MAC Book Pro or Sony Vaio

[ntractv]

I would like to get some advice from the boards if you don't mind as I think everyone has either worked with the Windows and MAC platforms. I bought my daughter a 15" MAC Book Pro for Christmas and I really like the whole construction and feel of the laptop (backlit keyboard was a nice touch). I am in the market for a new laptop and I have never used the MAC OS so I was wondering how hard of a leap is it from Windows to MAC. All of my current programs are Windows along with snyching my programs on my Omnia. I was looking at a customized Sony Vaio with 8G of RAM and 1 Terabyte harddrive but the problem I had was the harddrive ran only at 4200 rpm so I am kinda iffy.

I am aware of the MAC parrallels program to run Windows, but if I am going to need that to run my Windows based programs what do I need the MAC for.

P.S. The battery life on the MAC was quite impressive.

[doogald]

I did not have too much of a problem switching. Really the things that are quite a bit different:

- the trash does not store any information about where an erased file once was, unlike the Windows Recycle Bin. You really need to stay on top of the trash and where things are, etc.

- the Finder is a bit weird when you switch from Windows Explorer, but it is really not that difficult to grasp quickly

- closing a Window does not close the application (with very few exceptions.) It's like closing the document in Word while leaving Word running, say, in Windows. It doesn't take long to train yourself to "Cmd-Q" when you are done with an app, though.

- you do not have as much power controlling printers. For example, if you want to switch a printer from a network connection to a USB connection, you really cannot without just creating a new printer definition. Pretty minor grievance, though.

There are a lot of strengths with Mac OS compared with Windows. I find Time Machine excellent, there are apps like SuperDuper to clone a drive very easily, even while you are using the Mac; I do prefer having discrete apps for calendars, contacts and mail rather than a huge thing like Outlook (though Microsoft makes Entourage if you prefer it that way).

[David Tucker]

A couple of your 'minor' issues actually seem pretty surprising to me.

[Spooof]

I think that we need to understand what you do on your computer? Is this for business, personal, or both? What are the main applications you use and which of those can you not live without.

I am entering my 3rd year as a mac user but only for personal use. I simply could not use OSX for work without fusion/parallels. The other problem at work would be the line up at my office for people seeing that I had a mac and wondering why they could get one too.

[ntractv]

I think that we need to understand what you do on your computer? Is this for business, personal, or both? What are the main applications you use and which of those can you not live without.

I am entering my 3rd year as a mac user but only for personal use. I simply could not use OSX for work without fusion/parallels. The other problem at work would be the line up at my office for people seeing that I had a mac and wondering why they could get one too.

I use my laptop for both personal and business use. I use Outlook extensively and also to sync my smartphone with all my information through Media Device Center. Power Point, Excel, Adobe Reader, etc. I use Photoshop CS3, Money Plus, Zune software (also have an iPod as well, but the Zune most often). I think I am more concerned about losing the ability to sync my Windows Mobile, money information and synching my Zune.

[Spooof]

My comments...


Mac Mail is fine for pop or imap; however if you sync to an Exchange server then you should use Entourage (MS Office for Mac).
Excel works fine on the mac. it is a bit different but 100% functional (just don't use Numbers it is useless)
PowerPoint is better on Mac for presenting in my opinion. I cannot imagine what MS was thinking. When you have a projector plugged in I love they way they layout next slides and the timer etc. Way better than on a PC.
No need for adobe reader it is built into preview
Photoshop CS3 - $199USD upgrade to CS4. I am not sure if there are other options.
Most smart phones can sync easily with Mac... a few require some 3rd party tools that are not that expensive. This can be a problem. Not sure if it is a windows mobile phone.
MS Money / Quicken is a problem on the Mac. I do not think that they offer an osx product. Squirel is an alternative that recently won an award from Apple... http://www.squirrelapp.com/ It is pretty cheap and looks pretty cool. Not quite the same support as Quicken.
You Zune is another problem... Don't think that you can do this without running Windows in bootcamp or a VM. Once the zune's market share grows you might see something.


Note that in many cases you can find some very high quality shareware for free or low dollars on the Mac platform. In general I think that small developers make more money developing for Mac vs PC. Now this is not across the board I find that there are some holes in certain applications

[Macguy59]

- the trash does not store any information about where an erased file once was, unlike the Windows Recycle Bin. You really need to stay on top of the trash and where things are, etc.


Actually what you're talking about is not having a 'restore' function and I agree there should be one. Of limited help would be using the "Undo move" option from the Finder bar. Using that would put the files back in their original location but I don't know if that's retained for more than the current session. That said it's unusual for me not to remember where the file(s) came from.

Quicken 2007 for Mac works under Leopard as does Quickbooks

[doogald]

Just yesterday I was doing some disk cleaning and, when I opened the trash to empty it, I realized that I had deleted more files than I wished to. And for some of them I had no idea where they originally were - I had to make a guess, really - and, had they been something in my ~/Library, it probably would have taken me far longer to figure out where they belong.

Windows does this far, far better than OS X (though I do like secure empty trash.)

[Deslock]

Responding to a couple things in the thread:
Numbers '09 is better than '08 (though still not as feature-rich as Excel) and FYI iWork can be had for $39 (its normal edu price is $79, but my university store sells so much volume that they offer an additional discount).
Personally I've never actually needed/wanted Trash to tell me where files came from, but I see how this could be useful. If this comes up for you, an easy workaround is to use Time Machine (simply search for the file name and click on the result to see where the file was).
If you switch, here are some tips off the top of my head:
macmall has Macbooks cheaper than Apple's educational pricing.
Before switching to the iPhone, I used The Missing Sync with my WM devices; it worked well. There are also other options (such as SyncMate), but I can't comment on their effectiveness.
VMWare Fusion is faster and cheaper ($39 educational) than Parallels.
Get 4GB RAM (it's under $80 from OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/) and their stuff works well).
Some notable free apps: Audacity, GIMP, iStumbler, Celestia, Cord, Fairmount, Firefox, Google Earth, Handbrake, iEatBrainz, iSquint, MAX, OpenOffice, Quicksilver, quikConvert, TripleA, Transmission, VLC, Whatsize (of all of those, get Quicksilver first; it's the only way I open apps... fast, simple, and keeps my dock clean)
Download TechTools from Apple (you get it for free when you register... a lot of people don't realize this).
If you code, Textmate is a nice lightweight editor with effective syntax highlighting (though it's $44).
You can extend Applecare to 3 years anytime within the 1st year of buying your computer.
Be warned that Finder's copy behavior is different from Windows and UNIX. In Finder, folders are treated as single objects so if you copy one folder on top of another with the same name, everything in the destination folder is wiped out and replaced with everything in the source folder (rather than the two folders being merged). This behavior is a holdover from Apple's previous OS and only happens in Finder (ie OSX's cp does a proper merge). Old-school Mac fans seem to like it and don't understand why the rest of us think it's stupid :)

[Spooof]

Deslock,
Nice post I did not know about the Techtools download. One thing that I would like to be clear on is that Numbers vs excel is like using Notepad vs Word. Numbers will work for simple things. If you spend a lot of tine in Excel then Numbers will not fit the bill.



Numbers '09 is better than '08 (though still not as feature-rich as Excel) and FYI iWork can be had for $39 (its normal edu price is $79, but my university store sells so much volume that they offer an additional discount).

[ntractv]

Thanks for all the information. I made up my mind and decided to stay in the Windows camp. I customized a Sony Vaio with a 640GB 7200 rpm harddrive with 8GB of RAM and 512MB NVDIA and a 18.4" screen and Vista 64 bit operating system. I am just too entrenched with Windows in my everyday life to make the leap over to MAC. Also, all the reviews of the beta version of Windows 7 are very promising.

[Spooof]

Yeah I have been using the Windows 7 on one of my work notebooks at home and it is very snappy. I can't believe how much faster it seems to run compared to Vista. It also seems to be very close to release quality.

I will say that it is too bad you didn't switch though. I still prefer OS X to windows.