Question of the day: Saturday August 31

A year or so ago I thought my computer had crashed and so I asked advice on TCS about what to replace it with.

My computer revived itself but it's now becoming an inevitability and a year is ages in computer time.

So, in a blatant attempt to extract information and preferences from TCS members, Saturday's QOD is:

Mac or PC?   

  

all Macs all the time

SwampWitch said:

all Macs all the time

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Can I ask why?

One of the reasons I'm going back to a Mac idea after only ever having a PC is that Windows 8 is meant to be a nightmare and from what I'm hearing 8.1 that comes out in October is no better.  And custom made people really baulk at putting Windows on a new computer.. I have no idea why.

l would have preferred to buy a Mac based on all my friend has told me about hers, but l didn't want to pay for one 

l just bought a new computer a few days ago. lt has Windows 8, which at first glance is alarming! l didn't even know how to shut it off!

l've found a bunch of shortcuts online so now l'm getting a better picture of how it works, but still undecided.

So in spite of buying a PC, l would vote for Mac as being my first choice, but not from my own personal experience.

I honestly don't know at this point. I like PCs and I've not had any major amount of trouble with any of mine. Yes, I did have some hard drive and motherboard issues with the one I'm using now, but that was the first time ever and that's in 20 years of having a computer.

But I don't like Windows with all that touch-screen nonsense at all. So right now? I don't know. 

I almost had to buy another PC, but thankfully the problem with mine was IE and fixable. I had this computer custom built in 2003 and it's still going.

It depends on your software. I go with Windows because certain programs I need for work aren't available for Macs. I also find Apple's Asian labor policies objectionable and wasn't at all happy about how its "agency agreements" drove up the price of e-books.

jcat said:

It depends on your software. I go with Windows because certain programs I need for work aren't available for Macs. I also find Apple's Asian labor policies objectionable and wasn't at all happy about how its "agency agreements" drove up the price of e-books.

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Could you direct me to more details on the labour policies?  It's something that helps make decisions. 

But then, is Microsoft squeaky clean on this issue..

Laptop is all I got.

Bootcamp.

I have a really old PC (still on Windows XP) from 2006. I got a Mac laptop for my birthday in 2009, I think. I was going to build a new PC, mainly so I could play some games my current PC couldn't run and that don't work on Mac, and I was saving all year for it. But, I had some emergency expenses come up, so my "fun" money turned into "emergency" money (good I had it, but sad I couldn't build the computer).

Then I learned about Bootcamp, and it's really simple. Basically, it's free software included in every Mac that lets you create a partition, so you can have Windows on your Mac. So, I bought a copy of Windows 7 (cheaper than building a whole computer, obviously), followed the Bootcamp instructions on the Mac screen, and voila! My laptop now has both.

So, that's what I'd recommend. Eat your cake and have it too!

Windows 8 is the most user UN-friendly program you can imagine!!!  Avoid it if you can. It's completely COUNTER intuitive and annoys me daily.

I use a laptop. Maybe it's better on a touch screen tablet though.

I'm still good with my PC.  We're on Windows7 though.  

Macs are fast, intuitive, soooo easy to use and maintain. Our MacBooks have lasted for about 5 years each even with a lot of travel where they get knocked around. 

I fell in love with Macs in 1984 when I got a Macintosh that took my job (technical writing) from difficult and extremely time-consuming to crazy simple. 

PC.

SwampWitch said:

Macs are fast, intuitive, soooo easy to use and maintain. Our MacBooks have lasted for about 5 years each even with a lot of travel where they get knocked around. 

I fell in love with Macs in 1984 when I got a Macintosh that took my job (technical writing) from difficult and extremely time-consuming to crazy simple. 

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Thank you..

I've always gone for PC/laptop and Windows because Macs are so much dearer, plus Windows is what I have to use for work and there are compatibility issues when I do work at home and email in. However, reading about Bootcamp above,  I would now think very differently.  My personal experience with PCs and laptops is they never seem to last long (about 2 years then repairs cost almost as getting replacement). Every time you have to replace they've changed the software and other than Windows 7 the software changes have NOT been for the better.  The Macs do seem to have a much better lifespan, for both hardware and software. I'm thinking maybe next time I need to replace I'd go Mac as the higher price is probably offset by the better / more durable build and software options.

Yes, that's what I'm thinking.  One of the reasons I need to update is that I'm still on XP and to get another few months or even a year out of this PC I'll need to upgrade and it's just not worth the money.

It feels like one of those big holes that you chuck money into..

I've got no experience with full fledged Windows 8, but Windows RT is godawful.  I have a Surface RT tablet for casual home use.

First, the good points of my RT tablet:

• I actually like having a touch screen.  I miss it when I'm on a standard laptop. 
• I like the fact that the tablet is solid state.  It doesn't get hot, and the battery life is pretty good.
• I don't love the Metro interface, but I don't hate it either. As I said, I have this tablet for casual home use.  99% of what I do works fine with Live Tiles.  I hop into the legacy desktop for the 1% of stuff I can't do with the Metro interface. 
• I've had some happy surprises on being able to extract data from media devices.  The tablet has a USB port and a port that works with the media from a GoPro camera.  The device made an unexpected score one vacation evening when we wanted to look at pictures people had taken with various devices during the day.  Neither the old XP laptop nor an iPad would cooperate.  The RT tablet, surprisingly, was willing to talk to everything. Yay!

Now what I hate:

• Web browsing on RT just sucks. Major show stopping pain in the heiny.  RT lacks players for certain types of content.  Unfortunately, a lot of web sites have little scripts embedded into ads, banners, etc.  RT hits one of these scripts and just sits there waiting for a timeout before loading the rest of the page.  Sometimes I can force it to load by cancelling and refreshing.  Other times I just give up.
• Some content displays oddly or won't run at all. Photobucket detects RT as a mobile device and shows pictures at smartphone size. Photobucket videos won't play .
  
  .  Popups, like the smiley face selector on some web sites, won't always display.  Amazon Prime streaming video won't play.
• The wireless antenna on my Surface device is pretty wimpy.  Right now I'm sitting on my bed, and my router is on the floor under the bed.  The RT device is displaying only four signal bars. Browsing gets hideously slow at around 2 bars, which is just about anywhere in my house apart from the bedroom. I find my Lenovo PC and my Mac Powerbook both work fine about 15 - 20 feet further away from my router than the RT machine will.
• Live Tiles can be kind of weird.  Several of them (photos, Bing, news) constantly change, displaying varying images pulled from their content.  So, I can't just go to my photos, for instance, by looking for the picture of a camera or scrapbook.  The picture changes from a picture of my cat, to a picture of someone's retirement party, to a picture of my dog's left nostril as he was sniffing the lens, to something else random.  I have to remember the tile I want is the one on the top row, third from left.  And then I accidentally drag it somewhere.
  
• The Surface keyboard is slow and inconsistent.

I think, if I was allowed to bring just one piece of hardware into the house, I'd go for a MacBook Air with Windows loaded as a secondary OS for stuff Macs won't run.  I'm actually a PC person by preference.  Since I'm not limited to one device, my plan is to wait for the 8.1 Windows release and then go for something like a Lenovo Yoga.  When/if I find it won't do things I need, I might add in an iPad or a top end Kndle.

MAC!!! I am a mac person, and I refuse to own another PC if I can help it! Macs has very little to no viruses, easier to navigate the files (once you know what to do), the graphics is over all better IMO and more websites are supporting Safari.

I dunno, it may just be me, even with a virus software, I always seem to contract a virus on a PC.. and I've noticed it tends to be more sensitive about which websites you go to and how you shut it down. I won't go on my dad's PC anymore (Even to check my emails!)

Mani said:

Could you direct me to more details on the labour policies?  It's something that helps make decisions. 
But then, is Microsoft squeaky clean on this issue.. :dk:

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In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

Riots, suicides, and other issues in Foxconn's iPhone factories

The politics of global production: Apple, Foxconn and China's new working class

Apparently there hasn't been much in the way of improvement. This report is from the end of July, 2013:

Undercover Report: Apple Faces Fresh Criticism of Factories