You Can't Coach That

I Need A WinBunMac

Decisions, decisions. As I said in my last post I am seriously considering buying a new Mac Pro. Several of my online friends were kind enough to drop by and let me know their feelings and all offered sane, rational arguments without any hint of the hysteria one sometimes reads when Windows/Microsoft and Mac/Apple are mentioned in the same paragraph.

One fact learned during my research into the Mac Pro has surprised me. I have always believed that Apple hardware was significantly more expensive than the equivalent Wintel hardware. While this is true most of the time, for me and the decision I am in the process of making the opposite is true. At the budget end of the market there is no contest, Apple just doesn’t make a budget computer. Even in the middle of the market they are still more expensive. There is just not the same competition to bring prices down as there is in the Wintel market segment.

My purchase is at the top end of the market. I am considering the Mac Pro with two dual core Xeon processors, at least 2 GB of RAM, a decent video card with possibly 512 meg of video RAM and some serious hard drives. Of course I am going to have to drop some serious folding stuff to make one of these my own. As a teacher, Apple offer me a 12.5% discount. With this discount taken into account the cost of the Mac Pro is actually slightly cheaper than a similarly spec’ed Dell. I could of course build a machine of similar specifications myself for much less than either a Mac or a Dell. While I may still do this I am leaning away from this idea. I am time poor as well as cash poor so would not like to have to deal with warranty type issues myself when something inevitably goes wrong. Windows Vista will of course run very well on a machine with this much grunt. I am just not sure I want to put another 3 or four years more faith in Microsoft.

Once I realised that my capital outlay was about the same for each platform I turned my mind to software. Could I do everything on the Mac that I can do on a Windows machine? So far the answer is yes. It even turns out that the site license my school is about to acquire for Adobe Creative Suite 3 includes both the Windows and Mac versions and the license allows teachers to install on one personal machine. Teaching Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and other multimedia applications necessitates me having them at home. I also dabble in 3D modelling and animation and video editing. From what I understand the Mac will excel in all these areas.

What I really want is all three operating systems - Windows, Ubuntu and Mac (WinBunMac). Windows has served me well over the years, although I am becoming disenchanted with it of late and haven’t got excited about Vista. I enjoy using Ubuntu and it’s free. It has limitations in the software I cannot run on it though. I haven’t tried Mac OSX yet but I am willing to give it a try. The fact that it is optimised to run on only one hardware platform appeals to me.

And the Mac Pro just looks cool

The following people were kind enough to give me their honest opinion:

Mick
Goldcoaster
Comedy Plus
RT
Arnie
Jim

For the record, it was five to one against the Mac.

“You can’t coach that”

It seems that you want an apple computer and your reasons seem fair enough. Why not the quad core xeon instead of 2x dual cores?

I have read and heard lots about bootcamp and dual booting etc but I really doubt that once the ‘cool’ factor of doing that wears off that you will actually use windows at all. I am guessing that nearly all will just end up running osx (the poor mans Vista )

What I like about the PC units is the ability to buy any video card or any DVD burner during the life of the PC and only pay a few dollars for it. Apart from me not like OSx as well (I have an Apple with OSx sitting on a desk and it hasn’t been turned on for at least a year) I just don’t like how it works. Don’t get sucked into the marketing hype (windows, osx and linux)

At the end of the day - you are going to get a better computing platform than you have right now (unless you purchased something within the last few weeks) - changes happen so quickly, you can never keep up and can only hope to stay current. 

Here’s some additional information/advice (take it for what it’s worth

1.  If you are going to be using your compute platform for gaming - I’d go with a WinTel - and if you want high end, go with AlienWare.
2.  If you want something to work, not have too many problems, and don’t want to worry too much about it (i.e. I don’t want to become a computer troubleshooter) then go with the MAC.
3.  If you need to have lots of compatibility with some office computer/business applications, or need to sync with a handheld PC - go with WinTel.
4.  If you want cool - go with a MAC
5.  If you desire lots of choices - go with WinTel
6.  If you want to become a geek - go with Dell + Linux solution - that way you can become a serious Geek Boy
7.  Looking into the software for the make by the name of Parallels (something like that) that provides you the ability to run multiple OS’s on a single MAC box.

That’s it - good hunting!!