Why most people should buy a Macintosh rather than a Windows PC
Written and compiled April 2000
Updated February 2004

Why this site....?
( introduction)

Design

Cost

Ease of use

Installation and troubleshooting

Extending your computer

Reliability and Security

Laptops and Working across platforms

What schools should do

Where Windows is better than the Mac

Price watch

References

Contact

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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.

 

Why this site....? | Design | Cost | Ease of use | Installation and troubleshooting | Extending your computer | Reliability and Security | Laptops and Working across platforms | What schools should do | Where Windows is better than the Mac | Price watch | References