In the market for a new computer.

[Caper11]

Like the title says I'm looking for a new comp. I'm interested in a laptop and ditching the desktop. I'm interested in a apple product since my a lot of my devices are apple.

I'd like to know what my fellow s@m think about the MacBook or a windows based unit.

Thx


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[pfi572]

Levono touch screen windows based. ( just purchased a few months ago)
I purchase a new note book every couple years .
Gave up on the desk top 10 years ago as the tablets have came a long way.
Saying that I run a iPhone and iPad also but with Calgary servers and logging on I still keep the windows based note book.
If your just using the net ,emails and photos I think the Mac.
Way more $ thou.

 

[CUSO]

I have an older macbook (2007), time for me to upgrade... I might go the other way... and am thinking of buying an I-mac. Waiting to get the 27" retina version. I will still keep my macbook for out of office stuff.

What I did for my setup, was run my macbook with monitor, bluetooth keyboard and track pad. Works awesome. I had lots of trouble with the magic mouse, went through 3 of them with troubles on batteries, bluetooth pairing etc.
Anyways, I bought a 22 inch monitor and adapter, and plugged it in and viola! a desktop computer (pretty much). You can take it with you wherever you go and use it too.

You can also use a desktop surround stereo system by getting an adapter for your firewire.

If you are adamant about using windows, you can bootcamp your hard drive and run both O.S.

As for being expensive, I had mine for 7 years this september, paid 1200. It's not so bad if it lasts that long. Lots of people I know go through laptops on a yearly basis.

As for making your devices compatible, I-tunes does that anyway.

 

[Syclone74]

The wife just bought the new I-Mac home computer. She loves the thing. They now have office built in. Got sick of that windows 8 crap, couldn't print half the documents. Always had to use the kids old laptops to do printing of our business stuff. Now with all our iPhones and iPads they are linked together and she can still do our business stuff on it. Besides still have 4 old laptops in the house to use to if it screws up.

 

[Caper11]

This is good info! Thx
We upgraded our computers at work and they are the lenovos using the windows 8. I'm having a tough Time adapting to using it but I'm warming up to it.

Good thing there are smart computer guys
at work that can help me out! Lol


The Mac mini seems pretty cool, could easily hook it to a tv and a hard line instead of using wireless, and have similar functionality of a desktop and laptop.


Which brings me to another question.

How secure is the wireless signal? 90% of my online usage is from my phone or iPad, when I pay bills it's on my hard line desktop with a good antivirus program.


Thx





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[sumx54]

We have two iMacs in the house. One new one and one a few yrs old. Both have MS office, both have worked flawless.

 

[the_real_wild1]

Tried windows 8 for 6 months. Still had trouble finding stuff on it. I finally got a macbook air and haven't looked back. Love it. I still have to use a pc for work (Lenovo) and hate having to use it. Sooooo Fawking slow and painful. Go Mac.

 

[whoDEANie]

On line banking is pretty secure. However, it is really only as secure as your computer. If your computer is vulnerable, any number of malicious tools can be installed on your computer to allow someone to see what your doing, log your keystrokes, or steal personal info.

Here's a few steps to protect yourself:
- Good antivirus software is key - a lot of people ignore this fundamental requirement (Apple users especially), but you just have to accept that it is the cost of owning a computer these days.
- Password security!!! Do not use the same password for more than one site or service. You'd be surprised how many less professional sites will store your password in their databases. Responsible service providers NEVER store your password - encrypted or not. Instead, they should store a hash of your password which can never be converted back into the original password from which the hash was created. If a site stores your password in their database and you use that password elsewhere, you are vulnerable. Is it a pain in the a$$ to keep track of a whack of passwords? Absolutely, but it still needs to be done.
- It turns out that it is surprisingly easy to break into the average wireless network. Once someone is on your network, they will likely have at least partial access to your PC where they can do all sorts of malicious things like sniffing your network packets and installing malicious tools on you PC (like key loggers). Using WPA2 instead of WEP will help but apparently not all that much. Eventually a hacker can break those keys with some easily attainable tools available to anyone and everyone on the internet. Other mitigation tactics include turning your router off when not in use, moving the router away from the walls to limit the signal strength outside your house, and turning off SSID broadcast. The idea here is that the less accessible your network is and the less you broadcast, the harder and longer it will take them to crack your security key.

The good news is that, even if your wireless network is compromised, there's pretty much no chance of them decrypting the HTTPS packets between you and your financial institution. As far as I know, they'd need to watch you typing in your password by compromising your actual PC. Any other way I'm aware of requires hacking the financial institution itself or its certificate authority.

 

[LkDemon]

I've got 4 PC's so I don't have to tell you what I prefer but my girlfriend has a Mac Pro which she likes as well. I've been running Pro Tools on my XP machine for years and I've never had an issue.
With Mac you obvisouly will spend more money on the machine but you could run Garage Band which is free (I think) and be done. A PC you'll spend at least $600 less for the computer but it does take some tinkering. I personally like that kind of stuff but if you don't want to futz around get a Mac.

 

[Marley]

Been using Mac since 1989 and never have installed anti-virus on any of them. Never had a problem on probably 20 plus machines . Having said that I never download 'free' anything - music, movies, software etc (unless it was meant to be free) - so that may have something to do with it. Apple, behind the scenes, keeps the OS updated for all but the zero day vulnerabilities. We do online banking, investments and stock trading with them...

Have iMacs, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPads, iPad Air and many iPhones - they may cost a few hundred dollars more but we have virtually no problems over the 25 years.

Apple may however discontinue support for models when they are 10 years old or so - whether it is technical or just incentive to upgrade - if you 10 plus problem free years then you are doing ok. Got my parents an eMac for less than $1000 about 13 years ago and it is still in daily use.

 

[whoDEANie]

Been using Mac since 1989 and never have installed anti-virus on any of them. Never had a problem on probably 20 plus machines . Having said that I never download 'free' anything - music, movies, software etc (unless it was meant to be free) - so that may have something to do with it. Apple, behind the scenes, keeps the OS updated for all but the zero day vulnerabilities. We do online banking, investments and stock trading with them...

Have iMacs, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPads, iPad Air and many iPhones - they may cost a few hundred dollars more but we have virtually no problems over the 25 years.

Apple may however discontinue support for models when they are 10 years old or so - whether it is technical or just incentive to upgrade - if you 10 plus problem free years then you are doing ok. Got my parents an eMac for less than $1000 about 13 years ago and it is still in daily use.

Just because you've never noticed a problem yet doesn't mean you won't in the future, nor does it mean that you don't already have one. A well written trojan could live on your machine for years without you ever noticing it. True, a Linux based OS is inherently more secure than Windows, but that's not the main reason they don't get virused as frequently - they don't get virused as often as Windows devices do because not as meany people are writing viruses and trojans for IOS. There are many reasons why IOS isn't targeted very frequently, but I suspect the main one is that it doesn't have a very big slice of the desktop market share yet (Windows is 91.6% and IOS is only 6.9%). One day, there are going to be a lot of IOS users with corrupted machines or compromised bank accounts because they figured anti-malware wasn't necessary for Apple products.

 

[101110101101]

Just because you've never noticed a problem yet doesn't mean you won't in the future, nor does it mean that you don't already have one. A well written trojan could live on your machine for years without you ever noticing it. True, a Linux based OS is inherently more secure than Windows, but that's not the main reason they don't get virused as frequently - they don't get virused as often as Windows devices do because not as meany people are writing viruses and trojans for IOS. There are many reasons why IOS isn't targeted very frequently, but I suspect the main one is that it doesn't have a very big slice of the desktop market share yet (Windows is 91.6% and IOS is only 6.9%). One day, there are going to be a lot of IOS users with corrupted machines or compromised bank accounts because they figured anti-malware wasn't necessary for Apple products.

Just to add.... iOS is Apple's mobile OS.... OSx is what runs on most their notebooks models.