My desktop Dell suffered from some hardware failures and I’m considering purchasing a new computer rather than paying for repairs. For day-to-day surfing, photo management, email, etc., my wife and I get by with a pair of Mac iBooks, and are generally happy. However, I use the Dell for managing my Garmin GPSr as well as gaming. I’m not a big online gamer, but I’m a fan of Half-life 2, and I’m looking forward to Spore. I’m not a power user by any stretch of the imagination.
Here’s my question: should I buy a new Windows- based PC from Dell or elsewhere so that I can keep up with 1-2 new games/year and my Windows-specific software, or is there a Mac that I can buy and install BootCamp/WinXP on for the same purpose? If we could switch to all Macs in our home network, it would make things easier, but I’m ignorant as to whether the dual-boot stuff is a gimmick or can really work to play, say, Half-life 2, without me having to become a software engineer OR spend way more $$$ on the Mac.
Boot Camp helps you create actual dual booting, which means you are running both operating systems (one at a time). There’s no difference between running Windows on a dual-booting machine and running Windows on a single-booting machine; anything you can do in one you can do in the other.
My son-in-law does exactly what you are asking about. It works well. The Windows software is running in native mode, so there’s no emulation slowdown. It took a while to get Windows to work with the WiFi, Bluetooth, and so forth, but he eventually made it work and is quite happy with it.
He spends 90% of his time in MacOS, and then pops over to Windows when he has to.
The problem is that Apple’s hardware is expensive, especially if you already have a monitor. Just playing around a bit on Dell you can get a computer for $840 with the same performance as a $1200 iMac. Of course you don’t get a monitor with the Dell, but if you have one already you don’t need another. Plus, Vista is a couple hundred bucks itself.
Of course, if you already have the monitor and the peripherals are working fine, something like the Mac mini might do the trick. I find them somewhat odd and I don’t know how good the graphics hardware is, but there you are.
No the Mac Mini won’t be a good gaming machine. I’d recommend an iMac for what you want. On the other hand you’ll be stuck with the graphics card for the life of the machine, whereas with a Dell, you won’t be. Also, I had zero problems with bootcamp and my hardware. Apple now provides drivers for every part of the machine, including wifi and bluetooth. I’ve used them both without problems. Half-life 2 works well, which is the most demanding thing I’ve played on it. Half-life 2 will work just out of the box. It sounds like you know about macs and all, so I’ll spare you the zealotry. I imagine that it will play Spore well too, but I’d crosscheck the requirements with a current iMac’s stats.
This thread has piqued my interest in going over to the Mac side, but I’m unfamiliar with their vagaries and quirks. treis, what do you mean about the monitor?
There are three types of mac computers. The mini is your basic computer stuck into a small box. These are under powered compared to conventional computers. They use laptop type processors and integrated graphics. The iMac is essentially a monitor with a computer stuck on the back. Since you can’t get the computer without the monitor, it’s a waste if you already have a monitor. The only standard tower Apple sells is the Mac Pro, which is 2500 dollars.
Ok. The Mac Pro was the one I was looking at, so that’s not a problem. They are pretty expensive, though. The tricked-out Mac was over 500,000yen, while a similarly tricked-out PC was only 330,000, including MFP, UPS, speakers and MS Office.
For dual-boot, do the OS’s have to be in separate drives?
Boot Camp is extremely easy to use: you download and run it, it walks you through repartitioning your drive in place, it helps you make a driver install CD with all of the Apple drivers you’ll need, and then it prompts you for the install media.
If you decide you don’t like it, Boot Camp happily uninstalls itself, removes the partition, and you are back where you started.
I wouldn’t use it for anything that is really hardware specific, such as gaming. As it was, I couldn’t get the Bluetooth adapter to work correctly under Windows, and that made me imagine that I would always be chasing after one or another strange hardware issues.
For those who aren’t doing gaming (probably not the OP), I heartily recommend buying Parallels: you can run Windows XP inside a window on your OsX desktop, and it runs at ~90% full speed since it isn’t emulation. The latest beta lets you run your Windows apps as separate windows on your Mac desktop and drag stuff between them.
Imagine the cool factor of starting Photoshop in Windows and dragging a photo from your Finder onto the Photoshop window and having it open up. It’s the real deal.
My son has one of the original old Mac Minis, and even that one can play games like World of Warcraft just fine.
Also, your list of “three kinds of macs” doesn’t include the notebook computer families.
I find my MacBook Pro to be a great computer. I use it dual-monitor and get fantastic video performance from it. My son-in-law uses a slightly smaller model with Bootcamp and has no problems.
World of Warcraft has surprisingly small system requirements. On the other hand a game like Halflife 2 requires a 64 mb video card which the Mini’s don’t have.