I'll be venturing into the world of Macs soon !

[Behemoth]

A friend of mine has just bought himself a Mac Book Pro, which leaves his Mac Book that he bought last year going spare. When I asked what he was going to do with it, he said he was going to lend it to me !!

I've never really used a Mac more than when I was sent on a training course for work and that was really just so I could demonstrate the Iphoto, Iweb and DVD packages to customers.

Am I going to be really out of my depth or will it take me a while to get used it and will I want to go back to windows after using it ?

[kalniel]

Am I going to be really out of my depth or will it take me a while to get used it and will I want to go back to windows after using it ?

Nope. Unless you want to play lots of games

Otherwise get Steam on it and enjoy what you can

[Behemoth]

Well thats what my PC is for, I use my Laptop for all other tasks, e-mail etc.

[mightymouse]

started using mac for everything other than gaming 5 years ago and never looked back since. Its really reliable and macbooks have some of the best battery life not to mention ease of use. But then nowadays win 7 is quite decent too.

It takes a lot of tweaking for now but overall its an amazing os and bit of kit. one thing i really like is the ease of installing programs and how easy to execute it.

Have fun

[Behemoth]

I'm still waiting for him to get all his junk off it so its all fresh for me to fiddle with.

[t1m4]

Welcome to world of mac's! I joined it around Easter with an iMac, now when i needed a new laptop i ended up with an Air!
Once you get it you wont go back apart from if you want to play games!!

[Behemoth]

Like I said I've not got it yet, but I can see myself enjoying it. I'm pretty sure it's very much like Linux in which case I don't see myself struggling too much.

I really do like to muck about with an OS and go deep into it's bowells and give it a good going over.

You can bet a pound to a pinch of horse manure though I'll get stuck with somethng. So watch out for threads on how to do something very simple lol.

[deathbyscience]

You can dig in to a fair amount with Macs, but for the most part there's no need. All files that you need to get at are visible and in sensible places, and there's no registry to become bloated or overrun with rubbish

[macfanuk]

trust me, once you start using a mac, it'll always be in the back of your mind.

I used to use a mac (started with a G5 iMac) and ever since, been lumbered with PC's, and the more I tinker with my PC, the more I long to buy a mac again.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I use Macs at work and TBH I am still a PC person! I feel no need to actually get a Mac and prefer a PC. If I want a different OS I could always install one of the Linux distros and tinker with that instead. AFAIK,Linux is similar to OS X under the hood anyway.

The only time I would ever consider getting a Mac is I really needed one for work purposes.

[Covenant]

I entered the world of Macs, when I bought a Macbook Pro earlier this year. Almost the first thing I did was install windows through bootcamp so that I could carry on playing games - and because I was a bit sceptical.

Having used OS X (and re-enabled the RMB!!) for half a year, my thoughts are (broken down into my typical usage):
Internet - Same - I use chrome, and it seems the same on both pc and mac. When using the trackpad, I find the two finger scrolling very intuitive on the mac.
Email - Same - prob best to ask someone who uses an email client as I switched to webmail ages ago.
Music - Same - I'm lazy and just use iTunes, which seems same as the Windows version. Seems less buggy on the mac, but that's probably just some hardware bug on my pc.
Photo Editing - same - lightroom2, pretty much exactly the same, now I've worked out how to turn mouse acceleration off and enable the RMB!!
Photo viewing - Worse - I preferred the windows version of google picassa - I haven't really got to grips with the mac version, so just flicking through photos using the standard photoviewer. It does the job, but doesn't feel quite as slick.
Gaming - Obviously worse! - I just boot into Windows for this, and that's a simple case of restarting the macbook and holding down the ALT key and selecting bootcamp. Everything works fine. I play COH mainly (especially the new online version), MW, GRID... they all run fine, but can understand it being a bother to have to reboot to play them.
Battery Life ...Great, but no way to tell whether Windows or OS X is more efficient. Here's my reasoning - In OS X I am getting mammoth hours from my 13inch MBP, something in the region of 6 or 7 hours. In Windows I get less then half of that... but I suspect this is not the fault of windows, rather that Apple haven't bothered to optimise their bootcamp drivers. And since no windows laptop can boot into OS X (except the occasional hack-intosh netbook), there's no real way to test the reverse. Either way, a macbook from the last 18 months running in OSX is going to give great battery life, and mediocre in Windows.

I'd say in terms of general usability, I'm starting to prefer OS X. I close the lid for the macbook and it goes to sleep. I open it, and it appears instantly, although takes another 5-10 seconds to be completely responsive. After 6 months, it still does this perfectly. I know this is what's meant to happen with a windows laptop, but in practise something always ended up going wrong for me a few months after a fresh install.

Something I do find really good however, is the built in backup system. I backup the whole thing onto a portable HD through a built in program called Timemachine. I tested it, but wiping the system relatively early on, and installing OS X back through the DVD, with the timemachine backup from my portable HD - and it worked perfectly. Complete restore in about an hour. You can also use the timemachine backup, to simple go back in time to an earlier version of the OS - seems very effective.

Also, used a free program called Winclone, to make an image of the Windows partition. That also worked fine, for when I wanted to increase the partition size of bootcamp, and didn't want to go through the bother of reinstalling Windows.

The geek in me probably still prefers windows, purely because I know where everything is, and I always feel like I've got more options an controls available, without having to go through the terminal screen when I need advanced options.

Hope some of that helps!

[Covenant]

Recent article from Anandtech - using a Macbook for windows:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3889/a...dows7-laptop/1

I'd agree with the conclusion that there are better alternatives if you just want to run windows... but still an interesting read.

[Peter Parker]

I'm a fan of Macs. We use them at work for software development and the UNIX-like BSD environment is a great plus. OS X is a fine OS but if you want more Linux/GNU compatibility then check out Macports as well. Also have a look into Wine for some gaming - I use Wine 1.3 on Fedora at home (can't afford a shiny new 12-core Mac Pro just yet!) and it plays things like Civ4 and X3 well enough for me to not bother dual booting any more. Windows? Only good for games in which case get a second hand Wii or 360.

[kmac]

I'm with CAT on this. I bought a Mac Mini to see what all the fuss was about and never really got on with it. It sat unused on my desk till one day about 13 months after I got it it wouldn't even switch on.

I now use a Macbook Air for work but I've loaded Windows 7 onto it and it seems fine.

Not a real fan of OS X

[Terbinator]

http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/...le-edition.ars

There is a Widows one as well...

[Methanoid]

I have an iMac but I tend to use Windows on it more.. but I love the hardware!