Computer Choices

[Andy Haney]

I just read thru a computer thread and didn't find what I was looking for. I thought a new thread might be best since my question is different than recovering/maintaining OS. My computer is an HP laptop that I bought with Windows 7. I installed the free upgrade to Windows 10. Working fine, methinks. However, some of the "mechanicals" inside the box are making noise, so I've started looking for a replacement computer.

I'm used to MS Office from the working days, and the dinosaur in me says I want/need to keep that platform. My daughter is a geek and a big proponent for Apple computers/software. I attended a beginners class for Apple today, and it seems I can accomplish the "MS Office" thing with Apple and eliminate much of the "bloatware" issues that come with Windows. That comes at significant expense.

Opinions/thoughts relative to Apple vs. MS, please.

Thanks,
Andy

P.S. I'll likely be checking for responses tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the game tonight. No dog in the hunt, but I'll bet it will be a slobberknocker!

[William Adams]

I bought an Apple Mac back in 1984, and then transitioned to Windows machines when they came out, then got a NeXT Cube --- Mac OS X which inherits much of NeXT's technical underpinnings is quite nice, and I miss quite a bit from it since I'm back to using Windows --- the highwater mark of my computing career was using a NeXT Cube as a desktop and an NCR-3125 running PenPoint as a portable.

These days I use a Samsung Galaxy Book 12 since I despair of there ever being a real replacement for my Fujitsu Stylistic ST4121 and its daylight viewable display.

For Mac OS X, so long as you can find applications which meet your needs, which work as you wish, it's quite nice. Some things to look forward to:

- Miller column filebrowser
- nice file manipulation options including persistent selections when changing sort views on a folder and drag-drop into file dialog boxes
- consistent interface and niceties such as dragging a disk icon changing the trash can icon into a disk eject symbol
- EMACS keyboard shortcuts in Cocoa apps which us the nstext object
- rich typography in tools which use ATSUI/AAT or whatever Apple is calling its typography objects these days
- nice collection of typefaces including Zapfino --- wrote a paper on that: http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb24-2/tb77adams.pdf

[Jim Koepke]

Well Andy, my preference is very biased from being the owner and user of an Apple Macintosh. When employed my computer at work was a Windows machine. My experience was it was a lot more work to get the Windows machine to do what was wanted. With some of the tasks such as photo editing or drawing it was easier to do them at home and then take them to work on a flash drive.

Here is one of my favorite images in a procedural document my supervisor assigned me to write:

375873

Most of my coworkers enjoyed the humor.

When it comes to surfing the internet or writing documents there really isn't a lot of difference. The most difficult part will be with changing platforms is some of the command keying will likely be different than what you are used to. A little effort and it will be tackled in no time.

jtk

[Jim Becker]

I made the switch in 2010 and haven't looked back. I still need to use Windows for some things, but I do that on my Mac(s) using virtualization so it's pretty seamless. And I have an MS Office 365 subscription, since that's what I was using for work (one of my Macs was for BYOD work) so that remained consistent. My Mid-2010 iMac is running the latest version of the MacOS and with a solid state drive and generous memory, you'd think it was brand new. Not bad for a 7 year old computer...none of my previous Windows machines lasted anything near this long for both reliability and usability. The cost of entry for an Apple machine is often a little more, but long term, mine has cost me less. I expect the same will be true for my 2012 Macbook Pro which I'm going to be using for CAM since it's portable when I need it to be.

[Shawn Pixley]

Disclaimer:Bias.

I’ve been a long time Mac and iDevice user for years. For most of the last 20 years at work I would use a Wintel laptop. I can use both, but give me the Mac any time. There are some work system I need to interface that aren’t Mac.friendly, I interface through Amazon WorkSpace. I run an older version of MS Office on my home Mac. My work Mac (the company now allows Apple devices now, especialy with the proliferation of iPads and iPhones as work devices) runs Office 365 and linked to my iPad.

[Roger Nair]

I have been firmly committed to Microsoft since the advent of the Win2K system and Microsoft support and update system, I have not had to take any computers into a shop for service. I would urge purchase of a machine with just the Win10 system installed and pay a little to not have bloatware or promotional software installed. Start your system clean and maintain good hygienic internet habits. Avoid tempting services, widgets, apps and such and keep the computer for needed tasks. I have not had longevity problems with the gear. Use a secondary computer for the risky stuff, for tryouts, before installing on the main computer.

[Dave Richards]

I have both PC and Mac and use the PC most of the time. I have built a couple of PCs and had the last one built. In all three cases, I installed the bare minimum. No bloatware. Actually, if anything, the MacBook Pro came with more applications that I don't have any need for than my PCs did.

If you don't go with Mac and you're OK with a desktop machine, look for a local shop to built a PC for you or build it yourself. They aren't difficult to build yourself.

[Roy Petersen]

I would urge purchase of a machine with just the Win10 system installed and pay a little to not have bloatware or promotional software installed.Are you referring to the option to install an unbloated Win10, or just the ancillary apps they try to include like Antivirus and "productivity packs" and the like? If there was a way to get Win10 without all the extra stuff they force on users (xbox, etc) that can't be removed, I'd consider it at some point.
If not for the pile of Win only software I use, Mac would be on my list of alternates, with LINUX (Ubuntu, maybe) behind that.

[Matt Meiser]

Looking to start a fight, eh?

I debated the Mac vs PC 2 years ago. I came close couldn't get over the several hundred dollar price differential between machines of the same spec plus having to learn a new OS. I ended up with an HP Spectre X360 and have been very happy with it. In fact, a year later, my wife needed a PC upgrade and decided that I should get a new one, pass mine to my daughter, and pass my daughter's to her. I bought the latest and greatest HP Spectre X360. Best Buy carries them at a good price in several variants and they come with virtually no bloatware other than some HP stuff purportedly to check for BIOS and driver updates automatically for you. That's easily uninstalled. And you can buy a discounted Office 365 subscription at the same time. I find the subscription to be a decent value for my family of 3 PCs, 3 tablets, and 3 phones compared to the days of buying upgrades every couple years. Whenever we buy a new PC we grab the discounted subscription, and in the years we don't, I watch for a deal and usually get it almost as cheap.

[Tom Stenzel]

A few years ago we bought a pair of Toshiba laptops with Windows 8.0 for my daughters. My younger daughter liked that laptop so much she worked two jobs last summer so she could buy a lower end Mac Air laptop. I've never used it but I think it's wonderful. Not once has she brought it to me because something was fouled up, she's been able to figure out any problem she's run into.

Well, she can't hasn't been able to write to the external hard drive she has as it's formatted NTFS. That's a solvable problem. For me anyway. For her, not so much.

To help funnel money for the Air I bought the Toshiba off of her, now running Win 8.1. I can see why she didn't like it, intermittent freezes, slow. Knocking out some of the useless services has it working better but I prefer the linux desktop for normal use. Linux won't run the tax software so the laptop takes care of that, another factor in my buying it.

In short, years ago I would have said that the Apple cost couldn't be justified. I no longer say that.

-Tom

[Andy Haney]

Thanks for the feedback so far folks. A lot of what you've said is Greek to me, but will make fantastic sense to my daughter/geek. She will appreciate the feedback from the woodworking community as a reflection of what I may want...which may differ from her final recommendation. I'm sure I can learn any new system from a user standpoint if necessary. I'll continue to monitor this thread and share information with others close to me.

Thanks,
Andy

[Curt Harms]

Are you referring to the option to install an unbloated Win10, or just the ancillary apps they try to include like Antivirus and "productivity packs" and the like? If there was a way to get Win10 without all the extra stuff they force on users (xbox, etc) that can't be removed, I'd consider it at some point.
If not for the pile of Win only software I use, Mac would be on my list of alternates, with LINUX (Ubuntu, maybe) behind that.

For someone wanting a generic Windows install, it's possible for download a Windows .iso directly from Microsoft and install it so no shovelware from the manufacturer. You might have to go on a driver hunt for any hardware not included in the download. Make sure you select the right version or it won't activate.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/software-download/windows10ISO

[Jerome Stanek]

A few years ago we bought a pair of Toshiba laptops with Windows 8.0 for my daughters. My younger daughter liked that laptop so much she worked two jobs last summer so she could buy a lower end Mac Air laptop. I've never used it but I think it's wonderful. Not once has she brought it to me because something was fouled up, she's been able to figure out any problem she's run into.
Well, she can't hasn't been able to write to the external hard drive she has as it's formatted NTFS. That's a solvable problem. For me anyway. For her, not so much.

To help funnel money for the Air I bought the Toshiba off of her, now running Win 8.1. I can see why she didn't like it, intermittent freezes, slow. Knocking out some of the useless services has it working better but I prefer the linux desktop for normal use. Linux won't run the tax software so the laptop takes care of that, another factor in my buying it.

In short, years ago I would have said that the Apple cost couldn't be justified. I no longer say that.

-Tom

I would upgrade windows 8 to windows 10 I did that on my older laptop that had windows 8 and it ran a lot better

[Tom Stenzel]

I would upgrade windows 8 to windows 10 I did that on my older laptop that had windows 8 and it ran a lot better

I'm not going to bother with it. I really don't care for the keyboard, the wide aspect ratio of the screen is just goofy for my needs. Plus the fact I don't have a lap to set it on makes using it difficult. A desktop system suits me much better. For the limited role I use it for it works well enough.

Also:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/09/windows_10_what_to_expect_in_2018/

I'm not sure if I want an operating system that's a continual "work in progress". I've been burned by software vendors that removed features with an update because of changes in their business model (yes, I'm looking dead square at you, Yahoo). This was for software that I PAID FOR (YES I AM SHOUTING), bought in a package at a Best Buy years ago. Being at the mercy of a company's unknown ever changing business model is not where I want to be.

-Tom

[William Adams]

Yeah, Windows 10 seemed neat at first, but the most recent Fall Creators Update actually had me rolling back the update and setting my 'net connection to metered so that I could manually control updating --- couldn't select text using the stylus (w/o switching to one which had a side button whose functionality was disabled apparently), and it wouldn't let me select drop down menus in an app I need for my tech support job.

[Jim Becker]

In fairness, there are occasionally some things that "break" when MacOS is updated, but that's often because a software vendor doesn't keep up with the published requirements or if the user insists on using an old-old version of something. That's no different than in the Windows world. And for folks who use applications that tend to be "sensitive" to OS updates, what William suggests about the user controlling updates is a good idea on any platform.

[Keith Outten]

I just received a new 27" iMac yesterday. I got the 1 terabyte solid state drive and 32 gigs of ram plus the video upgrade. I run parallels on my iMac with Windows 7 and it works pretty good for Corel Draw and a few other programs I need for my sign business. I hope to have the new iMac installed this afternoon. FWIW I have not been on the Internet on a Windows machine in many years.

My older iMac will be used by our server administrator, Aaron will get lots of use on the iMac even though he is a Windows fan. I'm going to convert him though :)

When my youngest daughter was in college I had to buy her a new laptop every year. In her senior year I purchased her a Mac notebook that she is still using to this day, at least five years now. Money well spent IMO !!!

[Peter Christensen]

My iMac says I bought it in late 2009. I've never had any issues with it and it's run fine after every upgrade. I just want my computer to work for me and not have me work on it. I never had that with Windows both at home or where I worked. I don't have MS Office mainly because I'm to cheap to buy it so I use Open Office that's free. It is close enough to MS Office that it shouldn't be an issue to transition. Apple stuff probably works well because they make the hardware so the compatibility is consistent and the operating system works. Windows stuff is made by everyone so how well it plays with itself seems inconsistant. So my vote is an Apple, the next user is passionate about their Windows machine. You get to pick whether to take the fork, or stay on the same path.

[Jim Becker]

That's a darn nice machine, Keith. I've been doing the Parallels thing for awhile now; it allowed me to do BYOD for work and stop having so many issues that came with the corporate provided laptops (including not replacing them soon enough...) and also to support programs like CutList Plus and Quicken on my personal machines. I've now moved to the latest version of Quicken for Mac that's actually functional at this point, so Windows is only used for Cutlist and now the Vectric software I'm learning.

My younger daughter ponied up a few bucks of her own three years ago for a Macbook Air to replace the tiny (and horrible) netbook she used during middle school and as a freshman in HS. She's now using it at Penn State and it will likely stay with her for all four years and beyond.

[Keith Outten]

Jim,

The iMac with the 4k resolution on the monitor is excellent, my new iMac has he 5k monitor. Jackie has a Macbook Air that she uses every day and is really pleased with it. I think its about three to four years old now and has never missed a beat. I bought a MacBook Pro notebook when Jackie got hers, I use mine only when I am traveling and I really like the notebook. We use Apple TV as well, just dumped our cable TV and don't miss it at all.

I still use a Windows XP machine in my shop to run my CNC Router and my Laser Engraver. No internet connection on this one though.

[Jim Becker]

Yea, those new iMacs are outstanding relative to the screen. Enjoy! But until this mid-2010 actually dies (LOL), it's not in the cards for me. My MBPr13 will likely take over at that point since it was my BYOD work machine and I have an excellent "4K" 27" monitor attached to it when I'm not traveling. I have not been able to get Professor Dr. SWMBO to switch over as she's "set in her ways" and also uses some statistics packages that she doesn't want to mess with via virtualization, but her employer is one of the strongest Apple supporters going in the education space (Drexel) and maybe she'll change her mind for the next refresh. She's "devastated" that she had to give up Office 2007 recently because the school implemented the latest version of Exchange via Office 365 and they refuse to support the older versions of Office anymore. Such is life... :)

The computer/controller for that big yellow "toy" I'm considering runs Win10. I do plan on it being on my internal network for more convenient file transfer from the house, but it will be denied access to the Internet.

[Shawn Pixley]

That's a darn nice machine, Keith. I've been doing the Parallels thing for awhile now; it allowed me to do BYOD for work and stop having so many issues that came with the corporate provided laptops (including not replacing them soon enough...) and also to support programs like CutList Plus and Quicken on my personal machines. I've now moved to the latest version of Quicken for Mac that's actually functional at this point, so Windows is only used for Cutlist and now the Vectric software I'm learning.

My younger daughter ponied up a few bucks of her own three years ago for a Macbook Air to replace the tiny (and horrible) netbook she used during middle school and as a freshman in HS. She's now using it at Penn State and it will likely stay with her for all four years and beyond.

W’appen? We all buy iMacs at the same time, all still running. My mid-2010 iMac runs to this day though I did have a head crash in the spring. Installed a new terrabyte drive and she runs on. Back-ups are your friend.

On the Parallels front, I suggest you look into Amazon WorkSpace (AWS). I ran Parallels for a couple years and ... it worked. AWS was installed on both my work Macbook Pro and my work iPad. It seems faster and less “clunky” than the parallels. There are some statistical programs and visualization software that isn’t Mac friendly yet.

[Jim Becker]

Shawn, I did have a display controller component replaced a couple years ago and the backlight on the right side has slightly faded, but with a lot of RAM and an SSD upgrade I did awhile ago, this thing runs like a top.

I'm familiar with AWS for hosting corporate applications, but wasn't aware it was something usable for personal use. I'll look into it. But I own Parallels (two licenses) so moving to something else that costs money isn't likely worth it to me. The only Windows programs I use at this point are Cutlist Plus and (soon) Vectric VCarve Pro. All of the corporate stuff is gone, gone, gone... :D

[Shawn Pixley]

I'm familiar with AWS for hosting corporate applications, but wasn't aware it was something usable for personal use. I'll look into it. But I own Parallels (two licenses) so moving to something else that costs money isn't likely worth it to me. ... All of the corporate stuff is gone, gone, gone... :D

Both my Parallels and AWS are from my employer. As to losing these corporate perks, I am right behind you. One more year for me.

[Jim Becker]

Parallels I own because I was BYOD. :) They didn't "like" Macs, but eventually had to allow them since so many of the executives insisted on using Macs. Corporate IT politics at its best... :D

[Shawn Pixley]

Parallels I own because I was BYOD. :) They didn't "like" Macs, but eventually had to allow them since so many of the executives insisted on using Macs. Corporate IT politics at its best... :D

Our company’s I.S. Department was not happy to consider Macs. But like your firm, were arm twisted by Executives and Scientists to use Macs beyond the iPhone and IPad. I am a beneficiary to that. We considered BYOD, but eventually decided just to support company purchased Macs for those who made the right case for it.

Politics are odious in any organization.

[Jim Koepke]

Our company’s I.S. Department was not happy to consider Macs.

One corporate network engineer type told me it was because they needed less support than Windows machines. Less support needed meant a smaller IT department and less pay. Those IT guys know where their bread is buttered.

jtk