I'm CONSIDERING buying a Mac for home. Sometimes I work out of my house, though. I need to be able to open Excel, Word and other Office programs, as well as Acrobat stuff. Can I do that now on a Mac? Do Macs and PC's "talk" now? Anything else to consider? I'm not much of a computer guy, so speak to me like i'm a 3 year old.
You need to listen to me when I am talking to you. Are you listenining? Do you need a time out? Look at me when I am talking to you. Stop. Stop. LOOK AT ME. What you did was not okay. It is not okay to push other kids on the playground. Do you understand? What did I say? Sorry? No way, mister, we're going home RIGHT now. You should have listened to me if you wanted to keep playing. Now we are going home. I am sorry, I would love to stay and play too, but you did not listen the first time. Yes, Macs run all of that stuff, talk to PCs, it is all quite smooth, you'll be impressed.
You can buy the new Macs with Intel processors and run Windows and OS/X. MS Office does put out the office suite for Macs as well so you can simply run Mac OS/X and run the Office:mac produst. By default, you can save files in PDF format on Macs (at least the newer ones) without the need for Acrobat. You can also read PDF format. Our MacBook Pro exists just fine on our home network and I can use the Mac Remote Desktop connection to log into my Windows XP Professional PC.
I'm thinking about making this my new signature. If you had thrown in an "Austin" or "Katlyn" it probably would be a no brainer for me.
Figured I'd bring this back up instead of starting a new thread. What'd you end up doing Max? I'm considering switching from PC to Mac, after everything I hear from how much reliable they are. Is it easy to find compatible software that will open the same stuff PC's can? For instance, .rar's, .torrents, etc.
Bitorrent os x clients are all over the place. Stuffit can open almost any compression format, just to address the examples above. Honestly, the only software really still dominated by the PC is games.
Indeed it is. As for your specific examples (.rar/ torrents et al), you can use programs such as StuffIt/UnRarX and any plethora of torrent clients such as bittorrent, azureus et al for that purpose. MS Office is available for macs (as noted earlier) as are other major software packages such as Adobe et al. Hope that helps.
To no longer suffer endless irritation. [/snootymacperson] Big topic thegary, but for me the above really is the kicker. Windows is just too much of a pain the rear to maintain, epecially if you want to be a "power user". For the record, that's not all MS' fault - a lot of it stems from the myriad of applications developed for it.
oh, i run four macs at my studio and three more at home. i've been a mac guy for 15 plus, never even owned a pc, just asking a question. [how's that for being a snootymacperson ]
We've been transitionig to MAC's for about a year at work. I have a laptop, and I'm possibly getting a new one in a month or so. It will take you about 1-2 hours of working on the new machine to get accustomed to the different interface and the differences in programs. Other than that it should be a pretty simple conversion. The MAC will recognize your existing network and will pretty much run the same stuff your PC will, although many of the programs will have different names. The only issues I have seen with MAC's is in gaming. Some software is not written for the MAC or if it is it is released well after the PC version. If you aren't looking for all kinds of games it will be a non issue for you. MAC's do offer a lot of cool apps and games for free. After a year of using both I am pretty comfortable sitting in front of either. Now I'm adding Linux to my list. If you have any questions shoot me an email, and I'll answer what I can.
Anyone saying that Windows is really unreliable must not know how to work a computer. I have absolutely zero reliability problems. If you click on BS links and download random crap, you deserve to have problems. I get so tired of family members calling me telling me their computer is broken, when it all it takes is a little common sense not to install crap. /soapbox
No joke, XP is incredibly stable and I have next to no issues with it. Being in IT sucks because all of your friends and family feel like you are a free help desk. It is not that difficult to maintain a computer.
Rule #1 - Buy your teenage son or daughter their own computer and don't let them touch yours. Rule #2 - See Rule #1, but substitute your parents for your kids.
That's not necessarily the issue. Windows has a high rate of crashing compared to linux and mac osx. (which conveniently is also built on unix) Also, Windows is just flat out bloated at this point. Windows Vista will require 1 freaking gig of RAM to run the normal version which seems ridiculous at this point considering most computers don't have that much RAM. They've really got to streamline all the code. And if you tried reading the windows code that got leaked a couple years ago, it was riddled with angry comments and bugs from programmers who were just flat out rushed to deliver a product that was nowhere near ready for a safe release. And while you're computer savvy enough not to fall for links that create spyware and viruses, many people aren't and consequently they fall prey to holes in Windows. That's not to say Mac OSX or linux don't have holes but for now they've yet to be exposed and consequently they are safer for the novice user.
