[Scoutmaster]

So . . . PC or Mac? The lady or the tiger?

I await your learned counsel.

[MaryFromMichigan]

Ping.

[Red Badger]

[Red Badger]

A thing of beauty......

[Maneesh]

Switch to the MAC, it will be the best electronic move you make. I switched to the MAC in June 2007 after 15 years of the PC and am an ecstatic customer. No crashes, no viruses, boots up in 10 seconds, superb graphics and a rock solid OS. About 95% of the software you would want to use is on the MAC now and for graphics, pics, videos it is absolutely superb.

Well worth the premium price and light years ahead of windows.

[martin_fierro]

Buy a maxxed-out Mac with BootCamp. That way you can still run Windows on it.

[al_c]

If someone else is buying ... go for it. Especially if they'll front for the software too.

I use a Mac Pro quad core for design and tons of video editing (Final Cut Pro). This is a seriously fast machine. When I got this one, it was an upgrade to my G4 Powerbook. Speed difference was absolutely amazing.

[Rummyfan]

I treated myself to a MacBook Pro for Christmas and got rid of my old Dell. I’m very happy with my choice!

[Rummyfan]

I treated myself to a MacBook Pro for Christmas and got rid of my old Dell. I’m very happy with my choice!

[xcamel]

FWIW..
I bought 2 MacBook Pro’s for my kids for xmas. They run both OSX and WinXP very nicely. There have been no complaints whatsoever, and their friends are insanely jealous.

I have had no problems with either one, and my son managed to figure out how to slip ubuntu linux on to his also (3 operating systems on one laptop) — go figure.

[Da Coyote]

As an engineer who has “converted”, I now preach loudly.

If you want infinite reboots, lots of virus checks, unreliable operation, get a Microsoft product. My office machine: Windows. Crashes/reboots: around 2-3/week.
My home machines; Apples. Reboots: Well, I’ll tell you when I have to do do it. 5 years, 4 machines, and counting: none.

If you need a tool, not a toy, get a Mac.

Go to any institution full of physicists...and see what they use.

Preaching now turned off.

[pnz1]

I’ve had a Mac for about a year. I have no regrets!

[ShadowAce]

[marinamuffy]

I bought a macbook pro last January and have never regretted it. It was my first mac and even though there are some differences, everything on a mac seems to be where you would intuitively look for it. So I say go for it!

marinamuffy

[Aria]

My son is in the tech world in San Francisco - worked at Yahoo, started his own online business and is now at Bebo. He does his coding on his Apple laptop and used it so much he even wore off the silver by the mousepad. I asked him the same question and he told me to get a MAC so I’ve got a MacBook laptop and a PC desktop and I use Office for MAC on the laptop which translates my Word Documents and Excel between the MAC and PC without problems.

I love my Mac. You do have to get used to it however. I’ll just get another one when this one dies.

[ShadowAce]

[jacquej]

I can’t address your PC software question, for we are Mac users.

I really think you should give the Mac a try. You should make a serious effort to see how much you can do with the installed Mac software, and learn the Mac way of doing things to really understand why most graphics people prefer Macs.

Also, buy “Pages”, and really give it a good run.

Read up on the software that comes free with Macs... you might be surprised at how much you can do without spending a lot of money on extra software.

Just my opinion, and I will be interested to see what others have to say.

[Turbopilot]

I’m in the same boat as you are with regards to long-term PC usage and knowledge. I’d lose too much time and productivity throwing away all that knowledge and trying to start from scratch.

If you already have PCs, the software you need, and are a knowledgeable user, switching doesn’t make sense from a cost-benefit perspective, IMHO. I know someone else is paying for the computers, but are they paying for the new software, the time you’ll need to learn the new system, lost productivity from not knowing all the little tricks you know now, etc.? Plus, it seems to me that even if your company is paying, you could get one heck of a laptop for the same amount they’d pay for a new Mac desktop and laptop.

On a side note, I’m about to be flamed terribly by the Mac people for posting this, and I imagine you will be too, for considering PCs.

[svcw]

I have both systems.
Word processing and financials are easier on a PC.
Anything in the graphics (pictures, art, movies) way easier on a MAC.

[San Jacinto]

You’re thinking of switching to McCain? No way, man, no way!!!

[HAL9000]

You’ve already done a lot of good research on the platform.

You mentioned Quicken, and Intuit is working on a new version that will make extensive use of the user interface features available in Mac OS X. Some early screenshots are shown here -

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/01/16/sneak_preview_quicken_for_mac_overhaul_due_out_this_fall.html

You probably won’t need the sort of utilities required to maintain a Windows system, such as anti-virus software and disk optimizers. Mac OS X has a built-in firewall available, but it is generally safe to run without it. It also automatically de-fragments the disk drive on-the-fly.

There are a few free apps I’d recommend for everyday video usage. Flip4Mac will play Windows media through the QuickTime system. VLC from videolan.org can handle many other types of audio and video files. And Microsoft’s SilverLight video application is available for Mac.