Macs?

[mtnmom]

DH made me a Mac convert. My old PC was so slow. After waking it up from sleep mode, I'd go start the pot of coffee and feed my cats before I could start using the PC. Some things it just would not do. Streaming videos was hit or miss. DH had had enough and bought me an iMac.

It took a week to get used to it, but really everything is so intuitive. When you search for a document, you go to spotlight and type in a keyword and you instantly have your options in front of you! I remember waiting several minutes for the PC to find something for me.

My boys had Dell laptops and both got viruses. When they went away to college, I didn't want to have to deal with the phone calls saying they had another virus. So I bought them Macbooks. Best thing I ever did. They've never had a problem.

I live on the edge of Silicon Valley. I have my choice of Apple Stores if anything goes wrong (which it hasn't). Yes, they're expensive -- but they just plain work!

[firmaholic]

Originally Posted by m42

The only time that has happened to me has been with pcs. 2 Dells and 1 HP. The white iBook that I bought in 2002...still working. Like my fat back tv I had to give it away. Just would not break lol.

I could have written your post. Lol between my daughter and I we have crushed two Dells and one HP. But since we've have switched to white MacBook in 2006, we've had no issues. The one from 2006 is still going strong. We also gave away our fat back tv, it too wouldn't break. Lol

[Debbie S.]

Originally Posted by glamgal

I loved my Sony Vaio until it started overheating and became as loud as a small power tool. I had mine 2 years before it finally died on me. Prior to that, I had a Dell which lasted me about 4 years.

There must have been something wrong with the batch / lot that my Vaio came from, as I do remember about 14 months into ownership having to schedule a tech to come swap something out and it was covered under a recall notice. That was when it started overheating and being really loud, making all sorts of grinding sounds.

I purchased a MacBook Air a few months after it died. I won't ever go back to a PC again. The first couple of months presented a learning curve, but it has been pure love after that hump.

My Sony laptop is:
VGN FW390. I paid a lot of money for this laptop. It was to replace my Dell PC that was slowly dying. It has a blue-ray player/burner that didn't work at all when it arrived brand new. Sony had to send me a replacement and I had to install it. Rarely use it and when I do, it has crashed while in sleep mode, and I'm told that it has recovered from an unexpected shut down. I've gotten the blue death screen so many times that I've lost count.

What I love most about a Mac is that it is so easy to delete a program. Just drag the icon to the trash. So flippin' simple. No DLL extensions left behind causing havoc. Like Diane said, turning on a Mac is lightening quick. My PC and laptop take forever. When a program has a new update, it tells me and installing it is a breeze.

Zenera and Fidget Queen, thank you! I did download a bunch of documents when I first setup my Mac, and I do have it filed. I just wasn't sure how daunting of a task it is.

[Kathleen86]

Originally Posted by Zenara25

I find it very easy, but it's been quite awhile since I've done it. Finder, Applications, Utilities, Bootcamp Assistant. It will create a partition on your hard drive for Windows. You need your own copy of Windows 7 (with an activation product key) not sure if Windows 8 is supported yet. Bootcamp Assistant will offer printable instructions for you and I believe you need a DVD to burn the drivers required for full functionality (such as bluetooth etc). Pretty straightforward process.

I agree, it was easy. Once you open it up it guides you through. You can choose how much space you want for your Windows drive...I don't like to fill my computer with too many programs, so I did a 50-50 split for Mac and Windows.

[BigBadBetty]

If you want to run Windows, you might also want to consider Parallels. It's about $60. You can run Windows within a window while running the Mac OS. You don't need to restart your computer. It does take a lot of resources so I wouldn't recommend doing it on an older computer. I have one application at work that isn't available to Macs. You can use the boot camp partition you have already set up.

[glamgal]

Originally Posted by BigBadBetty

If you want to run Windows, you might also want to consider Parallels. It's about $60. You can run Windows within a window while running the Mac OS. You don't need to restart your computer. It does take a lot of resources so I wouldn't recommend doing it on an older computer. I have one application at work that isn't available to Macs. You can use the boot camp partition you have already set up.

I purchased Parallels, installed it, and then couldn't get it off my laptop fast enough. I wanted it so I could run the Audials software to download videos in the Safari browser. It was such a frustrating (and expensive) round of trial and error! It wouldn't work with Audials correctly and so I ended up paying for the Audials upgrade, thinking that was the problem. Finally, I had DH remove Parallels and Bootcamp my laptop. It was the best decision for me. If I know I will be working on school work or financial stuff (all of my financial documents are still in Excel), I start it up in Bootcamp mode. Everything else is done in Apple OS.

[Fidget Queen]

For those of you with Bootcamp also, do you know of any way to reallocate more space to Windows, or would I need to start the whole process over? I gave it 100G, but it is already half full with nothing more than Windows and AutoCAD (literally). I wish I'd known, because I have 1T to work with. I assumed it would be plenty!

[glamgal]

Originally Posted by Debbie S.

My Sony laptop is:
VGN FW390. I paid a lot of money for this laptop. It was to replace my Dell PC that was slowly dying. It has a blue-ray player/burner that didn't work at all when it arrived brand new. Sony had to send me a replacement and I had to install it. Rarely use it and when I do, it has crashed while in sleep mode, and I'm told that it has recovered from an unexpected shut down. I've gotten the blue death screen so many times that I've lost count.

This isn't mine, but this is what my Sony Vaio sounded like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9vHLwAbFxU

I, too, escaped that blue screen of death many times on the Vaio. The model number for mine was VGN-CS110E. It was pearl and I loved it when it worked properly.

[beatchica]

I switched from a PC to a Macbook air about 4 years ago and never looked back. I love it.

I can download workouts, stream, pretty much do anything and more that I used to be able to do on my PC. There is a large amount of open source software for the Mac as well. Which means you are able to find free programs for just about anything you might need to do!

[glamgal]

Originally Posted by Fidget Queen

For those of you with Bootcamp also, do you know of any way to reallocate more space to Windows, or would I need to start the whole process over? I gave it 100G, but it is already half full with nothing more than Windows and AutoCAD (literally). I wish I'd known, because I have 1T to work with. I assumed it would be plenty!

I asked DH. He said no, not as far as he knows. He said that when you initially set up the Bootcamp, you format a certain portion of the hard drive for Windows to use and it can't be enlarged due to the type of formatting. He said you would need to delete the current partition (thus losing all of your info saved in Bootcamp) and reinstall it with bigger space. Another option is to store any Files you would normally store in Bootcamp on an external hard drive or on the Cloud.

Maybe someone else knows of a way around this that DH isn't aware of.