I’ll add that Openoffice.org is a FREE office suite for doing the word processing thing. My iBook came with Apple’s ‘light’ office suite, I never use it. iLife provides all the ‘multimedia’ editing I need’. and a $100 purchase for a Wacom tablet got me PhotoElements and another art package included in the box.
I haven’t spent an additional penny on software that I needed to. (I’ve purchase a couple of utilities that are helpful to me.)
Honestly, the price difference between the Mac and PC are one of the most common brought up. If you’re worried about that $50-$150 difference, perhaps you shouldn’t be buying a Computer with what little money you have.
If the OP’s current PC is running Win98 or ME, then any comparisions to the Mac don’t count. You won’t get much argument if you complain that Win98/ME are unstable.
I don’t know what kind of RAM it needs but you could add 512 megs of DDR RAM for about $50, you want to get at least 512 megs in it total. Add XP Home OEM for another $82 as well. I would also suggest that you get a “modern” 7200RPM 8-Mb buffer hard drive while you’re at it, as the original is probably a smaller 2-meg, and maybe a 5400RPM. That would add about $60, for a 80-gig. So that totals $192, and would boost the speed quite a bit and cure the instability problems (though the bundled software might just be crap, it sometimes is).
…If you want to add one, a CD-burner that also reads DVD’s costs all of $25 now. Windows can burn data CD’s itself, and there are free programs for making audio-CD’s. A DVD-burner drive costs $40, but good DVD software (Nero) might cost another $60 (if you don’t like what the DVD-drive comes with, or it doesn’t come with any software at all).
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The problem with this is: What if the person doesn’t CARE what rpm their hard drive spins at? Performance hasn’t ever been a selling point for a MAC. In my piddly little 1 Ghz iBook, I’ve had three BitTorrents downloading, an iso burning to CD, and iDVD rendering in the background. All of it justworking. I figure I spent 15-20% of my time on the PC just maintaining it. I spend NO time with the iBook dealing with the little crap that just frosts me on our home PC. (like why isn’t the scanner working? It worked just fine 6 months ago when I used it last. Oh, looks like Doom 3 stopped working, better figure that one out. Oh, Microsoft’s patched my box…again…I’ve gotta reboot…again. 10% of the time, my system doesn’t come back when they do that.)
The Mac will never win a D*ck size contest. But it WILL just work.
:dubious: Can you clarify what you mean by “reliably perform”?
If you are refering to stability, I think you are very wrong.
To the OP: From what you say you’ll use the computer for, a Mac Mini will work just fine for you. There are differences between the two platforms, and they have various advantages over each other, but most of the details don’t seem very relevant to your needs. If you want a mini, go for it.
The average person might not care what RPM the disk spins at or what speed the CPU is, but my mini is definitely not as “snappy” as my Windows 2000 machine. iTunes is much more responsive on the Windows side.
But that’s kinda outside the scope of this discussion. There’s a full spectrum of Mac and Intel (and soon MacIntel) machines. At the Low end of the market, there are features other than raw performance that seperate the Mini from it’s competition.
-The last time I turned of my computer because of crash since I bought it in March, was… never.
-The last time I suffered from spyware, virus, or adware: Never
-The last time Iworried about converting 300 RAW images to jpeg, running iTunes in the background while surfing the internet: Never
Since my First powermac in 1998, 350mhz G3, I have never worried that My firewire drives would give connectivity problems.
Look dude… I am a PC builder, I have fixed peoples PC’s for over 15 years. You cannot nor can anyone convince me Winblows XP /Vista/ FutureXYZ’s will ever be as productive and reliable as Mac OS X. Unless Microsoft decides to use a BSD shell then and only then will I begin to trust in Windows.
This is my opinion on Personal Computing, as in people in their homes computing. Corporate PC’s and Professionals using PC’s aside. These people are more prepared to properly maintain a DECENT OS, whatever it is in order to do their job.
As far as the thousands of calls from ordinary people using Windows, their problems can easily be solved if they just went with Mac OS X.
Well see the problem here is that you are arguing that having slow hardware and not being able to run Windows programs doesn’t matter if you have a super-stable OS–and if that’s so, then Linux is free, and one can build a PC that is roughly-equivalent to the Mini for much less money. OR much better, for the same money–since the OS is free.
Apple most-probably won’t let their OS run on regular PC’s, for the simple reason that they have always followed a marketing scheme of giving away or selling cheap software in order to force users to buy Apple’s own overpriced hardware. You can’t run OSX on a PC, and it’s not an oversight on Apple’s part. They give you a lot of free software because software is easy to hack and copy–and if they didn’t, Apple users would just copy it amongst themselves anyway. So they hand the software out and screw you on the Apple-only hardware instead.
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If you want an Intel machine that can run OSX, chances are you’ll be buying it straight from Apple and overpaying for it, just as you do now. Because really–it wouldn’t make sense for PC retailers to sell the hardware, since the only place you can get the OS is Apple dealers anyway, right?..
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Maybe, but it’s a cornerstone of their business model, to ensure a revenue stream from hardware sales. Though I suspect that if “Running MacOS X on any Intel box” is sufficiently complicated that only hard-core geeks will bother, Apple won’t mind – it’s the casual piracy they’re primary concerned with.
I think the real worry would be from Dell and HP and other Intel box-makers – if people can buy a Mactel for slightly more than the cost of a comparable Dell with the knowledge that they can re-install Windows on it if they decide to “switch back”, it’s an extra incentive for people to buy from Apple.
That’s not what we’re arguing. In addition to being super-stable, Mac OS is also an order of magnitude easier to use and maintain than Linux (for both techies and luddites alike). I say that having been a Linux user for at least six years.
Also, the only reason that “not being able to run Windows programs” doesn’t matter is that, for any given Windows app, you can usually find a Mac program with equivalent functionality and better usability. Linux has very end-user-quality applications available, and that situation is not likely to change anytime soon.
I don’t know if you’re being intentionally obtuse or not, but that wasn’t the oirginal question. For overall ease of use, stability, and value, the Mac solution is more dependable than the Wintel solution…for things like word processing, web surfing and email.
Linux will get you a cheaper, faster, more reliable box, but at the expense of administration. I’ve had a LOT of experience with administring various Linux distros, and none of them are something I’d consider ready for the end user. (vi /etc/samba.conf, look for ‘printer’, add guest = yes, restart samba) While I’ve seen PARTS of SOME distros that play well, OS X is the first one I’ve seen that does what it says, all the time. Linux also falls over on hardware support. (Hold on camper, lemmie explain)
While support for a TON of hardware is available in Linux, buying hardware to run with it becomes a crapshoot. When you buy a Mac, you get the optimised Hardware accelerated video out of the box. When you plug in the no-name Bluetooth dongle, It Just Works. I’ve had uniformly excellent experience with hardware on my Mac. I’ve had LESS excellent experience with XP…I’ve had a bunch of unhappy experience in Linux.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll say that the Mac has NOT been a 100% perfect experience, it’s just MUCH MUCH better than my long and storied experience with Windows and the various Unixes.