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Showing messages 1 through 14 of 14.

• Computer for college
  2005-07-14 21:50:58  braziliano [Reply | View]
  
  
  I'm gonna buy a laptop for college next year. From what I've read it sounds like pcs are better for gaming and macs are better for getting work done. Is this true? Would a mac be better for college?

• How about for non-video editing?
  2005-03-09 17:36:55  aysiu [Reply | View]
  
  
  For basic computer use, I'd say an eMachine blows any Apple configuration out of the water in terms of value. Granted, Dell isn't exactly a "straw man," seeing as how more people buy from Dell than eMachines, but if you're just comparing Macs to PCs, why stick with just Dell?
  
  More details here with real numbers, not just some poorly equipped salesperson yammering on.

• Compatibility
  2005-02-21 15:24:56  mosbricka [Reply | View]
  
  
  Hi! sorry for my bad english, im tired and it's not my native tounge:)...
  
  i have a question, and it's proberbly something you don't have an answer to. Im wondering if any of you guys know how mac computers function with diffrent CAD programs, like ArchiCAD, solidedge and so on and so forth...
  
  would appriciate the help! Need it for my school work...

• PC vs MAC
  2005-01-27 10:39:49  DreamM [Reply | View]
  
  
  I have been looking through the net for a comparison of the performance of PC vs MAC processors. I haven't really found anything useful.
  
  On one hand, one hardly finds comparisons done by PC users. Seems only Mac users are interested in such comparisons (mostly). The problem is that the tendency of these articles is cynical and biased. So there isn't much in terms of objectivity.
  
  I have been fortunate enough to be able to work with Mac, PC, Sun and SGI computers. They are all good for different things, and most of the time they can all do well in many tasks.
  
  With respect to video editing... I think the PC sales representative contacted in this article was probably not very useful.
  
  Last year (2004) I made a 40 min movie that was an official selection of a couple Film Festivals. It was done with a prosumer DV camera, and edited on a PC. Now, my PC is not even comparable with the one mentioned in the article. This is a 5 yr old Pentium II, 450Mhz computer with 384Mb. For $30 I added a firewire card, and for $100 a 120Gb external HD. I edited, color corrected, added SFX, on this old PC.
  
  I also used a 3-4 yr old Laptop. Sony Vaio PGR-33 (or something like that). It is slightly smaller than the 12" ibook, and has integrated Firewire. It runs on a 600Mhz Celeron and has 128Mb or RAM. And it was perfectly capable of capturing and editing video. Oh, and it cost $999 at Fry's Electronics (back then).
  
  So I am convinced that any PC that can be purchased in the present time (2005) is more than capable of editing video (my 1999&2001 computers clearly were).
  
  I wish computer users were not so much like cult activists and were open to the possibliity that Macs, PCs, SUNs, and SGIs can all be good computers with strong and weak points.
  
  So... does anyone know of an objective comparison of processors?

• your an idiot
  2005-01-19 09:42:36  surfbumm [Reply | View]
  
  
  ok so i have officialy deemed that the person that wrote this is an idiot. you cant just go to any random store and check a computer on prices. you compare computers based on their computing capabilities. you find a pc that has basically the same kind of hard ware as the mac, and then you test them to see which one runs faster. cause i can guarentee that if you had gotten a dell that you would have had your issues delt with. and it would have been cheaper and faster than your oh so great mac. so simply your an idiot.

• mac v pc price
  2004-05-31 05:10:24  davemurphy [Reply | View]
  
  
  There seems otbe an assumption that you want to do video editing etc - I don't - so all those free mac apps becoem irrelevant.
  
  No oen seems to take into accouny anyonr swapping frm a PC to mac, and having to repurchase all their apps again - eg development tools, web dev tools, ms office or equivalent tools, games etc.
  
  Every time I hav considered upgrading (I am planning a new laptop and would LOVE to get a mac - but I canot justify the cost. MACs are not cheap, and I am at a loss to see from my price comparisons how anyone can say so. Add in the cost of conversion (I am ignoring the learning curve in this) and mac still appears very expensive to me.

• Re-training cost in switching
  2004-05-17 22:39:12  bioinfotools [Reply | View]
  
  
  At least one thing is missing in most cost comparisons: the machine that switches you away from your current OS has a retraining cost.
  
  While this may not matter at all to first time users (as they need not retrain!) and not much to home users (as the learning experience may be part of the deal), it is something smart businesses will consider. They need to determine if, in the long run, switching will prove profitable.
  
  There are obviously other factors too (particular software, networking, availability/access to Unix, etc.). I just wanted to raise this issue of retraining as I rarely see it included in the costings of one machine over the other. Despite Apple's campaign, it does take time to become proficient in a new OS.
  
  FWIW, I use OS X & Linux in my office and Windows (in a limited way) on off-site contract work. I personally like OS X, but then it suits my needs: the Unix core is more-or-less vital to my work.

• Hidden Costs of Windows
  2004-05-17 15:21:38  e-twelve [Reply | View]
  
  
  I just got out of an all-day security meeting with PriceWaterhouseCooper auditors concerning security -
  They quoted the cost of patch-management for Windows systems as being $250 US per workstation per patch.
  I found this hard to believe, but if it is even reasonably true by a lesser order of magnitude, I wouldn't take too long for the ongoing cost of supporting the Windows platform to pass the "sweet spot" of being "inexpensive".
  Unconfirmed, but I know from experience that supporting the Windows platform these days is causing a lot of large corporations to examine closely what they have really bought into.

• Inconsistent Purchasing Habits
  2004-05-17 13:30:08  Timberwolf [Reply | View]
  
  
  It's a little amazing to me that, in general, the majority of people are willing to spend the money to buy a more expensive car (like say, a Honda Accord as opposed to a Ford taurus), more expensive audio/visual equipment (Bose vs. el cheapo brand) or designer clothes or even some more expensive household appliances. Yet, when it comes to computers, they always seem to choose the cheapest computer they can possibly find.
  
  If it really is just about cost/price, then why not apply the same logic you use to buy computers to all other purchases? Don't buy that Honda Accord, buy a Yugo or much cheaper car. Forget about the Bose Amplifier and Speaker system, get the lower cost Radio Shack stereo instead. Designer clothes? Do you really need to have Ralph Polo or DKNY clothing? You can shop for much less expensive clothes in the bargain shops and flea markets.
  
  My point is, if you're going to be a discriminating buyer when it comes to your car, tv/stereo, appliances, furniture and clothes, then you should also be just as discrimintating when it comes to buying a computer.
  

• ilife
  2004-05-17 12:19:57  jbelkin800 [Reply | View]
  
  
  while itunes is free, it's pretty hard to put a true price of ilife if you're going to work in video. imovie is definitely worth $150 right there - have you actually tried Moviemaker or whatever MS calls it? Ha-ha, it is to laugh.
  
  And while there are a couple drag and drop iDVD like apps cheap on the PC side (that work okay), there is NOTHING that so easily and elegantly creates DVD Themes and navigation as easily - NOTHING. Certainly nothing at the INCLUDED price of the computer and or even at the $49 cost.
  
  iphoto looks nice. I don't take a lot of photos so it's not real useful for me but everyone else seems to have thousands of photos lying around.
  
  I'm not a musician but garageband looks like imovie for musicians - it's stilla basic toolset but for 95% of people, it does 95% of what they want to do.
  
  But software is one of those times that's hard to quantify. When you are stumbling around in the morass of MS Moviemaker, you want to scream, I'll pay a thousand dollars if I can just drag and drop, lay in audio, etc ... without having to spin around and jump through hoops and wonder what happened to my file.
  
  But people just don't know any better. On their TV, MS talks about dreams and Hp talks about Shrek - in the stores, they talk up the specs and all the hardware goodies you get - parallel ports - space age technology! (well, the Mercury program ...)

• On the pricing front...
  2004-05-17 09:11:03  eableson [Reply | View]
  
  
  For all practical purposes, if you are willing to invest the time and be an educated consumer, you can build a PC box with relatively close specs for the same price or cheaper than an 'equivalent' PC. Heavy on the 'equivalent' since every consumer has different priorities that translate into different specs.
  
  However, on the high end laptop front, the current Apple lineup is (oddly enough) the value leader when you compare equivalently equipped PC laptops, with many features that simply aren't available on most PC laptops. The only place the Apple laptops fall down is not offering a stupendously high res screen like some of the DELLs and SONYs with their insane 1600*1024 LCDs, but you really need to have good eyes to use those ones :-)
  
  I think that one of the reasons that you often see Mac machines with a longer lifecycle is because today's machines are shipping with leading edge technologies, so there's less incentive to upgrade just to get access to something new.
  
  The PC market generally waits until a given technology has reached critical mass on the production front to drive down the costs. Case in point, try finding a laptop equipped with FW800 and Gigabit ethernet. Rationnally, I don't need either of these things today, but I won't be desperately looking to upgrade in two years because I want to buy the latest FW800 array or am running up against the 100Mbit wall transferring multi Gb video files to a client's server.
  
  My 2 cents, for what it's worth...

• It's not the numbers
  2004-05-17 09:04:39  borozen [Reply | View]
  
  
  Whenever someone starts with me about how cheap a PC can be, compared with a Mac (wich seems to me like comparing pears with apples, no pun intended) I just tell them that I don't care how cheap their super-deluxe-bargain-PC was, I just care about all that tiny little details that makes my computing expirience that pleasant. That expirience, for me at least, can't be achieved from any PC, don't matter the price. And that's what makes my investment in Mac hardware and software worth it.

• Future numbers
  2004-05-17 08:34:54  boo [Reply | View]
  
  
  In the future, we will each spent $20 in human labour hours (1) arguing about whether a Mac costs 25% more or less than a PC - which will amount to about $2.50.
  
  Nonetheless, I've astutely discovered an important trend: Macs get cheaper and better every year. In 1996, I spent $12,000 on a hopped-up, top-of-the-line Mac to edit video. It really just didn't work. Today, a $799 eMac will let you edit multi-layered, broadcast quality video without breaking a sweat.
  
  It seems to me that the cost of one's chosen religion is increasingly cheaper year on year, making the differences in costs between religions somewhat irrelevant.
  
  Personally, I'm not gonna change religions to save a couple bucks. Changing religions is, by definition, not an option. (It's a re-lig-ion!)

• looking at numbers...
  2004-05-17 07:14:59  jwenting [Reply | View]
  
  
  I did some comparing of numbers for similar systems myself, and came up with a $5000 PC as compared to a $10.000 Mac for the same basic specs.
  
  Sure you might at the low end get a Mac cheap, just as you can get a cheap PC.
  
  But Macs still outshine PCs in the cost arena when you go into the highend machines.
  
  Or take a powerbook and compare that to an equivalent Dell or HP laptop.
  
  Your attempt is just another Mac-adept trying to make up bogus arguments why his God is God.
  
  Barebones G5 1.6GHz will set you back over €2000 without a screen, cheapest screen to go with it costs over €800 (those are figures from Apple's own website btw).
  
  Some little configuring to get to the same point as what I consider minimum specs (19" screen, 1GB RAM, 128MB vidRAM, larger harddisk) and we're up to over €4300 for the Apple (despite their generous €150 discount when buying a screen with it).
  For just under €2300 I can get me a Dell with a 3GHz P4 and otherwise the same specs (20" TFT, same videocard, sized harddisk and RAM, etc. etc.).