your views on imacs...

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Oh seriously folks, this is like asking one person why they would buy a Volvo and another person buy a Saab, its about personal preferences, i hate modern box like houses and some people hate charachter cottages.

Those ganging up on Joe should get over themselves.
 
i dont think its ganging up, but i think joe (and no offence joe) has a way of wording things on the screen that come across as said a little patronising so things heat up pretty quick.. whether that is meant or not is another matter, as joe said stuff on a screen can be read out of "tone".

joes a big boy and he doesnt seem to be upset by the banter, im sure he knows where the RTM button is if not :D
 
aye no harm done, and you're right about that, sometimes i can come across that way without meaning to, although to be honest in this thread the times i have been patronising have been on purpose because quite frankly the message coming from arad is that he knows better why i buy osx as indicated by his "if only you knew" comment. which comes across as incredibly patronising hence where we now find ourselves.
 
why is it so important to you to know?
To see if I'm missing something.


time machine. Windows equivalent is Ooops!Backup at £29

they way finder works with it's views and cover flow etc Oooh... cover flow... It must be good ;)

the dock Not sure how much better that is than the taskbar. In fact, for me, I find the dock to be very cluttered (but then I do have an inordinate number of programs open at any one time)

uninstalling programs is just a drag to the trash OK, but hardly a killer feature!

bootcamp and being able to run my virtual windows machine if i need it for work You can run virtual machines on Windoze too you know ;)

the ease of use of disk utility I can't see why that's any easier than Windows disk management/utilities to use...

iphoto Picasa 3

and ilife in general Picasa for Photos, Mixcraft/Audacity for Music, Movie Maker for Movies, DVD Maker for DVD authoring. Have I missed something?

As machines, they both do the same things - and you can get them to "look" pretty much the same if you want to. I have a different set of preferences for Windows machines as I have different needs to you - hardware expandability, upgradeability and the ability to get "under the hood" are very important for me for example.

The point I'm trying to make is that neither is a better system.

and please don't go through my list and tell me all the alternate ways i can do these things in win7.
Don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you what to do - deal ;) :D

The whole setup and feel of OSX is my preference and its as simple as that, just accept it.:thumbs:
I always have accepted it, just reacting to the general opinion of mac owners that macs are "better" and that people who don't agree are looked down upon. Yes, they're probably slicker and look nice (i.e. a "lifestyle" product), but they are more expensive to own. Six of one, half a dozen of the other....
 
quite frankly the message coming from arad is that he knows better why i buy osx as indicated by his "if only you knew" comment.
Tee hee...

That response was down to your insistence that macs cost more because the OS cost more and people would pay for it. I have no idea (nor have I tried to tell you, even though you keep accusing me of it) why you buy OSX, but you are happy to do so and all power to you. However, please don't try to tell me macs cost more because the OS costs more. That's an area I do know about as my day job is managing large complex software projects so I do have a reasonable idea what s/w development costs ;)

IMHO, macs cost more for a number of reasons including: bigger profit margin, overheads in highstreet stores, ability to appeal to peoples sense of lifestyle, sexy design and because they can get away with it. I don't see the problem with that - if people are willing to pay for it, that's fine, but don't kid yourself that it's because they're inherently better :D
 
Back to the OP's question? The 27" ones are very nice and will have all the power you need for the next few years. The footprint and the screen are great. However, bear in mind that if you don't get on with OSX it may be an expensive mistake. You can install windows (or if you are really wierd linux) though.

I don't have one but I would say if you can afford it, get one. If you get to play with OSX before (and that doesn't mean going into the apple store for 5 mins) it will make your choice more informed.

As for the other arguement going on, most people realise (ie Joe, Neil and Trencheel) that we do appreciate that people like different things and are happy with either Windows or OSX. What some of us don't like seeing are blanket statements that one empirically is better than the other, without qualification etc. It always turns into one of these daft bunfights!
 
On to the technical side i dont really have a clue about specs but i know it'll be used for a lot of stacking 40+ images in photoshop, and a bit of video editing which pushes my current computer to the point where it will just crash. - do you think opting for the quad core over the dual core would be a better option or would i get away with the 3.2ghz i3
On the dual vs quad core. That's really difficult as it will depend on how parallel you can make the code together with a system balancing act (no point having fast code if all you are doing is waiting on disk access for instance). Having said that, if you want to boil it down to a benchmarking:

The following ratings come from: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html and the numbers in brackets are the model numbers of the processor that clocks at the rate specified in the apple store - only a guess they are correct from me tho!

i3 (550) @ 3.2GHz rates: 3037
i5 (680) @ 3.6GHz rates: 3600 (£160 "option" on dual core)
i5 (760) @ 2.8GHz rates: 4551
i7 (870) @2.93GHz rates: 6026 (£160 "option" core on the quad core)

Based on that, and that you can run multicore for CS5 and Premiere Pro encoding I'd go with the i7, but you are paying for it - the processor themselves cost (assuming I have the right processor versions).

i3 550: £100
i5 680: £200
i5 760: £150
i7 870: £220

You might want to check with your primary software providers though as if you can only utilise a single core, for most of the work, the dual core i5 might be the best option.
 
To see if I'm missing something.


time machine. Windows equivalent is Ooops!Backup at £29

they way finder works with it's views and cover flow etc Oooh... cover flow... It must be good ;)

the dock Not sure how much better that is than the taskbar. In fact, for me, I find the dock to be very cluttered (but then I do have an inordinate number of programs open at any one time)

uninstalling programs is just a drag to the trash OK, but hardly a killer feature!

bootcamp and being able to run my virtual windows machine if i need it for work You can run virtual machines on Windoze too you know ;)

the ease of use of disk utility I can't see why that's any easier than Windows disk management/utilities to use...

iphoto Picasa 3

and ilife in general Picasa for Photos, Mixcraft/Audacity for Music, Movie Maker for Movies, DVD Maker for DVD authoring. Have I missed something?

As machines, they both do the same things - and you can get them to "look" pretty much the same if you want to. I have a different set of preferences for Windows machines as I have different needs to you - hardware expandability, upgradeability and the ability to get "under the hood" are very important for me for example.

The point I'm trying to make is that neither is a better system.

Don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you what to do - deal ;) :D

I always have accepted it, just reacting to the general opinion of mac owners that macs are "better" and that people who don't agree are looked down upon. Yes, they're probably slicker and look nice (i.e. a "lifestyle" product), but they are more expensive to own. Six of one, half a dozen of the other....

I could rip this post apart especially the part where you compared Movie Maker to iMovie :lol::lol::lol::lol:

but ..... in the interest of not going round and round in circles, I won't :thumbs:
 
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Tee hee...

That response was down to your insistence that macs cost more because the OS cost more and people would pay for it. I have no idea (nor have I tried to tell you, even though you keep accusing me of it) why you buy OSX, but you are happy to do so and all power to you. However, please don't try to tell me macs cost more because the OS costs more. That's an area I do know about as my day job is managing large complex software projects so I do have a reasonable idea what s/w development costs ;)

IMHO, macs cost more for a number of reasons including: bigger profit margin, overheads in highstreet stores, ability to appeal to peoples sense of lifestyle, sexy design and because they can get away with it. I don't see the problem with that - if people are willing to pay for it, that's fine, but don't kid yourself that it's because they're inherently better :D

see post above regarding just leaving it be to stop going round in circles :thumbs:
 
Go on then... I'll let you have the last word ;) :D

geek02-geek-nerds-eyeglass-smiley-emoticon-000201-large.gif
 
The point I'm trying to make is that neither is a better system.

Depending on your view of better. In terms of hardware and specs, if you were to match 2 specs, then of course neither would be better as they'd be the same. In terms of design and quality and appearance, I'd have to say one is streets ahead ;)

I always have accepted it, just reacting to the general opinion of mac owners that macs are "better" and that people who don't agree are looked down upon. Yes, they're probably slicker and look nice (i.e. a "lifestyle" product), but they are more expensive to own. Six of one, half a dozen of the other...

So involved in you bashing of Joes points I feel you overlooked my post that said I paid less for the mac at the same spec as an HP equivelant, so not always more expensive ;)
 
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In terms of design and quality and appearance, I'd have to say one is streets ahead ;)
Design and appearance is a personal thing - personally, I DON'T like the look of iMacs. As to quality - you can get that in PCs too if you buy good quality cases and power supplies...

So involved in you bashing of Joes points I feel you overlooked my post that said I paid less for the mac at the same spec as an HP equivelant, so not always more expensive ;)
Sorry, you're right, I missed that post. But yes, if you're going to be spending the best part of £2k on a laptop, then the competitors (HP) will be operating in an entirely different pricing structure (i.e. business) to that they operate in the low cost (i.e. £300-£400 area). We could (and have) bought 3 laptops and built a desktop for the price you paid for the MBP.... You can buy i7 laptops for half what Apple are selling theirs for....
 
Christ - Have you all finished now? I bet poor Phil probably wishes he'd never opened his mouth (or keyboard!).:D

My 10 pence worth - I have used PC's now for about 15 years until I used a friends Imac and found it really user friendly and more than adequate for running Photoshop with some pretty big files. I decided to take the plunge and bought a 24" Imac 2 years ago. It still works exactly the same as it did when I bought it and I have to say I prefer the OS to Windows. It just seems more logical to me, but we're all different, and have different uses for our computers. I still use a PC at work with Windows and it irritates me regularly with it's endless pop-ups etc but that's probaly down to me installing stuff without knowledge of it. I would say most computer users are not particularly computer-literate and will install stuff unknowingly but have no idea how to remove unwanted cookies, unnecessary background programs etc. I know I don't. All I know is that I haven't had these issues with the Mac.

I think you have to try out both the Mac and PC and decide for yourself which suits you. It's a personal thing. ;)

As has been said, though, the only down side I can find with the Mac is the upgradeability (or lack of). It's pretty simple to upgrade a PC, but not so with a Mac. But hey, if mine still runs the same in another 2 years, then I have no need to upgrade! :thumbs:
 
assuming youre talking about apple there, again depending on your point of view.. ive got/had lian li cases over the years that are phenominal quality and gorgeous :)

Well you made an assumption there, so I guess you feel that apple produce something that looks good. There are some lovely looking PC's on the market, but I do like the aesthetics and design of apple products, in the same way I like the same values in many vehicles made by Ferrari.
 
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