Switch to Mac ? How would you rate the benefits ?

Thanks for the pointer, so used to check out the web that I forget to check magazine !!!

I was in your shoes until a month or two ago when I got a 15" MacBook Pro (2GB RAM). I originally got it because I had 2 WinTel notebooks die, and had just resoldered the AC adapter jack onto the motherboard of one (only to have it break again)...

Anyway, after 3 days I was a die-hard Mac fanatic. I have a Athlon dual-core with 2GB RAM and 2x24" widescreen LCD Dell monitors, and I don’t even use it anymore. The MacBook is just so fast and stable. Only times it’s crashed (3 times total, I think) were when running WinXP in Parallels. Never, ever bogs down. I can go weeks without a restart, while I have to restart my XP box every day.

I love my MacBook Pro!

What they said, except that I’ve got a PowerBook G4 and my Athlon isn’t as hot...:D :’(

It also seems finding memory outside of apple might be an issue, it seems Crucial and OCW brands work with Macs. In France, those are hard to find...

As far as I know, current Macs use regular memory; you just need to buy the right spec’ed stuff. After reading others’ observations that factory RAM/etc seemed to be an overpriced upgrade, I recently upgraded a Power Mac G5 with 2 GB bought off NewEgg (after using Crucial’s recommendation tool to point me toward the specs I needed)...works like a champ.

My thinking was, invest to get à 7200 rpm drive instead of going the 2Gb way, I have done that on my PC laptop and the speed increase is nice (plub IBM has made a great job not increasing power consumption). Hard drive is most often the weak link in a config... that’s why I had a 7200 rpm on my laptop and a 10 000 rpm Raptor on my desktop.

One last thing : is there easy access to memory and hard drive ? Let’s say I want to upgrade the memory myself, as a PC user my question would be : is there some incompatibility risk ?

Macs tend to use the RAM a lot more than PCs, so more RAM is always better. A hard drive upgrade would be sweet as well, of course. And I was amazed at how simple Apple makes it to access the hardware for upgrading.
If (or should I say when?) you get a Mac, I’d love to hear how you like it....:)

OK I’ll chime in- even at the risk of raining on the "Mac is the greatest thing to come along since COBOL" parade.

I really like the Mac OS. It is reasonably stable (I have had crashes- at least as many as on my PC). It is highly elegant and nice to use in most ways. However there are a couple issues that keep me from spending my own money on a Mac.

• They are outrageously priced. Bang for the buck Mac is not a bargain.
• I have been anything but impressed from the hardware. I deal with Macs in our computer labs on campus. Our web servers are also Macs. I’ve seen too much failure (and rediculously slow support). In fact one of our servers has been down for close to a month with some mystery hardware failure. The $30 Apple keyboards don’t seem nearly as reliable as a $5 generic. My wife’s iPod Shuffle died at the ripe old age of 6 months. Etc. etc.
• Worthless mouse. If I’m shelling out big bucks on a computer, I want a decent (multi-button, scroll, optical...) mouse without having to spend $50 MORE.
• Frankly they seem slower for what I do. That’s completely subjective - but I feel like I’m waiting on a Mac more often than on my PC (of similar processing power and vintage).
• Another subjective: I just don’t care for everything in Macland being a floating palette. For crying out loud, if I have ONE application open, dock the stinkin’ palettes in one window please!
• Ironically, one reason people really LIKE to have Macs, is one reason I don’t. I don’t care about the "elite" artsy fartsy metality. I save that for other aspects of my life (like my foosball table )

The bottom line for me is that I don’t have a lot of $ to burn. So I need top value. For me that isn’t a Mac. If I were younger, not married, more disposable income... I might give it a shot. And since they’re footing the bill at work for these things, I like them just fine there too.

As a long time die hard Mac fan, I’d give one word of advice: (almost) never buy a Mac for server applications.

Oh sure, $15,000 later and NOW he tells me!

I had a tough-as-nails 13" Compaq Celeron 600 Windows laptop (sometimes dual-booted Linux, sometimes not, as the mood struck me) for about four years before I was given the PowerBook. Other than reinstalling Windows from time to time, and a habit of eating batteries, it served me very well, sold for a good price, and as far as I know is still working. Well, it did come with Windows Me that wouldn’t let me install my PCMCIA network card drivers, but an old Windows 98SE disk and then later Windows 2000 solved that problem.

I like the Mac, but it’s mostly a matter of personal preference, and that I was given the machine; I could in no way afford it at that time. I am a practical person. What works is fine, and if you can afford to indulge a personal preference in the process, even better.

a mac is not so expensive....

try to check the prices for a sony vaio...

I’m saving now for a new MacBook -- probably the IBook successor. And I’ll tell you why.

I use my desktop machine 98% of the time, it’s windoze, and it’s set up exactly the way I like. That isn’t changing.

I wanted a notebook computer so that I wouldn’t be chained to my office and could work while travelling so snagged a thinkpad. It’s functional and does the job. Klunky but it does the job.

Then I wanted a mac for testing websites so I shopped used and minis. After reading about all the video display problems using a PC monitor, I decided the mini wasn’t the way to go, so it was just a matter of seeing what came up on ebay in my price range that had a monitor. I ended up with a used IBook.

Now, I never expected that this would be anything but a machine that I’d use to test websites on Safari, Firefox and IEMac on the mac. Instead I find myself taking the IBook with me when I travel. Why? MY HANDS LOVE IT. It is ergonomically the nicest notebook computer I’ve ever used. I don’t make typing mistakes on it like I do on the thinkpad. It’s wonderful.

Oh, the person who was complaining about the fifty buck mouse? Any usb optical mouse will work with a mac. You can even southpaw the buttons, though finding that setting was a bit of a challenge, given that most of my mac friends don’t know from more than one mousebutton! And yes, the scrollwheel works too.

Bottom line is that when the budget allows it I’m buying the new MacBook and selling both my current notebooks on ebay. Why have two when one will do?

Well... I couldn’t resist... I dit it, and I went straight to the 17" MacBook Pro this morning ! (just spent 25 seconds looking for the "!" didn’t notice so many keys were pretty different from the PC world... the @ and the - gave me some trouble too... still looking for the DEL key... this will take some time as I am typing not looking at my keys )

The thing that really strikes you on first impression is the build quality : it’s amazing... The keyboard really has a nice feel, I confirm what Kickass says. It might seem like a detail, but spending hours and hours a day typing, I think it’s a plus. Also, the screen is pretty amazing... the 17" is just plain great !

75% of my choosing to swith is Mac OS X... I have a lot to learn there, I am a little disoriented but those are my first minutes so... As you can see it took me no time to set up the Airport connection I’ll go and look at the apps now !

I’ll give you more impressions later

Congratulations you made the right choice.

You should install parallels for IE testing.

About DEL key, you can do the same with this shortcut : fn + <--

Enjoy your mac