Thinking of buying an Apple computer

[Lee]

Congrats! I am loving my iMac so if you are anything like me I think you will be pleased. I hope you got extra memory, mine really bogs down with the standard 256. Luckily my gig of memory will be here tomorrow.

[th'FOOL]

Actually, the model I got comes with 512.  That should tide me over for a little while at least

[Montag]

Foolish mortals!  You would have been better off playing with Linux.  It would have been cheaper and there is all the open source software out there.   :twisted:

[ravenvii]

Are you... sure about that... Mentag?

I've played around with Linux. And it's no plaything, I'll tell you that. Almost impossible to install trouble-free, constant problems, incomplete-feeling open source software, more problems, and a necessarity to use the terminal if you want to do anything, oh did I say more problems?

OS X is vastly superior. And Apple's sleek machines are vastly superior than your typical biege Linux box.

Linux may be approaching danger for Windows, but the only thing that tells you about Windows is that... well, you know the rest.

[th'FOOL]

Foolish mortals!  You would have been better off playing with Linux.  It would have been cheaper and there is all the open source software out there.   :twisted:

What, and be forced to use Gimp?  I think not!

Linux is about as far on the other end of the spectrum of user-friendliness as it gets

Next time I want to build a mail server, I'll get back to you...

[Siljanus]

What do you guys use for your browser? I can't get comfortable with Safari. I love Opera, but the Mac version can't tile pages and when you click a link it opens the link in a new Opera window instead of a new page. I hate that. The PC version of Opera seems much smoother than the Mac version.

At work we have Macs and I use Camino which is the Mozilla browser put out for the Mac.  No worries so far with it.

I'd be curious about your impressions as you use your computer since we need to do some upgrades at work and the iMac, even with bumping up the RAM is at a pretty good price point.

And get yourself a real mouse instead of that one button thing that Apple still insists on including with their machines.

PS  Here's the link to Camino

 http://www.mozilla.org/products/camino/

[Kermy]

I registered just to reply to this thread.

I'm a long time PC user, recently I got the urge to try OSX, so I bought myself an iBook G4 back in April. It was nice, but the aluminium "bling bling" got to me. So I sold it and got a Powerbook 12". That is a nice little machine, a flawed gem as they say. Crappy a$$ screen brings it down like the bastard stepchild it is.

After the escapade with the Powerbook I sold it and went PC only again for a few months till just last weekend.

I had the urge to buy a Mac again, so I was debating whether or not to get the new iMac G5 or 15" Powerbook. After going to the store and checking them out I went with the 17" iMac. I can't say this enough, the screen on the Powerbooks sucks...a lot. But the screen on the iMac is nice...very nice. 17" is perfect for the avg user without a lot of space. 20" is hot! But not $500 more for the same machine minus 3" and 80 gig hd hot.

Anyways, after using the iMac for 3-4 days I can say that I love it BUT it has problems:
1. Check the Apple support forums for the iMac G5. HUGE thread on noise issue due to fans. It's a really "whiney" sound. High frequency, ugh. I have to put it to sleep every night or else it really bugs me.

2. Ram. If you get the iMac, get ram. No, get A LOT of ram. OSX eats ram like a 5 year old eats ice cream. 512 should be the bare minimum here. Go with 2 x 512 for the 128 bit channel thingy. You need both the ram to be the same. I.E., buy it at the same time from say...Crucial.com

3. Fan. Ugh. Yes.

I like OSX, I also like Win Xp. I'm a part time gamer/full time engineering student so I keep my Thinkpad around. OSX can do almost every major thing you want it to compared to XP. BUT it's the little programs that will get to you. Programs lke Autocad (Ok it's not "little"), Solidworks, Pro/E...see a trend here?

At this point in time, I would not buy the Powerbook. They're due for an update in Janurary. Mac rumor sites are predicting a big update at MWSF in Jan 05. I would either get a iBook or iMac. And of course more ram.

[ravenvii]

On the PowerBooks... yes, it's due for an update, but the update for the iBook came by without a word for it's bigger, aluminum-y brother. It's possible it'll be updated in January. But as for it being big is unlikely. Possible but unlikely. The only two possible directions the PowerBooks could go are a PowerBook G5, or a PowerBook dual core G4. The G5 is way too hot, and NOT for laptop use. Not yet anyway. The dual core G4, while promising, is still a while off - Freescale says the first samples will go out in February-March, way too late for a MWSF2005 update. So chances are, we won't see a PowerBook update for a while, or see a simple speed bump.

As for the iMac G5 fan, it's not supposed to be loud. That's a defect that affects a fair number of iMac G5's. Call Apple and they'll provide you with a fix.

[Kermy]

As for the iMac G5 fan, it's not supposed to be loud. That's a defect that affects a fair number of iMac G5's. Call Apple and they'll provide you with a fix.

Unfortuantely according to several users on the Apple support forum, the fix consists of either a new midplane or a new PSU. It seems this is hit or miss as in, it does get better for some but worse for others. Or it doesn't do jack squat.

But it's not loud, it's just the pitch of the fan is high and annoying.

[Lee]

I rarely hear my iMac over the sound of my PC next to it. Tonight I tried that marble game that comes with it and that really got the fans going though. No high pitch noises, thank god. I don't a hear a peep out of it 90% of the time.

I have been using OmniWeb, and enjoy it. For some reason the Mac version of Opera seems slow and I couldn't get comfortable with it. I like OmniWeb but I miss mouse gestures. I will have to try Mozilla, thanks for the link Siljanus.

Kermy I am a little lost on what you said about the memory. I bought a 1 gig stick from Crucial and planned to put it next to the current 256 stick in it already. From what I read the sticks didn't need to match. Is there some benefit if they do?

Edit: NM on my memory question, I just found the answer. Jeez I wish I would have read that before I bought the memory. I guess I could always just put 2 gigs in it. I bought the Mac for photo management/editing, it couldn't hurt. Well besides the extra $250 for another stick.

[Lee]

Got the memory in it, and it seems to get bogged down less when running multiple programs. But one thing that is very annoying is that my larger picture folders (around 1.5-2megs each) it takes forever to load thumbnails in a window. So bad it literally can't display them all, it stops. And on top of that the fans have been going like crazy tonight. Usually I can't hear them, tonight they are going full blast, and I am not even doing anything different.

[Kermy]

Check the Activity Monitor and see what's taking up the CPU. CPU activity controls the fan, not heat. So if anything CPU intensive occurs, fans kicks up.

[Lee]

Thanks Kermy.

I posted about slow loading thumbnails on the iMac forum and basically was told that OSX has to render each thumbnail on the fly, while XP keeps them in a hidden file (the latter I knew, I just figured OSX would do the same). I guess that means iPhoto is a must for picture viewing. Not a big deal, just means I need to learn it.

Now where is that activity monitor.....oh under utilities...that makes sense.

[Kermy]

You can also open up Terminal and type in: top

Is this your first mac? Check out:
www.macnn.com
www.macfixit.com
www.osxhints.com <----must
www.spymac.com
www.macgamer.com