Switchers

[malexgreen]

Originally posted by jade
I am a potential switcher.......have been considering for 3 years. (or maybe even a little longer). The next step for the switching campaign to be even more successful. well i think it is cost-prohibitive to switch now.

One thing that concerns me is speed. and looking at the mhz #s, a PC is at least twice as fast as an equivalent apple. and that will scare people off. Especially when they think about future software costs, it seems really expensive for 1/2 as much computer. I think if the processor sppeds are a lot closer, it removes that potential objection and frees your computer choice up to being the coolest computer. Hopefully this will be the year apple bridges the gap, and I will be able to switch with a clear conscious.

Until then I just look to the rumor sites for future clues and sit and wait.........

-----------------looking to replace my 5 year-old sony laptop

As a fellow potential switcher, but also as an engineer who works in the computer industry, I can say that you pay more for Macs because you get more. No stardard PC's come with firewire, and gigabit ethernet, and can be upgraded to up to 1GB of memory. And as far as processor speeds, you can never take two computer chips that are built on two totally different architectures, and compare their performances based on the clock speeds. Got to apple.com/myth for more info. Based on my knowledge of both the Pentium4 and PowerPC architectures, a PowerPC with 1GHz clock speed is comparable to a 2-2.5GHz Pentium in performance, but with LESS power consumption, which is what is making buying a Powerbook or iBook so compelling to me. Just my 2 cents.

[Arden]

Originally posted by djliquidice
I use IBM OS/390, "Winders", Unix and AIX at work. To embrace technology as a whole is awesome. Why eat just the blue M&Ms? heh. :P

Because they taste a lot better than those crappy red, green, yellow and brown ones...

Originally posted by bambi
(and who does Java, Javascript, HTML, C+, SQL, Apache, .... um... what else...something that starts with a 'P'... I get the letters mixed up sometimes since I never really know what he's talking about....)

I believe what you are looking for is PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor--interprets and parses your code before writing the final product to the screen). And all of those come standard with OS X, which means your cutesy little iMac is one lean, mean, (I wish I could say) green coding Mac-chine.

[symphonix]

And Perl ... and Python ... :-)

[kanecorp]

i'm a "switcher"...but if anything, the switch campaign made me not want to switch.

It was OSX mostly, but i couldn't find a lower cost solution and still get a powerful mac.
Well the second the LCD iMac came out, i couldn't believe it.
It was one of the best lookin things i've ever seen, powerful enough, and had an LCD screen.
I think they should focus on how cool their stuff is instead on how a few idiots couldn't figure out how to get a camera working on a windows computer

[macguy17]

My mom always used PCs and my dad always used Macs, so about 3 years ago when I moved in with my dad I was forced to switch basically. Glad to say, I don't miss much

[MacMarshall]

Originally posted by kanecorp
I think they should focus on how cool their stuff is instead on how a few idiots couldn't figure out how to get a camera working on a windows computer

But that is *SUCH* a cool feature. Last week, my friend asked me to show him how to connect a digital camera and a camcorder to his "new" Pismo PowerBook. He brought it over, I plugged the cameras in, and they worked just like that!

We didn't have to connect to the Internet, download drivers, install, reboot, etc. Both cameras worked the very first time. It saved me at least half an hour, but for a newbie, it saves you maybe a day.

And I did try connecting my camcorder to my PC. I bought a FireWire board. Then I had to upgrade to Windows ME. My hard disk wasn't fast enough, so I bought a new one. And I added lots of RAM. Ok, then I installed a bunch of software, and it worked.

But it doesn't work now. I don't know why, I don't really care, because, doggone it, I'm getting a Mac.

[Arden]

Good for you! We are so proud of you...

[abyard]

Originally posted by fryke
Jade: Go ahead and test what you would be doing on a Mac. Forget for a moment about the MHz numbers. What really matters is how fast you get your work (or not your work, but fun) done. And that's where Macintosh excels. It's the design of 'easy to use', it's how the machine works for you instead of the other way 'round that makes the Macintosh a better computer.

I don't really care whether the next PowerPC processors will be labelled 2 GHz, X MegaFlips or 200 MHz, as long as they're faster than the processors we're using now.

Benchmarks are all nice and that, but seriously: Are you the person that lets your computer run for four hours without interaction rendering something? I'm not. Most of the time I'm interacting with my computer, and there is where speed matters. Speed of workflow, that is. And the Mac's just faster.

A simple point and well articulated!

The problem is... where do you go and test drive a Mac?
I don't know many computer shops in the UK that stock Macs and those that do are staffed by pimpled geeks who love to show off their knowledge of IRQ's and other really important 'techie' stuff.

We don't have the Apples in education thing like the US so I'm wording how many Macs are sold by word of mouth from people like us.

I wish I could write...
"Apple what you really need to do is XXXXXXXXXXX"
but I don't know what X is, so for now I'll follow your lead and show my friends, one at a time, that faster doesn't equal smarter.