Mac OS X: Switching to a Mac
Non portable? What experience?
by ramraybhat - 10/23/06 3:34 PM In reply to: Yes defiantly buy it by ahawkeyesI am thinking of purchasing a nonportable iMac. It would be a great help if you could elaborate what experience you had with your Macbook which urged you to advise me on the same?
Will the Apple care protection Plan save me against a complete loss due to possible virus attacks if I run XP on my Mac computer?
RSD
by savanger - 10/23/06 3:39 PM In reply to: Non portable? What experience? by ramraybhatThe macbooks had a heat sync problem which caussed them to shut down randomly but more frequently on start-up. I have the exact problem and I'm sending it in for repairs when I have time, which should be sometime this week.
However that problem has been resolved and is only a problem for the first few batches.
RSD fix (?)
by mrmacfixit
- 10/28/06 6:06 AM
In reply to: RSD by savanger
http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6126-0.html?forumID=10&threadID=215154&messageID=2297205
NO!
by mrmacfixit - 10/23/06 4:16 PM
In reply to: Non portable? What experience? by ramraybhat
The AppleCare Protection Plan ONLY covers defects in the hardware and has nothing to do with software.
If you run XP on your new Mac and do not have any virus protection for the XP side, APP will only laugh at you for being so silly.
You will find no protection plan that will cover you in the event of a virus attack.
Just because XP is running on a Mac, does not make it any the less vulnerable to virus attacks. It is still Windows and still full of holes.
P
Understood Loud and clear but..
by ramraybhat - 10/23/06 5:07 PM In reply to: NO! by mrmacfixit
Let me first thank you for getting across your point. Let me also add another complexity to this. I will be buying an iMac with both Operating systems. I will also purchase an Antivirus for XP. DO
1. Need to also protect my Mac OS X with antivirus/antimalware? Do such programs exist? Is the threat clear and present?
2. Is buying Apple Care protection for my hardware a practical decision? Is the hardware for Mac desktops fragile in anyway so as to take this preventive/preemptive step?
Ram
Its your decision but I would
by ahawkeyes - 10/27/06 3:58 AM In reply to: Understood Loud and clear but.. by ramraybhat1. No you don't need a virus program for OS X. Tiger gets no viruses and if we do get one (occasionally as it is) a fix usally comes out a day later I think the last one for Tiger was last year. So no Norton Anti-Virus for the OS X partition is a waste of Money
2. Buying Apple Care is a good decision and almost a requirement for portables but for desktops it is a good idea but its not necessary since your not going to be carry around your iMac, but with softaware or a hardware failure or basically anything that could happen to your Mac Apple Care covers so it has some perks, also its less expensive that Apple Care for portables by almost two hundred dollars reflecting its usefulness
No, Apple care does not protect against "virus" infections.
by pabcsman - 10/27/06 8:05 AM In reply to: Non portable? What experience? by ramraybhatApple care is a HARDWARE protection plan.
Its mandatory for a laptop.
If you want to purchase the 2 year extension above the 1 year that comes standard with the Mac, you have to purchase it within 1 year of the machine purchase.
In other words, you dont have to cough up the money for Apple care at the time you buy the machine. You have a year.
AC is expensive, but the service is great. Note that it does not cover a machine with physical damage. If you drop it, you pay to have it fixed.
17 Year Consultant Speaks
by The CyberPoet - 10/27/06 4:48 AM In reply to: Switching to a Mac by ramraybhatAlthough your computing experience will be less jeopardized on the Mac, I believe you may be asking the wrong questions and looking for the wrong answers. This is where a consultant would normally come in, and you might seriously want to consider locating one in a professional sense (for the same reasons you wouldn't engage in a extensive contract without an attorney). In specific:
(A) Why are you looking at a laptop or even a low-end desktop? You are a scientist (which usually means processor & system intensive tasks analyzing data sets), and you also mentioned both video decomposition/analysis (always hardware intensive) and animation/multimedia (also hardware intensive at the creation stage).
This is especially problematic when you have a four-year horizon expectation for the hardware lifespan. A much more realistic approach would be to qualify whether a desktop would serve you better than a laptop (because desktops, at least on the Mac) always have significantly more speed and power, and whether you can cost-justify replacing it in two years instead of four (using the then-resale value to leverage yourself into a newer, faster unit, since depreciation on Macs is fairly linear, unlike PC's).
(B) The second question that should be asked is whether the specific core software to accomplish what both you and your other half need to accomplish is available for the Mac platform under OS X, preferably already optimized for the Intel hardware. Some of the programs you mentioned are (Adobe/Macromedia Director, Flash, Corel Draw**, MS Office). More-over, many of these manufacturers have very inexpensive cross-grades, where you relinquish your PC software license (& disks) in exchange for the Mac versions. Some of the software listed I am not aware of being available for the Mac (3D studio Max comes to mind), so you need to judge how critical those software packages are and whether they can be obsoleted or replaced with alternatives.
** Notes on Corel Draw for the Mac: Arrrrggg!!! Unfortunately, this package has caused me no end of suffering, and I have migrated all my Corel-on-the-mac clients to other packages instead.
(C) Data retention. Since your research depends so heavily on valid data retention, you should look at systems that can specifically support data back-up and duplication without user intervention. The single flaw in virtually every user's back-up schemes is that they depend on the user to trigger the back-up; after a few years of watching this failure in the early 90's, I have taken (and kept) all my clients on automated back-ups and data-redundancy systems so that the only critical thing in the whole computing process is always secured: the data. Hardware failures, lightening strikes to the power or telephone lines, etc., and what's there can be smitten into the equivalent of data pixie dust. Since this is so critical to you, plan ahead and ensure that your system supports data-duplication/data-archeiving without human intervention.
(D) Running dual OS's (XP plus OS X) -- while it can be done, and if configured "just right", can be done without serious peril for the PC side, it is my professional opinion that it is (for your particular scenario, as described, including an apparent lack of PC systems knowledge) a poor choice. Since you already have an investiture in your laptop, and the other half uses it for her multimedia creation, why not spin the laptop off to her (after having a pro clean it and protect it appropriately), and then buy the mac to address your own needs.
Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet
I have to agree
by Mindstyle06 - 10/27/06 1:23 PM In reply to: 17 Year Consultant Speaks by The CyberPoetAnother scientist speaks.
I have to agree with the Cyberpoet.
We have both Windows XP and Macintosh. Everyone strictly uses Mac on daily basis and our macs range from 700MHz G4s to the latest iMacs, depends when you started in the lab. Only one ibook for strict presentation purpose. Two G5 towers with 2 250GB HDDs with double screens, best possible configurations.
Almost all of us can run major applications like Adobe creative Suite without much hassle. Some of us feel free to use our machine for video editing and they work quite well. We use MS-Office but one user is dedicated for OpenOffice which doesn't perform as good as it does on PC. G5s are dedicated to extreme computational stuff. We wrote few of the applications ourselves to use all the cores of the G5 processor.
PC is P4 2GHz with 1GB RAM and 250GB HDD, this is used only for very special stuff which doesn't work on Mac and desperately need PC otherwise it is not used.
As far as data retention is concerned, monthly backups on TDK scratchproof DVD discs and weekly backups on the institute server. At the end of year, we check all the backups and whatever is fishy, we back it up again either from the server or from the disc then clear all the data to start everything fresh.
We haven't tried dual OS. Our system admin recommends against that.
Another option
by reptar - 10/27/06 5:28 AM In reply to: Switching to a Mac by ramraybhatYou might want to get one of the live linux CDs and use it with your old Windows machine. It's hard to give a virus to a CD that's already burned. There is a Windows emulator called Wine that runs on linux.
Software, software, software. If you or your beloved spouse really depends on a specific program, it can restrict your choice of operating systems. You can do a system restore and add some security software and hope for the best.
You can also look at sites like Source Forge to see if there are any alternatives to specialized software you're currently using.
Good luck whatever you choose.
v.
You're making the right decision
by jmsross - 10/27/06 5:50 AM In reply to: Switching to a Mac by ramraybhatDon't fear. You're making the right decision. Mac OS X is imminently more stable than any version of Windows I've ever used. You will easily get 4+ years out of it. I'm still using a PowerMac G4 that I bought new in 2000 and it's running the latest version of Mac OS X 10.4 just fine.
In answer to your specific questions: 1. If your Mac is configured as a dual-boot system, any Windows software you load onto it should run just fine; however, I would recommend getting Mac versions of the software, if available. 2. MS Office doesn't come bundled with Macs, except in a demo version. You'll have to buy it separately. If you use Access, you'll want to get the Windows version, as the Mac version doesn't include that title. Another option would be to download the free NeoOffice suite, which is a Mac OS X native version of OpenOffice.org. It includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, vector drawing, and database modules that rival the capabilities of MS Office and it costs not a penny. Check it out at www.neooffice.org
Start off fresh and you'll be delighted
by donlevy - 10/27/06 9:05 AM In reply to: Switching to a Mac by ramraybhatLike a lot of new Mac users, you are starting off with a misapprehension about Macs and viruses and other nasty critters: It is Windows that is the thing to avoid. Putting Windows on your Mac will merely perpetuate the headache. Without Windows on your Mac, you will enjoy complete immunity. With it, you will have all the same headaches as before, and need all the same crazy (but vitally necessary) to keep your ENTIRE computer from bogging down the same way your Dell did. The reason why is that it is the Mac OS that makes the difference, not the type/brand of computer. So I urge you to forget installing Windows on your Mac nor using any other scheme, now or in future, that lets you run Windows versions of programs that are Windows-compatible. Consider contacting the makers of your Windows software and ask if there is a path to retire your Windows versions and replace them with a Mac version. If not, why not advertise in Craig's List and similar to see if you can find someone who is switching the other way you can trade with (yes, for some people, there really are reasons why they want to do that, like joining an all-Windows firm, for example). Also, you can get the Student/Teacher edition of MS Office (with 3 licenses!) for about $150 from almost every store that carries Mac Software. Note that the email program in the Office suite, Entourage, is essentially Outlook Express on mega-steroids that makes Outlook Express for Windows look like a tinker-toy - Entourage is, in my opinion, far and away the best and most sophisticated email program among the myriad offered on BOTH the OS X and Windows platforms. Combine it with a good spam filter such as SpamSieve, available to download from the web from it's developer Michael Tsai at http://c-command.com/spamsieve (I have no affiliation except as a happy customer), and you will have what you want for Office.
Yes, it is a pain to make the switch, but it's a lot more pain to go buy a Mac and then open it up to all the aggravation and expensive time waste (and potential loss of your valuable data) by giving it the same vulnerability you're scrapping your Dell to lose.
Enjoy your new Mac!
Don Levy
The MacTherapist
Los Angeles
And the moral of the story is...
by ramraybhat - 10/27/06 4:51 PM In reply to: Switching to a Mac by ramraybhatDear Friends,
My sincere thanks to all of you who have taken the effort to convey your opinions to me as well as conjectures which will lead me on to think of other things.
I have made the switch and purchased the 17 inch 2.0GHz iMac from the Apple Store with iWorks. I am NOT purchasing Parallel Desktop nor will be running Windows XP on my machine. The only OS will be OS X Tiger. And I feel I will be better served using Open Office since I was never overtly fond of Microsoft Office anyway.
There are certain choices and sometimes the wishes of your better and beloved half are to be complied with. Hence my queries were to purely consider alternatives and evaluate the consequences of the compromises I might or might not need to make. However the almost unanimous opinions expressed in this forum have made my choices clearer. I conclude by saying I am only too excited to be a new member of the Mac Community.
Ram
Fantastic.
by R. Proffitt - 10/27/06 5:16 PM
In reply to: And the moral of the story is... by ramraybhat
I think you'll have a great ride.
Bob
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