I’ve been on the verge of buying a new computer for a couple months now, but I keep stalling because I really haven’t been keeping up with the latest advances in computing. My current computer is an AMD Athlon XP 1.4, which has served me well, and honestly still works fine for the most part. I’ve just beefed up the RAM over the years and bought a new video card and a bigger hard drive and I’ve even been able to play most current PC games on it up until now. However, there are a couple of reasons I want a new one. First of all, it clearly bogs down when I’m running multiple intensive processes at once, in particular when we’re recording a podcast and broadcasting it live on Talkshoe at the same time. Also, I’d like to get some dual monitor action going, and I wouldn’t mind trying out Windows Vista either.
I was tempted a couple times to just walk into Future Shop or Best Buy and buy a package system from them, but in the end I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to trust in one of their cheap-o systems. I really want to get a custom system assembled, but the problem is, then I have to go through the effort of re-educating myself. Intel or AMD? ATI or Nvidia? Dual Core or 64 bit? To be honest I don’t even know what the proper questions are, much less the correct answers.
For the sake of convenience I have also been considering getting a Mac. Jay bought one a couple months ago, mainly for video editing, and he seems quite happy with it. A lot of tech people swear by Apple, and while I like their designs, I don’t like the fact that you can’t get much software for it outside of the stuff it comes with. I had an LC III back when I was in high school and I found it really limiting, so I swore I would never get stuck with a Mac again. Even though I don’t do much PC gaming, I like knowing that the option is there, and I like being able to muck around with the OS, upgrade it easily and just generally hack the heck out of it. But most Macs can run Windows now, so is that even a valid argument?
Offer your wisdom unto me. Mac vs PC debate, right here, right now… go.
I finally got my hands on Guitar Hero II for the Xbox 360 a couple days ago. All it took was a quick trip over the border… while Canadian supplies are still extremely scarce, a mere 15 minutes away they are, oddly enough, ripe for the taking. So far I’ve rocked out to some Toadies and Rancid… and that’s about the only difference. Plus the graphics are like wayyyy better… but who the hell looks at anything other than the coloured dots? Speaking of cool visuals, check out this amazing new commercial for Guitar Hero II, produced by the same people who do the Gorillaz videos:
[gv data="erVt0ozPRN0"][/gv]
How good was tonight’s episode of Lost? Five stars. Five and a half even. If you tuned out sometime last season, you’re totally missing out now. It was announced this week that Lost will officially end in 2010. While that sounds like a long way off (and it is… 48 episodes in total) the important thing here is that it proves there is an end somewhere in the distance. No one can accuse them of making it up as they go along anymore. While I don’t doubt there will still be some filler along the way, this is a pretty impressive commitment to make for all involved.
Fox has announced an air date for the final two episodes of Drive. And it will be… July 4th, one of the least watched nights of television in the calendar year! I think it’s safe to say Drive officially got the shaft.
The “intelligent mob” over at Digg have been made it very clear this week that they want to help crack the copy protection on HD-DVDs by any means possible. When a 16 digit encryption code began finding its way onto the Digg front page through a series of articles, the powers that be asked them to remove the offending posts… and Digg complied. But the users revolted, continuously re-posting the code and voting it to the top on the grounds of free speech. Eventually this forced Kevin Rose, lord of the geeks, to buckle and side with his fan base. “You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences will be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.” All I can say is it’s pretty selfish of the Digg community to put that kind of pressure on its creators. It’s easy for them to say that Digg should fight the corporate machine… they won’t be the ones paying the legal bills when the time comes. (Well, at least they can now buy an official t-shirt to help support the cause.) (via Variety)
More Links for Today:
Man Sues Dry Cleaner for $67 Million Over Lost Pants
Rosie Wants To Host The Price is Right, Bob Barker Is Not Pleased
Xbox 360 Spring Update (with Messenger) Is Out Now
Restaurant Owner Refuses to Serve O.J. Simpson
I found Guitar Hero II this week too - believe it or not, right here in town! EO had a stack of new ones in stock. They also have GH-branded carry bags for the guitars for only $15 if you’re interested (I wasn’t).
I was a Windows user all my life (and still partially am - the laptop I’m typing on as we speak is an XP machine) - but for the most part I made the switch to Mac a month or so ago and I couldn’t be happier. This lack of software you speak of is really a myth - it’s just that most of it is direct download. There are so many cool programs out there that are Mac only that it makes my head spin. If you have a huge media library, you can keep track of it and actually scan in each item’s barcode via the built in iSight camera to add it to your library. For podcasting, Garageband is super-well-rounded and completely free. If you use your computer to as an entertainment center for the room it’s in, Front Row (also free) rocks the socks off anything on PC’s. I watch movies/tv on there every night before going to bed. It’s brilliant.
I could go on and on about this, but I was terrified of getting a Mac and a month later I couldn’t be happier.
Here’s my advice: Buy a Mac, but do it at Future Shop. If you’re not happy with it, you can bring it back within 30 days for a full refund. And yes - you can do that with computers. How do I know?
Before buying the Mac, I bought a prefab HP Vista machine and had nothing but problems. By Christmas, Vista should be great. Until then it’s just far too buggy and doesn’t jive with a lot of the programs and accessories I use. It will, just not yet. This happens every five years with Microsoft.
In a given day, I work on both a Mac and a PC and I own both. You already know that I’m a Mac guy so my opinion on PCs (or as I sometimes call them, “feces”), wouldn’t be relevant. However, my Mac is going on six years and I still choose it for digital illustration over our PC, which I bought in December. The Adobe CS apps runs smoothly on my Mac and the few that I have that are CS2 run well too. I’ve never used my Mac for games because I’m not a gamer plus I’m pretty sure it couldn’t run any game made in the past five or six years.
The thing is, you can’t really judge Macs on your experience with the LC III. Currently, there are probably more programs out there that run on both systems than don’t, also like you mentioned, if you get an Intel Mac, you can run Windows as well. My big beef with PCs is all of the unnecessary, memory hogging garbage on it. It took me three days to track down and uninstall all of the annoying apps I didn’t need. Many of the HP and Microsoft stuff (like messenger) were not easy to get rid of. Even now, when I install a new app, I always specify that I don’t want it to launch on start up but many of them still do! On a PC it just seems that software is more intrusive and all of the software companies are vying for dominance of your system and your valuable RAM usage. I don’t think I should have to be a computer expert to know how to keep my computer under control. The average household PC is bogged down by useless crap, worms, viruses and whatever else you can unknowingly download and when your PC is running at a snails pace after owning it for a year, the easy solution seems to buy a new one. There’s something unethical about that whole idea so in the end I see the value in owning a Mac. Besides, I wonder how many PCs I would have owned in the passed 6 years if I hadn’t chosen a Mac instead.
Just a note - the media program is called Delicious Library. Somehow I neglected to mention that.
http://www.delicious-monster.com/
Thanks for the feedback guys. I’ve done some additional reading and I’m pretty close to being sold on the Mac, assuming the following is true:
- most PC games can run smoothly on OS X using Boot Camp
- I can combine my current flatscreen monitor with a new Apple monitor for a dual monitor set up
- I can use/share my current PC keyboard and mouse using Synergy?
Assuming that Boot Camp runs Windows XP easily then I should always have that as a fallback… the only question is whether it’s inefficient and wasteful to buy a Mac and then end up using Windows most of the time. I’m hoping/assuming the Mac OS and software will win me over though.
I don’t have any definite answers to any of those, but that being said;
1) Now that Mac’s ship Intel-based, games on BootCamp should run smooth as silk. That being said, I haven’t bothered to deal with bootcamp as I have the laptop for XP.
2) Shouldn’t a be problem. Lot’s of Mac owners have dual monitor setups. Again though - I haven’t done it myself, so I can’t say for certain.
3) This one I’d be on the fence about. The Mac Keyboard is pretty different from a standard keyboard in a number of small ways. For instance - if you want to eject a disc, you have to use a special key on the keyboard — there’s nothing on the Mac itself to do so. Using a standard keyboard/mouse could be a problem, but like I said — I know nothing..
So there you have it — relatively useless advice from a guy with no actual experience with any of this. Hope it helps.
Macs are way too metro for me.
Hey what’s wrong with being metro? I think it’s fine for a computer to be well-groomed and take good care of itself. Seriously though, I don’t really care what it looks like, but the iMac will certainly take up a lot less space than my current beast of a PC.
I’m not a big fan of the Mac’s ultra minimal mouse, but my current mouse is supposedly Mac-compatible. Thanks once again for the reply Jim.
There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not for me.
Take the plunge sean, i know you wont regret it!
I’ve had my G4 i-book for the past four years or more and it still feels as fresh as it did that faithful day i purchased it,also when using a PC mouse the right click works on OSX!Awesome! if u do get it, i can point you in the right direction for nice free software.
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