Originally posted by: Justin216
Once your daughter gets to school, it does get rediculous with virii off school networks from other students, to the point of losing all work and having problems due to that...as you said, this first year is crucial...
Personally, if I was doing it again, I would have bought my PB a little sooner and saved myself a "English 102-missing term paper from crashed HD" incident, and now will consider safety BEFORE any computer purchase...I'd advise you to look into the Powerbook line, as any current machine will hold its performance and value over time (If she wants to upgrade later, the powerbook line holds its financial value VERY well...much better than PCs.....after 3 years, you can most likely still get at least half of the original purchase price, whereas PCs lose much, much more than that)
There is a reason that most professional musicians, photographers, and movie producers use Macs...they are simply KNOWN for their excellent stability with crucial and demanding work!
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232
The benefit of leaving applications running even when you're not using them is that when you do need to use them or open a file with one of them, the response time is instantaneous - as opposed to waiting for an application to load. Of course, you can do the same thing in Windows, but for some reason stability and performance seemed to remain unchanged under OS X, whereas I almost always ran into an issue with Windows - whether it was having too many windows open or too many programs running.
It is somewhat ironic that I would praise Apple for the multi-tasking capabilities built into OS X, given that the Mac OS trailed Windows in its support for preemptive multi-tasking. Needless to say, the mistakes of yesterday are not true of OS X today, and its multi-tasking prowess was my biggest draw to it.
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Performance isn't always a negative thing under OS X. In fact, there is one aspect of OS X's performance that I do believe significantly outshines that of even Windows XP: caching. The biggest pet peeve of mine as a PC user is hearing that hard drive crunch and having it be the reason for an interruption in my work, play or whatever else that I may be using my PC for at the time. I always get the upgrade-bug just as soon as I hear that drive crunch away, and immediately, I want to upgrade any and everything in my system to make those few seconds that feel like an eternity cease once and for all. Of course, regardless of how much I throw at the problem, it's always there and although I can lessen it, I cannot rid myself of it.
What I found in my time with the G5 and OS X was that it does a marvelous job of caching, to the point where after the first time I start the machine, I rarely hear the hard drive being accessed. Furthermore, I definitely don't feel as slowed down by it as I do under Windows. Again, I feel a bit lost writing this without a complete understanding of how Apple architected the caching system of OS X, but the results are positive and noticeable.
Originally posted by: Wuzup101OSX 10.3 "panther" is the current OS and is much more stable and user friendly than OS9 or windows XP. Apple should be taking this one step further with 10.4 "tiger" set to come out sometime soon (should get a release date at MWSF in mid Jan).
It turns out that on a college campus it's very likely that you get a virus before norton has a treatment for it. I currently use norton on my mac because 1) it's free 2) i don't want to get my friends with PCs infected if something is passed through me.
On top of that windows XP is easier to hack, and is a less secure OS in general.
Originally posted by: Wuzup101
The powerbooks definitely are expensive, but you get what you pay for. You have to realize that they have top of the line parts in them for the most part.
Originally posted by: Wuzup101
As for the stuff about OSX hype... well you can think it's hype as long as you want. Use both OSes and then you'll see which one is more stable. I currently run both, and OSX is just plain better. As far as easier to hack is concerned... one is windows XP... one is based on UNIX... nuff said. Neither is perfect, but OSX is better.
And as far as networks it depends on the school. We have 40,000 undergrads on campus, so our networks are polluted with harmful stuff. Smaller schools tend to have less to worry about...
Originally posted by: Wuzup101
Stateofbeasley, I definitely do think that the e-machines are a pretty good deal. I was never a fan of their crappy desktops (and I don't think many here were). But, yes I do agree they make reasonably equipt laptops that are pretty decently made. And their prices are great.
As for the stuff about OSX hype... well you can think it's hype as long as you want. Use both OSes and then you'll see which one is more stable. I currently run both, and OSX is just plain better. As far as easier to hack is concerned... one is windows XP... one is based on UNIX... nuff said. Neither is perfect, but OSX is better.
And as far as networks it depends on the school. We have 40,000 undergrads on campus, so our networks are polluted with harmful stuff. Smaller schools tend to have less to worry about...