Recommend a computer

In My Humble Opinion
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      • [Opinion] For typical home-PC tasks, there isn’t a lot of difference. Surfing, email, writing letters, printing checks. The two areas where Macs suffer is overall software choice, and in particular, games. Many games aren’t available at all for the Mac. More games now support OpenGL because more videocards support it (some even run it faster than DirectX), but generally it is agreed, “The Laying of Gratuitious Smackdown” basically requires DirectX.
        …
  • The reason to build a PC is that you can avoid a lot of problems if you research your choices. If you pick parts that have been available retail for a while, then before you buy you can go online and see how many other people are having problems with that part–just by visiting the manufacturer’s support pages as well as other general-tech computer sites. And you can see what other parts they are using–so you know if a particular combination of two parts is bad.
  • Compare that with what you get when you buy a typical big-name off-the-shelf PC: Dell and the like generally don’t use retail-grade parts, they use “OEM” parts that are based on a certain chipset. These tend to have mysterious problems unlike the retail-grade parts, the solutions for the retail-grade parts may not help at all and, -yes, it’s true: the Indian guy on the phone tech support line has no idea how to help you, quite honestly. If the problem is caused by the cheap OEM hardware your name-brand PC is built with, having him tell you a thousand times to reboot won’t fix anything. So you can end up stuck with a malfunctioning PC that you have no way to fix (without voiding the precious “warranty”), which to me is far more annoying than spending a bit more money and some research time to dodge 98% of problems in the first place.

~[-yea I know, the DirectX APIs fer drawing is DirectDraw and Direct3D, don’t tell me]

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Games.

That’s it, essentially.

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There’s also a dreadful lack of anti-virus and anti-spyware software for the Mac. :wink:

(“What do you do for regular maintenance on your Mac?” “Uh, I back it up once a month…”)

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I like to blow out the dust bunnies every few months, clean the screen, stuff like that. :wink:
I’m seriously thinking of getting my mother one of these for her birthday next month.

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Also, you’ll be blessed with a comparatively miniscule selection of spyware, malware and viruses, with a Mac. If going online is your main deal, this is a key point. Plus, Firefox blows IE away as a browser in terms of performance. Plus, of course, it’s less vulnerable to the spyware and malware that are such a huge problem for IE.

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The issue isn’t that you COULDN’T do it (except with regards to games), it’s that Macs usually go for about twice the price of an equivalently-powered PC. The upshot of that extra price paid is stability and security, which is why pros tend to go Mac.

Or went, rather. The new Mini is definitely the best bang-for-buck Apple has put out since the '80s. If all you need is Internet, word processing, and diddling with photos, it’s absolutely perfect. And this is coming from a dedicated hardcore PC nerd.

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Ironically, if the Mini raises Apple’s market share significantly, you may see a greater glut of viruses et al.

This is balanced out by the fact that one can now buy a PC and a Mac Mini and STILL spend less than if you were getting one of Apple’s more powerful machines.

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It’s harder to break into a house if there are no windows. :slight_smile:

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But if you eat… umm… lots of big MACS then you’re gonna… get fat…

Okay, I got nothin’. Screw you. :smiley: