atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories Finally bought a MAC!

Well, I went out this weekend with the bride, looked around and bought a Macbook.

So far, very nice. I still have to learn how to use the darn thing but some things have really impressed me so far- networking especially. And customer support is unreal - About 90 seconds on an Auto-Attendant, then off to a live person - here in America! And they got my wireless working in about 4 minutes.

I'll report more as I learn more.

Sam

just think, if you'd bought a Dell you could still be holding for a college kid in Manila!

Apple really knows how to make you feel like the extra money was worth spending.

I'm proud of you, Sam. As you know, I use both Mac (system X) and a PC (Win XP), but have run into tears and disappointment with Microsoft's newest OS and release of MS Office. Combined, both products have led me to abandoning Microsoft for the while. I know that this is something that I've recommended to you as well as others. I sincerely hope that you find this to be a superior product; I'd hate to think that I steered someone wrong.

Yup. Microsoft can only blame themselves when customers defect to MAC. Take your Vista and shove it!

-Hal

We bought a Vista box for our test bench as soon as it was released and haven't had a great deal of difficulty with it. However, it is really a let down in terms of the flimsy benefits it brings to the table. The vast majority of our system sales are still XP Pro boxes and once you throw on the free Desktop Search add-on and a few other tweaks, you're just about matching Vista for 'features' and you need a lot less hardware to have a useful machine.

I'm a lot more on the fence about Office '07. It's a rough learning curve but it does get you a lot of cool new stuff. I personally like the combination of XP and Office '07 as long as you don't need any speech-to-text features. Those crossed product lines recently: where they used to come with Office, now they come with Vista. Hence, an XP/Office'07 setup has NO speech-to-text tools. Gotta stay with Office'03 if you need speech-to-text and don't want Vista.

It's a cluster, no two ways about it.

Actually I kind of like Word '07. Makes it a lot easier to access things that were buried in earlier versions. I'm no "power user" though and I never saw Office '03 or the speech to text feature.

-Hal

If you want to witness software bloat, try running Windows 3.11 (Windows for Workgroups) on the kind of hardware required for Vista. It's so fast, it makes your head swim.

Sure, there's no security or prettiness to it, but my basic premise about unnecessary extras and bloat will stand clear.

Just for kicks, I still have an old copy of Microsoft Excel. It will give you a complete installation on six floppy disks, and I bet it does most or all of what the typical user does with spreadsheets daily.

The only problem with Macs that I could possibly discuss is that most security camera DVRs, and PC-based DVRs use ActiveX controls for remote access and configuration over the internet. Does anyone know of software that doesn't use ActiveX so that someone with a Mac can view his security cameras remotely over the net?

I was a big OS/2 user till IBM abandoned it. Everything ran on a 512MB Hard drive. OS, apps, user data - everthing. If you had two hard drives you could drag & drop an application from one drive to the other and it would work. I still can't do that with Windows.

Oh and Lotus 123 for DOS installed on one, 256K, 5.25" floppy.


Sam

Hope it goes well for ya Sam, as you already know what a fan I am. Did you get the "Apple-care" warranty/support extension?