Posted on 08/17/2009 9:15:12 AM PDT by ozaukeemom
Sorry for the vanity, but I think this is the one place I can find some reasonable opinions on the pros and cons of Mac versus PC.
You need VLC Player.
Better to get him the Mac. It promotes domestic tranquility. Mrs. Altair wanted to kill me after I bought her a Microsoft Windows XP notebook (which crashed all the time) and we settled the dispute by giving that notebook to one of her younger sisters and getting her a Macbook.
Macs may be more expensive, but they’re worth it.
Exactly what iMac do you have? They've been shipping standard with 1 GB or more for a long time. But if you need to run something on the Windows side and Fusion isn't helping, don't forget Boot Camp.
You really need to scrub your hd once a year or so if you use a pc, don't know about the mac yet.
I had a six-month scrubbing cycle on my PCs. I'm going two years with no scrubbing on the Mac. I did an in-place upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5 with no problems (I always wiped Windows before an upgrade).
It was always the same story. Seventy hour weeks, gotta get the game out before Christmas, if it's not out for Christmas we'll go bankrupt, as soon as the game's out we'll make sure you guys are compensated for all the overtime. As soon as the game's out they lay off the entire development team.
Happened to him a dozen times. Keep your resume up to date and keep backups of your most current work. When they lay you off, they will not let you take anything on the hard drive. "Hey, that's my entire portfolio." Screw you. Get out of the building.
New program out? Hey, we're changing over to a new animation program for the next game. Learn it in your spare time and be ready to roll when we do the change over.
Oh, and the independents are even better. They're perpetually underfunded, and you'll get a million requests to do all their game art on spec (translation, you do it for free, and if they sell it you'll get paid. They never get it sold and generally don't finish the game.) My brother works as a tech in an ER now. He's turned down several job offers because he's tired of the nonsense in the industry.
Don’t push him into anything.
Make sure he has a reasonable backup plan.
The only places I know of where computer animators find work is in games, movies and TV (media in general).
He can get a taste for the work by modding a game or two. Computer animation is very tedious at worst and isn’t for everyone. He should start by ‘skinning’ a game character which is about the most basic task in this scope.
Free to download tools include Blender (for 3d models, competing with commercial packages 3dStudioMax and Maya) and GIMP (a photo shop ‘competitor’) (forums for these tools will lead him to more tools and examples).
It would suck for him to spend 2 years on a subject only to find it bores him.
Many of his classmates will be game modders.
its that the whole “you are gay if you use Macs” line has gotten so old, and frankly offensive, particularly when it has been used so many times specifically to start flame wars and to disrupt threads. But you wouldn’t have been trying any of that, would you?
Fusion lets you set the amount of RAM the Virtual Machine uses. Chances are only 512MB is allocated. You can change that in prefs, but it involves shutting down and restarting -- not just hibernating -- the virtual machine.
The monitor is landscape. All you have to do is take the lower right hand corner of the web browser and drag it to whatever width you wish.
There is a basic philosophical difference between how the Mac and Windows display windows. The Mac's "maximize" button makes the window as big as it needs to be to fit all its contents; there is no "take up the whole window" button like on Windows. To me, the Mac approach makes a lot more sense. I want to see all 800 pixels of the Web page's width; I don't need a button to fill the screen with another 1000 px of wasted white space.
If you want the page to fill the screen width, use command-+ to zoom in until it's the size you want.
Why'd you buy a 24" iMac and then get CS4 for Windows?
Fun fact: If you have Adobe software for Windows, you can "crossgrade" to Mac for the upgrade price. I suppose they offer it the other way, but that doesn't come up that often.
Nice of you to focus on me and miss the 10+ other people who posted ant-Mac comments. Perhaps you should try DU, they are used to whiners. Get a sense of humor.
Why'd you buy a 24" iMac and then get CS4 for Windows?
Because I wanted to load it on my pc first because transferring all my photos and graphics files is going to be a humongous task, and I use it sometimes several times a day. The geek squad guy got both of my computers online with a router but could not get the two computers to talk to each other (network, won't work for some reason). That cost me, too. So whatever files I transfer, I'll have to use my 3 Passports which will be slow but should work.
I know Adobe will allow me to switch to CS4 for the mac at no charge, just that I have to agree to remove it from my pc even though I'm the only one using both machines. It's kind of ironic because when I installed CS2 (and I waited for years to be able to afford it and got a super good deal by upgrading from a discount offer I got with my Wacom tablet), I remember that I was allowed to install a copy on my pc and laptop (don't have a laptop). Plus I bought it for my granddaughter, too, because she is a budding artist and photographer. I didn't want to cheat and bought us both legal copies. Hers I got as a cheap upgrade from Elements that came with my camera. $299 each compared to $500-600, whatever it is now each, no school or teacher discounts for me.
I'm not one to jump on every latest and greatest but I can't read the new .dng or .CR2 files from my granddaughter's camera. I hope to upgrade my 20D at some point. The .CR2 files are different for the 20D and 40D and Adobe Camera Raw free download only supports it for CS3, not CS2. I think it's built into CS4 now.
You should contact Adobe directly and see if you can “cross-grade” your current Adobe products to the current Mac version. It is usually possible for a fee.
Fusion is a nifty program. For someone like me it is a license to fiddle. For someone like you, probably not going to be very useful. Bootcamp is the method by which Apple enables people to reboot their machine into Windows. It involves actually partitioning the drive and installing Windows on the partition. It is not an emulation environment and it literally turns your Mac into a Windows PC (the Mac OS can’t be accessed when booted into Windows). Kind of nifty if you’re waiting half a year before making the switch over to the Mac OS.
I would recommend getting some lessons at the nearest Apple Store. You should drop in and ask them some questions. Highly recommended. If you get somebody who just wants to sell you something go for a walk and come back later. Majority of Apple sales people are helpful and not hard sellers. Sales happen because people are happy with the service, so the philosophy goes.
Good luck.
Yours was the first blatant comment of its type - thus the one I first saw. I have not been directly back to the thread since then, posting to your replies.
So who is whining? I have a sense of humor. Crude and stale attempts at humor don’t entertain me.
What a crying shame - a mother comes looking for advice on buying a laptop computer for her son who is going to college and wants a Mac laptop. Yet people feel the need to troll any thread that might mention Apple or Macs and post drivel just to cause trouble - and I am the one whining?
Funny - I can’t say that I troll threads just looking for someone to offend or stir up. But if that is what FR is becoming, I guess I had better practice up.
You passed over #6 and #7 and targeted me.
Really, we are all friends here. It’s all in fun.
Everyone fully expected the thread to be a tit-for-tat.
Geesh!
As to the rest of it, I'm kind of on overload and it's hard to cope with too much information. Rather that bootcamp and partition, I'll go with Fusion when I can get to it because I think you don't have to reboot with that. But the imac boots fast compared to the pc.
But in hindsight, it would be a whole lot easier not to even attempt to run Windows on the imac. There is a little more software for windows than for the mac. I wanted to get my sister Rootsmagic so we could share info, but they don't support mac. Rootsmagic was the only one I could find that would read my .fow files from my Family Origins software which quit working right when I loaded it onto this pc. It won't export gedcom files any more.
I think the nearest apple store is 100+ miles away. I'll just get the apple care and let them help me over the humps. Never needed it with Windows, but I started from the ground up and wasn't doing much other than saving and trading genealogy information. Then I got a genealogy program, then got into graphics and photography, fractals, started building simple web pages, upload lots of photos via ftp, that's mostly what I do now. The only reason I bought the imac when I did was that I know the days are numbered on my pc before it crashes. Now it just keeps rumbling along. At least I won't have to make frantic choices with no internet when it does crash and will be forced to tackle the imac.
Oh, there was another huge factor. At some point, no hurry, I wanted to upgrade my camera. 15 mp files, huge, not enough room left on my pc, need to cull out some photos I don't really need to keep. Right now my 20D only has 8mp files. So I wanted to do the computer end of it first and be prepared. I've got most of my files backed up but need to do a few more. As long as I can maintain an internet connection, there is help there, but I have to take it one baby step at a time. Right now a lot of it goes over my head.
Except the person who started the thread, simply looking for some advice. I just don't understand why these threads have to denigrate into this junk. A good-natured ribbing is one thing, but this is more than that (though you personally may have only meant it that way).
If I "overlooked" other comments - #6 doesn't appear to be a troll - just someone expecting the thread to turn sour (like nearly all Apple-related threads do thanks to trolls), and #7 is at least not name-calling - and in fact is almost funny (though the scene it s the best one in the movie they clipped it from).
I will ask your approval from now on to be sure you approve my posts.
Spend the money on a 13” Macbook Pro and get the extended warranty.
That way you only cry once.
I have been an Apple evangelist for 14 years but the 13” unibody Macbook Pro is the most amazingly beautiful machine I have ever seen.
Today it went 12 hours on a single charge.
FWIW, the Apple Stores have a transfer service and will move your files for you. I use a 1 terabyte HD with firewire 800 (see what your PC has) but you can also get them for USB2. Just offload everything to the portable drive and you can make it available to two computers or use it to transfer the files to your Mac.
You can get a 500 gig for around $100 now, and you can use it as your Time Machine after you’ve done your transfers. The Geek Squad guy should have done that if he couldn’t get both computers on the network.
“”He absolutely won’t have any virus problems with his Macintosh computer...”
Maybe, but maybe not. While Macs are less vulnerable to random, indirect attacks, they are actually much more vulnerable to DIRECT attacks. This is because most Mac users have no protection at all and don’t bother scanning for security threats. I have a family member with a Mac that had a keystroke logger loaded up on her system and her accounts started to be broken into. She wound up having to not only entirely replace her computer, but had to change her online account passwords, all of her account numbers and passwords for bank and credit card accouts, and her email accounts. Big hassle and a big financial concern. I think I only heard part of the story of what happened.
Buy a Dell they come in pretty colors (Sarc!)
I will never ever buy another Dell. No matter what colors they offer! lol
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