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Unread 19-07-2009, 18:38
Mark Rozitis
 
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Re: Should I buy a Mac or a PC?

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Asus for the PC flavored option, I have two and you seem to get a lot for the price!. My older Asus F3 series I guess has been retired to be my desktop now and my laptop for the road is my newer Asus G50V. What made me look at Asus is because I work in news use and are rapidly expanding the use of live video streaming/encoding and that means graphics and these are laptops geared towards gaming so a bit better resources.

So far so good, physically they are not Thinkpad or toughbook tough but I have had no major problems as all and we who work in news are not always so gentle with equipment.

I "almost" went Mac a few years back but there were a couple of things that even under bootcamp were not guaranteed to work and since I needed those programs for work I couldn't take the chance on.

If I was going into school for video production, graphics, editing then yes I would probably go Mac but one thing about a PC that I like is when something goes wrong you can fix it, working under the hood keeps you're skills current and I kinda like that sometimes.

One thing I try and do if I can afford it at the time is buy they highest end laptop I can just to help future-proof me for a few years to come, for example I have no troubles at all running Vista because of that.

M

Quote:
Originally Posted by artdutra04 View Post
Some people will fight all day long saying their side is better, cheaper, faster, more efficient, etc, or just plainly, "best". They may also use snide comments about the other side, claiming they are buying overpriced gizmos or useless, virus-infested piles of sludge to name a few.

Yet as my favorite example, a Chevy Malibu and a BMW M3 will both get you from point A to point B, just as would a Toyota Camry and a Ford F250. Yet everyone buys different cars for different reasons. Some like really opening up the throttle on the curvy mountain roads when the cops aren't looking, while others just need to commute to work and back, while still others need to haul six cords of firewood every day. No one in their right mind will argue with someone all day long about how their car is superior to someone else's car. Different people have different needs and desires, so they buy different cars. Same goes for computers - there is no overall "best" computer or OS - just what is best for that particular person.

So my advice is that since the majority of people have experience using Windows, go to an Apple Store or Best Buy or borrow a friend's Mac and use it for at least 20-30 hours to really get a feel for the OS. (Why so many hours? Windows, OSX, and Linux are all structured differently. It can take 20-30 hours to really become familiar with how each operating system operates. Put a lifelong Mac user in front of Windows for one hour, and a lifelong Windows user in front of OSX or Linux for an hour, and I guarantee they'll both be equally frustrated and annoyed. Only after you get past the initial getting-familiar-with-the-OS-stage will you be able to fully experience the true OS user environment). Only after you've experienced the all the options, can you decide what is best for you.


One comment I will say though is that you do get what you pay for. On the Windows side, Lenovo Thinkpads and some of the Dell and HP workstation-class notebook and desktop computers are amazing, and of similar quality (and price) as Macs. And for any engineering college work, any computer cheaper than ~$1000 to ~$1200 will really be at a disadvantage. (Trust me, I went through the first two years of college with a $800 Dell Inspiron laptop...) As for engineering work, the Mac to Windows ratio I've seen at WPI seems to range from 1:3 to 1:4 (e.g. much higher than average), with about half of the Windows computers being Lenovo Thinkpads. So chum up the extra bucks and get a quality Thinkpad T400/T500/W500 or Macbook Pro (or a Dell or HP workstation class computer), because once you graduate into an engineering job, you should have no problems with the price.

Also, if you are going for ME, look for models with serious graphics cards, such as the NVIDIA Quadro or ATI FireGL. If you thought SolidWorks or Inventor or Pro|E worked great on your consumer class NVidia Geforce or similar ATI GPUs, prepare to be amazed when using a x64 OS, x64 software, and workstation GPU.

Last edited by Mark Rozitis : 19-07-2009 at 18:50.
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