Windows7 to Imac?

[mrb627]

Has any of our members made the transition from the PC world to the Mac World? 

 

I am considering it as I have had nothing but trouble with the Toshiba Laptop I currently own.  Wondering if the transition to Mac will be easy...

 

Malcolm

 

[joelippard]

I had

alot of trouble out of Toshiba notebook computers but no trouble at all out of windows 7.  Mac is good at what it does, graphics, music, and video editing.  Unless you get paralells desktop you will have some trouble with windows documents.  Honestly, I prefer having both PC and Mac

 

[danmantn]

Went Mac, ain't going back. I love my iMac, iPod, IPad 1, iPad2 and Apple TV. What programs in particular are you concerned about?

 

[mrb627]

VPN Access

At the onset, I am concerned that I will have difficulty accessing my office environment for work from home scenarios. I have yet to consult with in house IT staff to see what others have encountered. I know there is an option to have a dual boot environment on an iMac and that may be my ultimate route in order to support remote connectivity.

Malcolm

 

[3beltwesty]

I have an Imac here we bought back in 2006 for a Mac user. Now they are gone and have flown the coop. I used the Mac for about 1 year on the internet, about all of 2010. It got flakey in January and will not boot fully. One gets the spinning wheel of death. I have tried reinstalling the OS about 12 times as a new instance; without reformatting to loose anything. In trying to get it to work; have been on many forums and spent probably 1 to 2 man weeks. Plan is to pull the HDA and recover a few un backed up files before formating. The machine worked well before its heart attack of the spinning wheel; sort of like the blue screen of death with a PC. As far as robustness; it lasted as long a typical PC; and the futzing to fix it was been actually more.

 

[3beltwesty]

With a web connected Mac one can search for shortcuts of how to do things none has done without thinking on a PC for eons.

 

[washernoob]

At home I have a PC desktop that I sometimes use.

I do like Vista a lot. But of course now we are running Ubuntu (or however you spell it!) Its quite nice, always virus free, like a mac, and very user friendly. I like it a bit more than vista in many ways.

At school, each student is issued a 13 inch macbook to take home and use for school and such. I do like it. Lots of features. These are loaded with some TOL software, too, so its fun to experiment.

There are things I do still like using a PC for. But I hardly use it anymore because I like having a laptop to carry around the house, and sit comfortably in a recliner with! (like I am now! )

I think both are good computers. Macs are good for music industry (which is what I do- garageband- cakewalk- finale and such)

PCs are gooooooood for games. A good PC that is.

 

[mayguy]

We switched to Mac about 7 years ago, and LOVE it.. No issues at all.  our last lap top we retired last year and upgraded to the MacBook Pro, and runs very smooth.    I am not sure about your work if it can work with it or not..  May want to ask your co-workers.   My stuff from work is web based, so no issues for me.

 

I won't go back to the PC world.   Just put up with it enough at work!

 

[roto204]

Not hard

Malcolm, if you use VPN to access your office network remotely, there are lots of options. If it's PPTP VPN, that's built into the OS; IPSec VPN (a la SonicWALL) is easiest to configure with a software package called VPN Tracker, which supports a BUNCH of different firewalls and is likely easy for your IT folks to set-up. Likewise, Cisco makes a VPN client that works great on the Mac. So they can assuredly get you hooked-up, just as you were on your PC.

 

[lordkenmore]

I really can't speak much about the Apple of today--the last Mac OS I actually know is System 7.5, and the last I had any experience with whatever is OS X 10.4, which is years out of date.

That said, there are a couple of points that are worth thinking about:

First compatibility with the Windows world is not--and I repeat not--a huge problem. You'll hear people talking about running Windows on the Mac, either within OS X (Parallels) or setting the computer to directly into Windows. The ability to run Windows is a good solution for those who need or deeply desire some piece of Windows software. But many Mac users get by just fine without Windows. For what most people do, moving data between the two worlds is easy.

Secondly: the MacOS does things differently. There will be a period of learning and adjustment.

If you haven't done so already, try to get a chance to play with a Mac.

 

[lordkenmore]

Another possiblity to consider

is Linux. Ubuntu appears to be the most common flavor of Linux these days.

I've been using Linux as my modern OS since 2005, and have (mostly) been happy with it. There are some advantages Apple has over Linux--some software choices, particularly for graphics work. However, Linux is good enough for most "normal" uses. I certainly haven't felt limited--but then my major need for a modern OS is the Internet. If it weren't for the Internet, I could get by easily with a 90s computer.

Linux can run on basic Windows hardware. However, not all hardware is 100% compatible--some computers (particularly laptops) can have issues.

Installing Linux is also an issue for many. This has gotten easier over the years, and I'd consider it easier to do than Windows. But installation hassles are one thing a lot of people hate. Then, again, many people never install an OS--they buy something at Office Depot with Windows installed, and when it goes bad they replace the system, or have someone fix it.

Once installed, though, Linux has always run reliably for me.

 

[3beltwesty]

Here I have several dozen PC's and a few Macs.

Running some of my specialized industry specific programs on a mac is a kludge, maybe ok for amateurs and retired folks. Yea I have used parallels and other things for ages. Here I have gobs of varied programs even with DOS, NT3.51 and NT4 embedded and server stuff. Yes they can be run on a mac in many cases.

In the problem areas one gets involved with futzing around a massive time waster to "prove" the kludge is workable. Running the old PC stuff on an older PC is often vastly easier. I also have PC programs that drive hardware specific cards that will not even go into any mac ever made, thus the mac users chant is to abandon programs and hardware.

Here I have some special printers that never had mac support; or if they did Steve Jobs locked out the drivers working on a modern mac os.

With a PC and old XP one can install Photoshop 3, 5.5, 7, CS, CS2 etc. With the Imac 20" with Tiger/OS from 2006; the modern OS will not allow mac photoshop 6.0 to install, Apple has decided for its followers that you do not need to use older software.

Thus to run an older Photoshop variant you add parallels and install win2000 or XP and run Photoshop 6 to allow reading some oddball file variants that a more modern Photoshop cannot deal with.

 

[3beltwesty]

With simple web surfing a dumb mac has its advantage of picking up radically less horse manure, thus you will have less issues.

If one has never used a mac before then at first the lingo is confusing but they are really easy to use after awhile.

Thus all the dumb stuff like copying and pasting, saving files etc has different shortcuts and things. Often I would just type in google "how to I do XYZ in Tiger 10.4" with my Imac and find many answers.

If use both PC's and Macs like I do one often uses the wrong shortcut on the wrong machine which can be rather funny. It is sort of like driving an automatic transmission car and a manual too, ones clutch foot is often moved in the wrong car.

As an employee you are worth more if you know both PC and Mac and AVOID the endless lossy one is better soapboxing too.

 

[revvinkevin]

I'm biased as I've been an Apple/Mac user since the

Specifically since the Apple lle (talk about ancient)! But I have been using a PC at work for about 8 years now. Of course I've gotten used to the PC and most of the time it's fine, however at time's it's done things that I think "OK, what the hell are you doing now?" I never have those moments with a Mac.

While I don't know anything about VPN, I do know any number of files from Microsoft (Word, Excel, etc) and other programs can easily be used and saved on either platform.

On the plus side, I have NEVER bought any type of anti-virus or anti-spyware software for my Mac because I never worry about viruses and after all these years I've never had one issue. I'm not foolish enough to think there aren't any out there, but compared to the PC world, there aren't any out there.

It seems like my PC at work is being updated almost weekly in order to keep up with the latest anti-virus stuff.

Kevin

 

[3beltwesty]

"updates" on a mac are often one big slug(s) versus Incremental Backups. With the 2006 Imac with Tiger 10.4 it was never placed fully on the web until Jan 2010.

One could not look at some web stuff in 2010 since the browser Safari was too old. We tried updating but then the OS Tiger was too old thus it had to be updated. Apple locked us out for updates until we used the original mac OS discs to get the passwords ok.

Then the mac downloaded about 8 to 10 big updates all of about 60 to 65 megs each. After each reboot it wanted to update Tiger to a new rev. All told the machine that was off the web from 2007 to 2010 downloaded about 2 gigs worth of updates for the OS, Safari, Adobe reader and the like few things we used.

It is like Apple really does not tend to update; it just downloads a new complete version of the stuff.?