If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Posted on 03/17/2007 6:09:41 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Well, my experiences of both types of laptop this week has left me reeling. Where do I start?
Let’s start with the Mac, a MacBook with OSX preloaded.
The MacBook was a joy to look at, very well finished with a glossy white sheen that looked and felt good in the hand. And light.
On opening the thing had obviously been placed in suspension, and it just started. It found my network and was ready to use. The interface, OSX, with its one button for the mouse, threw me for a few minutes as I am VERY used to Windows with a two button mouse with a scroll wheel. But within a few minutes it was ok and I was off and running.
If you thought Windows was intuitive then you haven’t used a Mac lately. Everything worked as you think it should. From the perfectly designed email client to the built in iLife apps. Want a picture from here over there in that app? Drag it and drop it. And it’s there. It has been well thought out, and designed to be easy to use for a person. Not a USER, but a PERSON.
All of the “dialogue” boxes are made to explain everything in plain English, or close enough. It’s as though this machine has been carefully planned at thought about, and you can tell. A real pleasure to use, and the kids liked it too.
Now the Vista Laptop, an HP Compaq nc8430.
When I say Vista it had Windows XP on it so I had to load on Vista first. After picking this laptop up once and carrying it somewhere once I would have to say that I will not move it too often again. Man this thing is heavy. A beast. The case that came with it is HEAVIER that the MacBook. Think about that for a second, the case is heavier on its own than the entire MacBook. With the HP laptop inside it was heavy, and the strap dug into my neck. I couldn’t carry it very far. And its black, not a nice black, but that aggressive corporate laptop black.
So – I have to set up Vista. I will spare you that, but it’s been the last 24 hours or so of configuration after the Vista install that has been frustrating and well, just plain annoying. I wanted to thump the laptop, and I never got cross once with the Mac.
What’s with the keyboard? I’m typing, and suddenly the cursor jumps to another part of my document and starts typing there. Why? Who knows. It’s happened twice since I started typing this. And the dialogue boxes that pop up when you click on anything (the keyboard thingy just happened a third time!) not just once but two or three times. What is with that? Please – go away. And take the HP laptop with you.
The HP laptop is just not designed for people, it’s designed for USERS. And corporate users at that, so it comes with everything that corporate customers have wanted, ever. There’s a fingerprint scanner on the front, so that I can be checked. Whats wrong with a password, you asked me enough times for it. And Vista just isn’t designed for ordinary people, it’s designed for USERS, those mythical people who will won’t mind sitting down for 24 hours configuring a PC so that they can start to use it. HP, Microsoft, hire some designers!
A little on the biased side no?
Obviously HP makes smaller, more light weight laptops that are more consumer friendly. He's right that the one he has means business, that's why I own an nc8430!
Windows Vista can obviously come preloaded but I installed my from a network file share. It was a breeze!
I especially like the automatic resolution changes when I'm connected to an external monitor or projector.
I guess Macs really are for people who waste time with computers.
Vista sucks. I re-installed XP professional.
Prepare to be roasted and toasted by the MAC heads here, NO negativity about Apple is allowed with out the poster being attacked
This is my first post from my new laptop, an HP Pavilion, running Vista. I have to say that Vista is great. I listened to all the doomsayers who bragged about Mac and trashed Vista so looked for problems all afternoon. Found none; everything has been a breeze. My LAN in the house worked fine and with a few clicks I was accessing other shared drives on computers in the house. Setting up the wireless couldn't have been easier. The printer worked and even iTunes 7.1.1 is okay. This laptop isn't heavy, has a builtin microphone and camera (no masking tape required like in that stupid commercial). There are lots of nice features that might be "Mac like" but who cares, I like them. I only have one issue with my wireless internet and I think that's because of my ancient router. I'll Cat5 directly to the DSL modem to troubleshoot that.
I hope all MAC lovers love their MACS and all Vista lovers love their PCs. Can't we all just get along?
This statement made me question both the sanity and the judgement of the reviewer.
The choice of Vista or Mac is like being asked which way of torture you prefer... not much of a choice.
If those were the only two choices, I might consider an abacus or a slide rule.
Of course the author wanted to make it a non choice.
A laptop with a mature WindowsXP would be my choice.
Really, the difference between business and consumer computers is a bit blurry nowadays. It used to be that something like a Commodore 64 was a toy, while an IBM PC was a real business machine, and genuinely substantial differences backed that up.
But really you can run Office and web-based software just as well on the MacBook as you can on a HP, so I wouldn't say one of them is better or worse than the other on that basis.
Macs are for people who want a great computer and don't mind paying a bit more for it and having fewer software choices because of it. Of course if you like open source software, the Mac is the better platform by far, and has the great advantage over Linux that you can run the best of the proprietary software and free software worlds smoothly on the same machine.
I'm glad for your sake that you like Vista. When I visited Best Buy to see what it was like, the sales reps were clearly unenthusiastic. Nobody tried to show me any sort of "wow", and I thought it was an aesthetic disaster compared to MacOS X.
If you like your machine, I'm happy for you and hope you continue enjoying it. If you have an open mind, you might enjoy visiting the Apple store and checking out a Mac next time you're in the market for a computer. You might find it an interesting experience.
D
(David Dennis owns a 17" PowerBook G4 and other Macs).
The Mac OS is years ahead of Windows. Really, this OS makes Windows look like something made by Fisher Price. However, you can't really compare a Windows laptop against a MacBook in terms of hardware. While a MacBook is tiny, small, and financially reasonable, the max video card on a MacBook is 64M, the max available RAM is 1G, hard drive size is limited, and screen size is tiny. If you want a 128M Video card, a 15" screen, or the ability to upgrade your RAM or hard drive, you have to buy a MacBook Pro for $1500. Want a 17" screen or 256M video card? How's about a MacBook Pro with a minimum price tag of $2G. You absolutely have to go out of your way to buy a windows laptop for $2G's these days.
I opted for the bottom run MacBook Pro and am ecstatic. You push the "on" button, and this thing is ready to go in less than 30 seconds. No joke. To run any of the new programs I have downloaded, simply drag the file to the application folder. The only problem I can think of with the new machine is the newly generated frustration with my Dell.
Another note is tech support. Apple tech support is in America and staffed by Americans. I called in with a problem and told them where I was and how I got there, and instead of listening to Parmindher Sing tell me to reboot and then follow his retarded troubleshooting tree, they took my problem seriously and solved it from the exact point wher eI was hung up. After the phone call, the tech rep emailed me from his real email address (that I could reply to) to follow up. That phone call alone was worth the extra dough.
Lol...what an unbiased piece of writing.
Here's a Manszier bra for the effete.
helps prevent damage to your Mac’s finish.
For the 3%ers where productivity takes a back seat to style?
Peter Haus is a PC Windows user... so no, not biased. In a reply in the comments after the blog, he says:
"Matt, I liked it (the MacBook) and although it was only a relatively short loan, I think it was enough to infect me with enthusiasm. Needless to say I will be getting a Mac at the earliest opportunity. Talking about the one mouse thing, I have also been told that two button mice work just fine too if you plug them in. So now it’s just a question of when I switch and not if."
You mist not come around here often. :-)
I'm glad MS-Vista is working for you.
I'm also glad I left the Microsoft plantation long ago.
i have apparently mis-attributed the article to Peter Haus when that is actually just the name of the blog... the author is Peter Gilbert.
Peter works for the University of the West of England in the IT Services department on Coldharbour Lane at Frenchay which is on the outskirts of Bristol.
Sorry about that.
In the interests of validating PC user's impressions of people who like Macs, Peter Gilbert also lists himself as an "artist."
Was a beta tester for Windos 3.0, 3.1. Have used Windos 95, 98. Experienced with all versions of NT including XP. Every time a new version of Windows comes out, the general hew and cry was how bad it sucked; yet we (for the most part) use it and become comfortable with it.
Takes time to accept anything new.
Not that I’m promoting MS, I think it sucks in the biggest way, however it is the product that we are stuck with and it beats DOS.
Having said all this … my next ‘puter will be a Mac.
Wimp.
It sorta depends on the type of "negativity".
Is there a reason the blog of some guy who works in tech support for a college in England should be considered an authoritative source in a Vista vs. Mac discussion? Especially when the comparison given is as biased, uninformative, or unscientific as this one?
The nc8430 is a nice machine and all, but the price......if it came down to it, I'd buy a MacBook Pro.
Or an Asus G1 :^)
Who said it was "authoritative?" It is the subjective impressions of a Windows PC using IT guy, experiencing his first contacts with a Mac... nothing more.
If it is biased, where did the bias come from? Could it have been his years of PC experience? It is certainly not from his Mac experience.
I use Windows software every day.
My one experience with a Mac was in 1992, when a subcontractor sent a disk with the presentation he had developed on it. I got it the AM before the meeting. I tried it, and lo it could not be read. I called, and he said oh, it was written by a Mac.
I had about 1.5 hours to review and modify as necessary, the 70 odd powerpoint slides, using a Mac that I had never used before. I called our computer guys to locate a Mac in our very large building. There was one in a classroom just down the hall. We had perhaps 20, total in a building that held about 7000 people.
I was done with an hour to spare. Simply wonderful. I continue to use Windows products, but have the greatest respect for the designers of Apple products.
MacBooks can have 2 gig RAM
Well, see, that's cos most of us are on the MAC PING LIST...which is a group of Mac enthusiasts. So that explains why we're here......(leaving the unasked question..uh...well...unasked!)
Couple of notes (to others, I know this won't interest you, but I am on a Save The Bandwidth crusade tonight):
About the mouse- I just buy a Targus laptop (it's tiny, like my 5 lb. iBook) and plug it in. It has two buttons and a scroll wheel. I love the wheel, and am finding using the right button gives me more options, which is cool. Less menu jazz. I also picked up a GE wireless mouse ($22..00 Walgreen's) and it's nice, certainly small, but rather clunky. Oh, and it requires a mouse pad...how 80's is that! I use the Targus wired one, it's more responsive. It's so awesome to be able to go to the drugstore and buy peripherals for my Mac!
I think the PC/MAc thing is starting to be less combative (well, I guess Gates doesn't think so yet!). Every day we see more and more people saying "Oh, hey, those Macs aren't so bad!" Personally, I think it's the PCGuy MacGuy commercials...I think MacGuy is so sweet to poor PCGuy!
As for tech support, I wonder how many Mac people actually use it? Way back in the day, when I bought my first Performa, I spent 15 minutes with Apple Support, telling them in my best "Oh-my-god-the-computer-just-ate-my-financial-report-that's-due-to-the-committee-tomorrow-afternoon-And-why-didn't-you-include-the-system-disks-with-these-darn-thiings" voice. The perfectly understandable person on the other end of the line agreed, said it was stupid, and what was the address of my office, so they could overnight the disks to me? Problem solved. That's the only time I ever needed tech support because of one simple fact: Macintoshes are made for people. They are logical. If one can read and reason, one can fix almost any software problem. The coffee on/in the keyboard thing, however, required a visit to the Apple store. That was back in the day of proprietary peripherals...now I can just go to Walmart. So, the point of this long dissertation (saving bandwidth, yeah, right!) is this: Macs are simple to use and simple to fix. If I could teach my 80 yr old mother to use a powerbook to check email and shop on ebay in an afternoon AND fix a freeze-up (she whose most recent tech purchase was a Royal typewriter in 1968!) then they must be simple to use!
(And now for a FR tech question: when I preview this post, it's way wide. If I post it and it's way wide to any of you, go ahead and ask a mod to pull it...)
Well, you thought it worthy to post here, so I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that you think the author had some credentials beyond, well, being able to write something on the internet.
I don't know that the author is biased, but I'm also not sure what he was comparing. Is it that specific HP model vs. that specific Macbook model? Is it OSX vs. Vista (which he basically didn't discuss)? Is it the ease of upgrading to Vista vs. the ease of upgrading to OSX (which he didn't do)?
If someone posted an article where a random person complained that he had problems upgrading from OS9 to OSX on a Macbook, and then said he was happy with a new PC that came preinstalled with Vista and happened to weigh less than the Macbook, I don't think you'd consider that a useful or informative article. I don't see how posting the opposite is much more than uninformative cheerleading.
This sentence only degrades his subjectivity, rather than speak well of Apple. With friends like this...
Find one. I'll post it.
Well, you thought it worthy to post here, so I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that you think the author had some credentials beyond, well, being able to write something on the internet.
I posted it because I found his conclusions interesting... that the Windows PC laptop (and OS) was built for users while the Mac laptop (and OS) was built for people.
I'm also not sure what he was comparing. . .
I think he was comparing ease of use and initial impressions of the OS with a sprinkling of hardware comparison.
He should have been comparing the Mac Book Pro to the HP instead of the MacBook. He might have found the weight issue to be less because the MacBook Pro is almost as heavy as the HP.
Comparing the Apple MacBook Pro to the Hp Compaq nc8430 Notebook with the same processor (2.16GHz v. 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo) and RAM (1 GB), we find the Mac is lighter (5.6Lbs v. 6 Lbs), has a larger HD (120GB v. 100 GB), smaller (134.53 in. v. 154.43 in.) and cheaper ($1,999 v. $2,250).
Here's an article written by a self-described "certified Mac fanboy" who concludes that "Vista is currently pouncing all over OS X Tiger in most scenarios." Posting it with your "FUD" logo doesn't count :-p
I think he was comparing ease of use and initial impressions of the OS with a sprinkling of hardware comparison.
Maybe, but he didn't write much about it. Most of the article was complaining about problems upgrading to Vista from XP despite the fact that he was performing no upgrade on the Mac (and it's a good idea to do a clean install for an OS upgrade anyway), and then complaining that the specific Windows laptop he chose was heavier than the Macbook, as though there aren't hundreds of Windows laptops on the market in all sizes and weights. It's not really Vista's fault that his laptop is heavy; unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn't sell the hardware, and you have many different choices, so the hardware shouldn't play a role in an OS comparison.
the Windows PC laptop (and OS) was built for users while the Mac laptop (and OS) was built for people.
What does this even mean? I'm a person. I use computers, which presumably makes me a "user" also. My friends, family, and coworkers are also people, and also users of computers. What's the difference?
I just had to buy a laptop (IBM) when I wanted a Mac. I'm an avid Mac fanatic, but the schooling i'm starting has software that doesn't work well with a Mac (or Vista) I made sure i got XP. I'll survive, but it sure was hard to spend that money for a Windows using machine. :D
And thank you for posting it.
I know how to use XP. I was an XP (and 98 and 95 and Win 3.1) user for many years. and then i switched. OMG! You gotta be there. Most of the smugness comes from the sheer pleasure of seamless integration of ....virtually everything!
For me, it was just too complicated right now to use Windows on a Mac, my life is requiring all my attention and i can't be bothered with installing and running everything. XP is what it wants, XP is what it will get.
darn it.
On the other hand, i got a steal of a deal at the Navy Exchange online. Plus no tax, no shipping.
I realized that I left that out later. The spec. I couldn't get over was the 64M video card. I think buying a notebook with less than a 128M video card in 2007 is foolish and invites obsolescence problems. I'm surprised that Mac even makes them that low.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=A4791B5D&nclm=MacBook
If the top of the line MacBook had an option to upgrade the video card, I would have saved $500.
My experience with this selling point on Mac is quite different. My wife has a Canon i9900 printer for digital photos. On XP, the printer required me to install it's driver, which came with a bunch of shareware. When I got the Mac, I simply plugged it in with a USB and it actually worked. No driver, no shareware, nada. It just worked. I find that most cameras do work on XP if you just plug them in, like you say, but other than using the generic text LPT1 driver on Windows, I have never had this happen on a pc.
I got 10.4.9 this morning and iPhoto and the browser are noticeably faster.
Second, while I laugh at the commercials too, you must admit they are disingenuous.
Spot on, on both points. Possibly the single biggest thing that turns the average computer user off to Apple is the Mac "attitude" that their systems are incredibly superior to all Windows installations. Well, for the Windows users who do plug things in and have them "just work", and don't have crashes, and don't have spyware/viruses, or other of these problems that the Mac users tell us we have all the time, it's just irritating. And being dishonest about the XP experience can only make one wonder whether they are being dishonest about the Mac experience.
Oh well. I'm not going to get a Mac user to use Windows any more than they're going to get me to use a Mac, and I don't particularly care to "convert" anyone. I mainly post on these threads to counter some of the more blatant propaganda for the sake of the lurkers/undecideds who might otherwise read and think that unless they buy a Mac, their Windows computer will steal their TV and shoot their dog.
Macs can run all Windows PC software. You/ve missed nothing. Shimmer was probably taking no chances or someone wrongly told him the Mac couldn't handle it.
Second, while I laugh at the commercials too, you must admit they are disingenuous. One of the first had to do with a Mac simply plugging in a digital camera and it "just worked". I watched that commercial with my 8 year who received a Fuji Finepix for Christmas. She took it out of the box on Christmas morning, plugged it into our Windows PC and it also "just worked". It was so easy, as advertised, and she didn't understand why the commercial said it was hard. From the voices of children. One more example, our laptops have built in cameras and microphones, just like the Mac. We didn't have to use masking tape around our head to try to be like a Mac. While funny, that commercial isn't very honest. Now the "cancel/allow" commercial - you got me there.
On the contrary, 99% of the PC laptops DO NOT have built-in cameras. All new Mac notebooks do. How many PC desktops have built in cameras or even microphones? Almost none.
You will also find that many peripherals don't just work with PCs until you load the disk that comes with them... and many times you still have to download the upgraded drivers for it to work after you've installed the disk. The old joke is "plug and pray"...
I am also a two-button mouse fan and have always been amazed that Apple hadn't output one so I always bought 3rd party mice. However, they now have one. I reluctantly tried it and I like it. My Kensington has now be put away. I still don't care for the shape of the Apple mouse, but it's multiple programmable buttons are really nice. That said, either this is an older article, or this guy didn't bother to find out anything about the new mouse.
In all fairness to the Windows crowd ... I think this is not a good comparison. HP computers suck, IMO. They make good printers, but their computers don't seem to be as good as other PCs.
Our civilization is in serious trouble.
"And its black, not a nice black, but that aggressive corporate laptop black."
Perhaps this racist will be calling for a ban on "assault computers."
I guess that is a nice thing about Windows. It runs hardware from so many vendors and configurations that you can pick and choose from a wide variety. If you want a camera, like 2 of our 3 laptops, then you buy a laptop with a camera. If you don't, like my 81 year old father, you don't have to waste money on an option that will never be used. Either way, the choice is mine - it's not made by Microsoft, and that's the way I want it.
"plug and pray"...
That must be an OLD joke because I've never heard it before. And you're right. We bought the latest and greatest joystick for gaming and wanted to use it with our oldest computer - a Windows 2000 machine. There was no way the PC would have a driver for this new joystick. So, the extra step of inserting the CD wasn't too much trouble. The autoinstall program took it from there. It wasn't any trouble at all.
So having to choose whether or not I want to buy a camera and occassionally having to insert a CD with new hardware aren't hardships.
I was at BestBuy last night looking at laptops. They ALL had Vista. The salesclerk said the only installed WindowsXP for sale was a used computer up front!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.