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Laptops and Working across platforms |
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Where Windows is better than the Mac
Price watch
References
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front
page | Laptops
Macintosh laptops are more efficient with battery power than Wintel
notebooks. Only fairly recently have Wintel notebooks introduced efficient low-power
management features. There were no power-management/ sleep features in Windows
until NT. Also, because of the way Windows NT uses virtual memory, hard disk drive
access is increased dramatically, quickly depleting battery power in Windows NT
notebooks. With judicious use the battery of a an Al- or Ti-Book can last up to
six hours compared to 3-4 hours for the average notebook. Intel's new Centrino
technology has improved the performance of PC notebooks.
Apple has developed the Location Manager(LM) for use on
laptops. If a person uses the same laptop at home and at work, one click
in the LM will change all settings for default printers and network connections.
There is no similar way to do that on a PC. You have to buy third party
products like Netswitcher. http://www.netswitcher.com/
Retail prices for laptops in Australia (from late 1999 through to the
present) showed that Powerbooks
/ iBooks were sometimes cheaper than equivalent PC laptops. See
the long list of references below recommending the Mac (all except
Remy Davidson's are "non-Mac sites")
iBook rated best
budget laptop by Sydney Morning Herald (Icon magazine, May 10-11, 2003) PowerBook
rated best desktop replacement (with Toshiba Tecra) by Sydney Morning
Herald (Icon magazine, May 10-11, 2003) Review
of iBook http://www.visionengineer.com/tech/ibook_page1.shtml Least
Expensive Laptops? Hint: It Ain't Dell http://www.oscast.com/stories/storyReader$340
(April 2003) There's
no power like low power Intel's Centrino appears to be all about Wi-Fi,...InfoWorld
April 2003 http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/04/18/15centrino_1.html?s=tc "In
2002, the PC notebook market was shaken up by Apple's PowerBook G4, a PowerPC-based
notebook that struck an ideal balance between application performance and battery
life. In fact, the PowerBook juggled these objectives so well that it left observers
wondering how tiny Apple had managed what massive Intel could not. Instead
of shrinking a desktop architecture down to fit a notebook, Apple engineered the
PowerBook G4 from the ground up as a fast and energy-efficient mobile platform.
And instead of ramping up the processor's clock speed to boost performance, Apple
extracted a bigger kick from adding a huge, 1MB, high-speed cache to a 1GHz RISC
processor. The result was a sleek, six-pound portable with a large, bright
display; incredibly fast graphics; impressive performance; integrated wireless
networking; and a five-hour battery....Once Apple had done the notebook the right
way, PC customers started asking when it would be their turn. " (emphasis
added) Army's
Apple Shines in the Desert March 2003 Wired.com http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,57961,00.html?tw=wn_ascii
The
12-Inch Apple PowerBook G4 By Joseph Moran March 7, 2003 http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/testdrive/article.php/2106411
I have a confession to make. I've been involved with computers for a couple
of decades now, and for all that time was firmly in the "PC" camp. It's
not that I didn't like Macs - just that they really weren't for me. I
think I may have found one that is: The 12-inch PowerBook G4 .
PowerBook
G4: Good Things in a Small Package PC Magazine February 12, 2003 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,885936,00.asp
Apple
Vs Dell Notebooks PC
Magazine review of TiBook December 2002 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,801782,00.asp
"Apple's latest high-end PowerBook is an excellent machineÑone with greater
power and a lower price". PC
killer on the loose byÊTom Yager of Infoworld.com December 13, 2002 "The
PowerBook G4 isn't a product to watch; it's the only notebook on the market worth
spending $2,500 on, and at that price, it's a steal. Way to go, Apple." Icon
recommends iBook: Sydney Morning Herald's Internet guide (p. 16, June 16-17,
2001) says the iBook is the best laptop: 5 stars, beating the Acer, Toshiba and
Gateway. iBook rated best laptop of 2001
by Australian Personal Computer magazine (December 2001 p.64) a PC oriented
magazine iBook rated best budget
and medium range laptop by Sydney Morning Herald (Icon magazine, June
16-17 and October 27-28, 2001) CNN
rates iBook best new laptop of 2001 http://money.cnn.com/best/best01/2.html#6 Portable
Wars: Pismo v. Wintel by Remy Davison Which?
Magazine http://www.which.net/media/pr/nov00/which/compsurv.html Results
out today (2.11.00) from the largest ever Which? computer survey, consistently
rate Apple, ... as top brands for reliability, user satisfaction and speed of
support helplines. ..
Working
across platforms One of the big myths
about computers is that Macs and PCs don't work together. This is just not true!
It may be hard in a corporate environment but it is easy to do at home and in
schools! WindowsXP and Mac OSX10.2 will communicate with on eanother seamlessly They
can share the same networks and the same removable disks and some of the same
applications.
Shouldn't I get the same type of computer (and software)
as my friends or people I am likely to share files with? |
Not at all! It is fairly easy to share files with people using different
OSs and applications. Word, for example, seems to be used by many people. Word
shares the same format across platforms, but matching versions can be a problem
even if people sharing a Word file both use Windows (or Macs for that matter).
There are also programs available which allow people who don't have Word to open
and manipulate such documents. Saving text files as RTF - Rich Text Format, which
retains most formatting - is a quick and easy way to share word processing documents
whether by email or by disk! Software is the key not hardware! You
can do the same with most file types used by ordinary computer users; some are
easier than others to share and some may need special translators. The only Windows
"file" that a Mac can't open - without special software - is an "*.exe"
which is actually a Windows application / program (executable). The latest
versions of AppleWorks (6.2) and StarOffice (beta6) will open Word documents (and
can save in Word readable format too!) Compatibility "problems"
is a reason often given by salespeople (and technicians) to encourage people to
buy Windows PCs. This author has worked across platforms for years and knows that
it is - largely - a non-issue. Beware advice from people who may have a vested
interest!! Remember that there are over 12,000 software
titles for the Macintosh. Go to Products
Guide (Australia) | You can easily work
with PC files on your Macintosh. Every Macintosh comes with software that lets
you read and work with PC files. PC Exchange software makes it possible for a
Macintosh to read and format PC floppy/zip disks. File translation is not a problem
between Macintosh computers and PCs, either, since many of the most popular programs
on both the Mac OS and Windows platforms such as Microsoft Word and Excel, Corel
WordPerfect, Filemaker Pro and Adobe Photoshop have identical file formats between
Macintosh computers and PCs. If an application is not able to handle the translation,
DataViz MacLinkPro translators, included with every Macintosh, will translate
files from one format to another. This allows a user, for example, to use a PC
at work, takes files home (or email them) and work on them on a Mac, take them
back to the work PC, and continue working on them the next day. This author has
done just this for years with few problems! While Macs will recognise
both Mac and PC disks, PCs cannot recognise Mac formatted disks without the addition
of additional software such as PC Maclan or Macopener. Cross platform
savvy users Perhaps the best comparison of Macintosh computers versus
Windows-based PCs comes from users who know both systems very well. "Dual
users" prefer the Macintosh. Evans Research Associates found in a study that
"dual users" those who routinely use both Macintosh computers and PCs
running Windows 95 preferred the Macintosh in many important categories, including
productivity, satisfaction, ease of use, multimedia, and in other areas.15
People can now integrate Macs and Wintel boxes very easily. A home user
could buy a desktop or laptop Mac and make it an internet gateway machine using
free routing software (which includes a firewall) through a dialup PPP, cable,
or ADSL connection. The latest Mac OS can speak directly to Windows PCs using
the SMB (Server Message Block) networking protocol, again at no additional cost.
It works in reverse too! If the home user gets an older Mac he/she can connect
to and from other computers using third party products such as Dave or PCMaclan.
To share files with the rest of the world is easy too under MacOSX which natively
prints any document to PDF or to PostScript. AppleWorks 6, which comes bundled
free with all consumer Macs, can read and write Word and Excel files all the way
to the XP 2002 versions of those applications. MacOSX supports a number of
APIs including Java and Unix. Apple bundle free with MacOSX a CD-ROM of developer
tools. Macwindows
(http://www.macwindows.com/) has a wealth of information
on making Macs and PCs work together. See also GISTICS
ROI Study 1997 (http://www.apple.com/creative/collateral/ama/0101/roi.html)
15 *Evans Research Associates,
"Personal Computer Satisfaction," May 1996. |