laptops

[Neil]

HP Pavilion with the name harman/kardon. One of the few PC laptops with a bit of style. Opted not to have centrino, got lots more value for my money that way. 15" monitor pentium 4.3gh processor 1 gig ram 80gig hard drive cd burner and lots more.

I can hook up to the net via phone from almost anywhere in Australia for the cost of a local call and can stay on line indefinitely if needed for that one charge. Pays to have a good service provider with a free call number.

Used mainly whilst on the road for programming our Addball, photo editing and online banking. With the odd game of solitaire thrown in for good measure.

Cheers - Neil

[bitingmidge]

6. In the movies the baddies generally have PCs and the goodies have Apples.

Same as in real life!

You make some valid points there Grunt but a few comments:

1. As you rightly state 95% of all software available is for the PC and its something I thought about long and hard before I made the switch. However Ive never been in a situation where I havent been able to find Mac software that cant do the job. The Mac version of MS Office is actually better than the Windows version.

Same, to distort the stats a bit 100% of all software available will work on a Mac. Sorry but it's true. I have MS Office, but only use it to check formatting of stuff that needs to be sent off in that format, for the main I use much simpler/more elegant spreadsheet and WP software. I stay away from MS products as far as I can and have never had a macro virus problem!

I have only one specialist piece of software that requires a PC operating system and usually use that remotely from a server in another city via remote desktop.
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2. If youre a heavy gamer then the Mac probably isnt a good choice.

But if you're of normal weight, it's probably OK?? On the other hand, if you're a heavy gamer...get a life!!

3. If youre working in a work environmnt where everyone else has PCs and theyre running proprietry software then the Mac might not be a good choice.

I've never had a problem, either use Remote Desktop to log onto a server, or "Virtual PC" which gives me whatever version of the OS I need. Interestingly, on a few occasions IT guys have sought out my machine to use when attempting to fix server related problems....something to do with the way the UNIX kernal works...far beyond my understanding I'm afraid.

4. Having to learn to drive the Mac OS is much easier than people think..I..... Im not a computer guru and its never been a problem.

Agree - I used to be fond of saying "I have a computer not a hobby!"

5. Ive never had any problems accessing websites using the Mac. Usually such problems relate to the workings of IE (a MS product) rather than the Mac OS. Anyway why would you want to use IE on a Mac, it comes with its own far superior brower (Safari) and there are other choices as well.

Ditto:

Any problem associated with using websites is due to the inadequacies of some web authors and their complete refusal to recognise browsers other than IE. The Safari developers are continuing to work through these issuesas they arise, the Netscape developers seem to have died, and Mac's come with IE anyway, for those who like browsing Retro-style!

Why do Mac users feel so passionately about their stupid computers anyway??? It's a sort of vain superiority, that they get from using something that is really so simple and functional, without having to know what "Control Alt Delete" does.

Cheers,

MacMidge