
-p

Whoops too late

Anyway, i'm at georgia tech now. Ask your brother whether he wantes to buy a 3 1/2 month old ibook g3 700mhz, with 640mb ram and airport card for 850 bucks.

I love my ibook, but i intend to sell that and my ipod to get the apple buy-a-bundle program.

Which college is he going to btw?

[sniffer]

Originally posted by atomico37:
my brother wanted an ibook the whole time but my dad bought a sony vaio desktop anyways. even though he hates windows he just has too much software to give my brother.

they're regestering windows xp right now.

To bad. Ask your dad if he has a license for the apps he is giving away.

[atomico37]

it's all shareware i assure you, my father wouldn't go against the grain by giving away licensed software.

[x user]

Originally posted by atomico37:
it's all shareware i assure you, my father wouldn't go against the grain by giving away licensed software.

Shareware IS a license. Freeware isn't. And your poor brother.

[ccsccs7]

Of course, there's always Virtual PC. Allows you to run most of your Windows software on your Mac.

[Nawoo]

Which sucks so bad on an ibook

[radarbob]

atomico37,
Please pass on my condolences to your brother.

Hmm... even though he wanted an iBook your dad bought a viao? Does he make yall wear his underwear too?

Yeah, shareware is buying software on the honor system - usually at low prices to encourage you to pony up (as you should).

Buying a desktop is a BIG mistake for a college student IMHO. Yeah, not having is computer is much worse but given the option, go for a laptop. The desktop will be a tight fit, if it fits, in the dorm room.

In my, pre computer(!), college days I studied and researched just about everywhere except my dorm/bed room. I for one would be perpetually P.O.ed for the next four years as I have to write notes by hand and then re-write them into the computer. I don't know if i'd take a laptop to class for note-taking, but w/ and iBook, I'd give it a try at least.