Forum Moderators: travelin cat
I intend to buy a notebook and well, the powerbook looks very good. But frankly speaking, I have always used the PC and is really familar with it. The mac OS seems to be a little difficult to control and the one button mouse is a little funny.
Then there are those problems with linking up to my pc at home, how difficult it it?
I mostly use my computer to surf the net and to create websites. I use photoshop, dreamweaver and flash pretty often.(is it really more efficient to run photoshop on a mac?) At other times, I use it to write small java programs for school.
Actually my win Xp doesn't hang often and I dun get virus very often, so I can't really justify getting a mac.
Sigh, so should I get a mac?
is it really more efficient to run photoshop on a mac?
Only if you are working with high res artwork. At medium/web res you shouldn't notice any difference. In fact a power PC will render just as fast these days. The bigger differences asfarasIknow are in the way colours are displayed - macintosh output is and always has been considered a class above... I digress, it's question of RAM. The more the merrier - if you want to run lots of apps at the same time get lots of RAM - it was the best money I have ever spent. I was using an old pentium with 128mb RAM for a while and it could'nt deal with dreamweaver fireworks and a-another - I boosted the RAM to 512 and the old lump heaves along at a merry pace now. I can even run all the modern browsers on it at the same time + studio MX which is ace for testing.
I am very jealous by the way, power books are BEEAAAUUUTIFUL!
There is a paradigm shift needed in going from Windows to a Mac. It will seem very confusing at first, but as you begin to understand the Mac way of doing things, I think that you'll find it more intuitive. There are just a bunch of little minor details that Apple gets "right" (like on the Powerbook--when you open it, the little hooks that latch it disappear into their little holes). OS X is the same way--Expose alone is one of seceral "Why didn't someone think of this before?" kind of features.
As for the one button mouse, any two button mouse will work just fine. I'm using a five-button trackball with my Powerbook.
FInally, they're just so cool!
- Open up the Terminal app and learn some Unix. Then put "Unix" on your resume. (And learn some vi before somebody asks you for help with a Linux box.)
- Run an Apache Web server w/o having to install Apache
- Check what your Web sites look like to all those affluent Mac users. (This is a great reason to pick up a cheap, used Mac, but hey, like you said the new PB's are way cooloer.)
- Store your digital photos in iPhoto.
- Tinker around with iMovie.
- Find out what you've been missing.
Plug a multi-button mouse into the PB, and the first 2 button + the scroll wheel just start working. For buttons 3+, install the mouse driver. Those funky 1-button jobbers are (great) for children and the elderly.
Mail far and above the best Junk Mail filtering.
iCal, supper easy to use and share without an exchange server, this was really important in our all Mac (16ppl) department. Not only can you share them through the app, but it will publish your calander(s) to the web.
Address Book, a great address management app that integrats with iCal and Mail.
iTunes, but you can get that on PC now.
iChat, sinks up with AOL IM. Plus, turn on the Rendezvous window and find / talk to anyone on the same network with iChat instantly. This also came in supper handy in our office.
iSync. Great for synking you PDA, Cell Phone, backing up your make (with .Mac). Best part of all is once you are hooked and buy another Apple, you can keep the two Synced. That means between the two machines your Address Book, Book Marks, and Calander will stay synced betweent the two. I have my G5, iBook, and iMac syncing every hour and it is the greatest thing since sliced bread and Vodka.
.Mac, $100 bucks a year and you can backup your mac to an Apple server and publish you iCal Calenders to the web, sync up several macs, amoungs a host of other things.
Along with Apache MySQL and PHP preinstalled. Do your development on the mahince without hassles.
I have an older iBook (a step down from a powerbook) that I mainly use for travel and working from my porch. 500mhz 128Ram, I can open the entire MX 2004 suite, photoshop, illustrator, Word, Excel, and a couple of browsers no problem. Granted it does not perform tasks as fast as my G5 or my jacked up iMac, but it does run just fine. A newer Powerbook is going to do all of this a lot faster than my 2 year old iBook.
And yes they are so d-m pretty.
PS: Before you ask why I have all three, the iMac lives in my TV room on a coffee table. The 90lbs Weimaraner likes to snooze on my lap making a laptop a problem.
The mac OS seems to be a little difficult to control
because you are unfamiliar with it?
I use photoshop, dreamweaver and flash pretty often.
well,you will now have to buy Mac versions of them.
(is it really more efficient to run photoshop on a mac?)
I have no idea, if you can't "control" the Mac OS, you are going to be much less efficient using Photoshop on a Mac
Actually my win Xp doesn't hang often and I dun get virus very often, so I can't really justify getting a mac.
OK, then don't get one.
Sigh, so should I get a mac?
OK, then get one.
