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I joined the dark side...

Chilly

By Chilly
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stevestojan Hall of Famer

stevestojan

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Work ordered a 13" MacBook Pro for me.

 

I'm ashamed.

 

Honestly, I knew this was going to be a Mac thread based on the title.

 

I've had my MacBook for 2 years now. I use a PC at work, so I have nothing agains them. The only thing I can say is that my Macbook (standard, not Pro) has never, ever, crashed. Now I know that anyone in the PC crowd can tell me the same thing, but I owned two PC laptops before that, and they crashed regularly. To me, when you have important data on the machine, regularly = 2-3 times a year. My MacBook is overpriced. But I haven't installed a single piece of protection software on it and have never even had a slowdown. THAT SAID, I don't buy games. The only thing I do is web, work email through VPN, home email, and Open Office spreadsheets, word docs, and database.

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The Dean Hall of Famer

The Dean

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Work ordered a 13" MacBook Pro for me.

 

I'm ashamed.

 

 

I had a Macbook Pro (pre-Intel chip, though) for work, and thought it sucked. But I was in the minority, that's for sure. Mine froze all the time. The spinning beach ball or death was a regular event when I was watching video or listening to music. It was real pretty, though.

 

EDIT: Oops. My mistake. I had a PowerBook G4, not a Macbook Pro.

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Chilly All Pro

Chilly

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BTW, the reason why I switched is this:

 

I *love* ubuntu. So much, that it pains me to do this. However, openoffice just doesn't cut it. I also wanted to switch to a laptop from a desktop, and I still wanted a unix base.

 

I had a couple options:

 

1.) Dual boot Windows & Linux, but I didn't want ot have to spend time rebooting just to get to Office for 5 minutes.

2.) Run a VM. The problem is this would kill battery life.

 

So I compromised.

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BuffaloBill Hall of Famer

BuffaloBill

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Work ordered a 13" MacBook Pro for me.

 

I'm ashamed.

 

 

Put Parallels for Mac on it. They say you do not have to install on a partitioned drive (Bootcamp) though I find it runs better if you do. You can then switch back and forth to a windows or OSX environment without having to leave OSX. I set it up on an Imac with dual monitors. I can run a windows program on one and Mac OSX on the other. For me it is handy because some of my investing software will only run out of a Windows platform.

 

While I have not used it I am told VMware will get you the same result.

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Fezmid All Pro

Fezmid

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2.) Run a VM. The problem is this would kill battery life.

This would only happen while the VM was running. IF you're only using Office for 5 minutes, you start up your VM, do your work, then shut the VM down. Wouldn't have taken much battery at all...

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Chilly All Pro

Chilly

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This would only happen while the VM was running. IF you're only using Office for 5 minutes, you start up your VM, do your work, then shut the VM down. Wouldn't have taken much battery at all...

 

Cept I don't always just use it for 5 minutes. Sometimes its hours. (And, again, it's annoying to start up/shut down VMs for 5 minutes of work :) ).

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John Adams All Pro

John Adams

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Put Parallels for Mac on it. They say you do not have to install on a partitioned drive (Bootcamp) though I find it runs better if you do. You can then switch back and forth to a windows or OSX environment without having to leave OSX. I set it up on an Imac with dual monitors. I can run a windows program on one and Mac OSX on the other. For me it is handy because some of my investing software will only run out of a Windows platform.

 

While I have not used it I am told VMware will get you the same result.

 

I had parallels after I bought my first Mac 5 years ago. On my second Mac, I didn't even bother installing it. Just don't need it--but it was good for a few months until I found I really didn't need the PC stuff anymore.

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John Adams All Pro

John Adams

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Honestly, I knew this was going to be a Mac thread based on the title.

 

I've had my MacBook for 2 years now. I use a PC at work, so I have nothing agains them. The only thing I can say is that my Macbook (standard, not Pro) has never, ever, crashed. Now I know that anyone in the PC crowd can tell me the same thing, but I owned two PC laptops before that, and they crashed regularly. To me, when you have important data on the machine, regularly = 2-3 times a year. My MacBook is overpriced. But I haven't installed a single piece of protection software on it and have never even had a slowdown. THAT SAID, I don't buy games. The only thing I do is web, work email through VPN, home email, and Open Office spreadsheets, word docs, and database.

 

I can also add my $.02. I also never crash. (Ever.) But I did get a "failing hard drive warming" on my iMac this year. Now I have an external HD and run Time Machine (the built-in Mac backup program) so I was confident all my stuff was safe. I got a new HD for the iMac and removed the old one. I plugged in my external HD to the computer...answered a question about wanting to restore from the HD. About 4 hours later, not only was all my data there, but every application was back on my computer, including every single setting and favorite. Everything. My desktop background didn't even need to be reset.

 

I knew my data was safe but I fully expected to have to reset up browsers, install applications, etc. Nothing. It was as if all I did was add a bigger (and not failing) hard drive.

 

Oh, and I really appreciated my Mac warning me that the HD was failing without actually failing.

 

Like others, I use a PC at work. I don't hate it but I definitely prefer Mac.

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BuffaloBill Hall of Famer

BuffaloBill

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I can also add my $.02. I also never crash. (Ever.) But I did get a "failing hard drive warming" on my iMac this year. Now I have an external HD and run Time Machine (the built-in Mac backup program) so I was confident all my stuff was safe. I got a new HD for the iMac and removed the old one. I plugged in my external HD to the computer...answered a question about wanting to restore from the HD. About 4 hours later, not only was all my data there, but every application was back on my computer, including every single setting and favorite. Everything. My desktop background didn't even need to be reset.

 

I knew my data was safe but I fully expected to have to reset up browsers, install applications, etc. Nothing. It was as if all I did was add a bigger (and not failing) hard drive.

 

Oh, and I really appreciated my Mac warning me that the HD was failing without actually failing.

 

Like others, I use a PC at work. I don't hate it but I definitely prefer Mac.

 

 

Good point on the back-up HD though I am a hypocite at the moment because I have not installed one yet. The price of a TB drive is so low that the only excuse not to do it (my excuse) is that I have not ordered one and set it up. Over the years on my work machines I have lost 4 HD's they can go both with and without warning. Laptops are more prone to issues because they get bumped around more (plus i travel with mine regularly). At work i have the option to back up to the network and do so automatically.

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sullim4 Veteran

sullim4

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Honestly, I knew this was going to be a Mac thread based on the title.

 

I've had my MacBook for 2 years now. I use a PC at work, so I have nothing agains them. The only thing I can say is that my Macbook (standard, not Pro) has never, ever, crashed. Now I know that anyone in the PC crowd can tell me the same thing, but I owned two PC laptops before that, and they crashed regularly. To me, when you have important data on the machine, regularly = 2-3 times a year. My MacBook is overpriced. But I haven't installed a single piece of protection software on it and have never even had a slowdown. THAT SAID, I don't buy games. The only thing I do is web, work email through VPN, home email, and Open Office spreadsheets, word docs, and database.

 

You do know what causes a crash, right? Null read/writes, heap corruption? Crashes are GOOD things - they prevent poorly written software from pwning your machine through a write access violation.

 

When people see crashes they immediately blame the operating system. I have no idea why - I can write code in 5 seconds that will crash on ANY o/s:

 

SomeType *foo = null;

 

if (foo -> bar) /* crash! */

...

 

Crashes are almost ALWAYS the result of drivers that were written on the cheap or bugs that lie in the software, not the operating system.

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