Apple Macbook Pro or Sony Vaio?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the replies and thoughts on this one. I've gone for the Macbook Pro 13" 4gb RAM 500Gb HDD and it should turn up in about a week's time. Windows is okay but I'm just fed up with it and fancy trying a Mac for a change - 'I'm not going to be a PC for a while!'.

Apple have been helpful with the after-sales info and sent through some links for me to start getting familiar with Macs, which I'll follow up.

Anything else I should be doing to get ready for changing over from my Acer laptop to my Mac when it arrives?

Cheers

 

[Andrew Everard]

Jarnesque:Anything else I should be doing to get ready for changing over from my Acer laptop to my Mac when it arrives?

Buy half a dozen identical black polo-necks?

 

[Anonymous]

Some recommended reading:

'The Missing Manual' by David Pogue

 

[John Duncan]

GForce1:
Some recommended reading:

'The Missing Manual' by David Pogue

Actually better known as 'Switching To The Mac'. I have it, Mrs D found it quite useful - being a man, I don't read manuals, missing or otherwise.

 

[Anonymous]

This thread is like reading the internal dialogue i have been having for the last month.

My mate is very mac +ve. I've always been a windows chap with a bit of norton to keep away the nasties. The macs are closing the performance gap though and I have to admit the new macbook pros look the part and have a long battery compared to most windows laptops. I do covet one....but

I like the odd game though and that has put me off. i use the xbox for all the bang crash stuff but occasionally I like a bit of godlike world domination. most of those games aren't too stressful graphically. My old HP laptop is on its way out after years of faithful service (inc SPDIF out ...i think you'll be surprised how many things have digital out these days). Annoys me that mac wont engage with HDMI and are being as stubborn and "individual" as always. I've become more mac friendly since I got my ipods and iphone.

My mate says not a problem as you can dual boot on the mac with OSX and windows. Sounds great but here's my question: If I dual boot will I then need to run antivirus software (which I wasn't going to bother with on a mac) even if I only play games on the windows side (eg using XP or something) and avoid connecting to t'internet when in windows mode or do I then leave the laptop vulnerable...and can a windows virus on a dual boot affect the mac OSX, etc...

hmmmmmm

one for the technically gifted and minded...

 

[Anonymous]

whindows is windows so when you run it on a mac you will need an antivirus when you connect to the internet or use copied dvds or cds

however those viruses have no impact on your mac when its running osx

 

[Tom Moreno]

mbligh:This thread is like reading the internal dialogue i have been having for the last month. My mate is very mac +ve. I've always been a windows chap with a bit of norton to keep away the nasties. The macs are closing the performance gap though and I have to admit the new macbook pros look the part and have a long battery compared to most windows laptops. I do covet one....butI like the odd game though and that has put me off. i use the xbox for all the bang crash stuff but occasionally I like a bit of godlike world domination. most of those games aren't too stressful graphically. My old HP laptop is on its way out after years of faithful service (inc SPDIF out ...i think you'll be surprised how many things have digital out these days). Annoys me that mac wont engage with HDMI and are being as stubborn and "individual" as always. I've become more mac friendly since I got my ipods and iphone.My mate says not a problem as you can dual boot on the mac with OSX and windows. Sounds great but here's my question: If I dual boot will I then need to run antivirus software (which I wasn't going to bother with on a mac) even if I only play games on the windows side (eg using XP or something) and avoid connecting to t'internet when in windows mode or do I then leave the laptop vulnerable...and can a windows virus on a dual boot affect the mac OSX, etc...hmmmmmmone for the technically gifted and minded...

Right, quick answer is that if your god games aren't graphically taxing, you don't even need to run dual boot, you can use a virtual pc software like Parallels to run your windows apps within OSX. This does however still require the installation of windows and while running Windows apps you should protect the Win installation with antivirus. The good thing is that when not running windows apps the AV will not be running and not tax your OSX system resources. Likewise if your Windows virtual PC does become stricken by viral lurgy, you can simply delete the virtual PC file and start fresh with a new VPC file quite easily.

 

[John Duncan]

I may be misrememebring here, but I don't think that windows running in VMWare can talk to the wifi controller in a Mac, so it can't get on the internet anyway, unless you actually boot up as a Windows machine...

 

[Anonymous]

no vmware talks happily to the wifi controller and the internet

it boots windows as a virtual machine in a vmware window which uses most mac resources automatically unless you choose otherwise

 

[Alec]

Just how "bad" are Macs for gaming? Can you not run any at all? Presumably this is because they only support certain hardware and certain drivers, so software companies dont bother making compatible games? Is that the logic?

Also, if one got a mac and wanted to be ultra secure and add some AV software, would this bring the mac to a crawl or would it be ok?

 

[professorhat]

al7478:Just how "bad" are Macs for gaming? Can you not run any at all? Presumably this is because they only support certain hardware and certain drivers, so software companies dont bother making compatible games? Is that the logic?

Also, if one got a mac and wanted to be ultra secure and add some AV software, would this bring the mac to a crawl or would it be ok?

It's not that the Mac can't do games (as long as you have one powerful enough), it's just that the market for games on the Mac is so small, very few are ported over from the PC version. As a result, people don't buy Macs for gaming and thus the vicious circle is complete. There are a few around though - see here.

And you can run AV software on a Mac just fine - I run VirusBarrier X5 on mine. Many people don't bother as it's not strictly necessary at the moment, but then if a destructive virus for the Mac suddenly was released, I'll wager those people will wish they had...

 

[Alec]

Thankyou Proff. Theres quite a list o games there actually. Personally im not a gamer but i know a couple, and there are a few titles there they play.

 

[Anonymous]

You might want to look into Crossover for Mac if you're interested in running some Windows games natively without rebooting. It adds a few more titles to play with: http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Also, if a Virus were to be released for Mac OS X, an Anti-Virus program would do nothing. They don't protect against "Zero Day" attacks. Apple could probably get a patch out to fix the security hole the Virus was exploiting before the Virus was mapped and the signatures were released: Anti-Virus software only protects against known (read: old) Viruses. Just run programs with the least privileges possible and be very careful what you allow root access to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege

An added benefit of Mac OS X is that it it Unix based, so security and stability should be world class. (Unless Apple have messed it up?) I know nobody really needs to keep their computer on and running for 4 years, but it's nice to know it's capable I suppose.

 

[professorhat]

marco123:Also, if a Virus were to be released for Mac OS X, an Anti-Virus program would do nothing. They don't protect against "Zero Day" attacks. Apple could probably get a patch out to fix the security hole the Virus was exploiting before the Virus was mapped and the signatures were released: Anti-Virus software only protects against known (read: old) Viruses.

Well, that's not necessarily true. If a virus exploited a vulnerability in the operating system, you would need Apple to produce the patch whatever AV solution you were running. It's the method in which the virus operated that would determine if the AV product picked it up or not - most AV solutions these days use engines which don't rely on the virus being known in order to detect and remove it - they in fact examine what a process is doing and, if it exhibits behaviours that make it look like a virus it will be flagged up. Some AV solutions are better than others at this, and sometimes you'll get AV products identifying false positives as was the case with Spotify a few months back. Of course some viruses can act in a way which mean the AV product doesn't pick it up, or can act to nullify the AV program - these are the ones you hear about since the ones which can't do one of these things tend not to spread.

Either way you look at it, running some form of AV protection is always going to be safer than running none at all.

marco123:Just run programs with the least privileges possible and be very careful what you allow root access to.

Absolutely this is excellent advice, but it's not the be all and end all of security and the prevention of remote access / control of your system / data. AV products play a very important role in this and, along with a decent firewall / spyware detection, these should all should form the backbone of securing your PC / Mac.

 

[Anonymous]

exactly right ph which is why antivirus programmes often have a fit if you start mucking around with beta software

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

what does running "programs with the least privileges possible" mean, and how do you do that?

And, umm, what is "root access"?

 

[professorhat]

Unlike Windows XP, by default on a Mac, your account is not an administrator and if anything needs to be done which requires administrative access, you are prompted to enter the admin password. This means if something in the background is trying to do something sneaky, you would be prompted for the admin password even though you didn't request to do anything, alerting you to the sneaky behaviour.

Windows introduced the same thing by default in Windows Vista and it carries on with Windows 7.

"Root access" is a reference to the fact that Mac OS X is based around Unix and the Unix name for the local administrator account is root.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the explanation Prof.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for all the useful information/options and advice.

 

[Anonymous]

professorhat:
marco123:Also, if a Virus were to be released for Mac OS X, an Anti-Virus program would do nothing. They don't protect against "Zero Day" attacks. Apple could probably get a patch out to fix the security hole the Virus was exploiting before the Virus was mapped and the signatures were released: Anti-Virus software only protects against known (read: old) Viruses.

Well, that's not necessarily true. If a virus exploited a vulnerability in the operating system, you would need Apple to produce the patch whatever AV solution you were running. It's the method in which the virus operated that would determine if the AV product picked it up or not - most AV solutions these days use engines which don't rely on the virus being known in order to detect and remove it - they in fact examine what a process is doing and, if it exhibits behaviours that make it look like a virus it will be flagged up. Some AV solutions are better than others at this, and sometimes you'll get AV products identifying false positives as was the case with Spotify a few months back. Of course some viruses can act in a way which mean the AV product doesn't pick it up, or can act to nullify the AV program - these are the ones you hear about since the ones which can't do one of these things tend not to spread.

Either way you look at it, running some form of AV protection is always going to be safer than running none at all.

marco123:Just run programs with the least privileges possible and be very careful what you allow root access to.

Absolutely this is excellent advice, but it's not the be all and end all of security and the prevention of remote access / control of your system / data. AV products play a very important role in this and, along with a decent firewall / spyware detection, these should all should form the backbone of securing your PC / Mac.

I'll have to take your word for it: it's been a long time since I've had to use Anti-Virus software, or even worry about Viruses/Spyware, because I switched to Ubuntu (Linux) in April 2007.

With Linux, (and BSD and Solaris) the permissions system and user competence are "the be all and end all" of security, as there are no Viruses in the wild for these platforms and the Open Source ecosystem makes it easier for fixes to be released and code to be tested/scrutinised for flaws. (And Repositories help a lot too. )

I seem to remember that Threatfire was a decent "behavioural" anti malware solution?

Marco.

Edit: I also consider the "noscript" plugin for Firefox essential.

 

[Anonymous]

Just to confuse things even more, there's also "Sandboxing" with security frameworks like Apparmor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_(computer_security)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor

 

[Anonymous]

Bought a macbook pro recently. Lovely machine. so quick booting adn working. great operating system. no hanging around waiting for things to happen. a revelation really. great customer service from the guys in the store. a very different experience from the many painful ones with windows over the years so far. I can recommend....

 

[6th.replicant]

My brother had an all-signing-and-dancing Vaio and found it to be a major, all-round PITA. It was jettisoned for a base-spec MacBook and he's now very happy.

FWIW, I was very late to the world of PCs/desktops, started with a Windows-based setup and really struggled (although I do confess to having the attention span/patience of a crack-addicted squirrel). Swapped to a Mac and found it to be infinitely easier and more intuitive - and reliable. Been using Macs for 11 years since. IMHO, OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) is a delight and, IME, Safari is quicker than any other browser.

Now I actually enjoy using a computer and visiting any Apple Store is always a pleasure.

 

[Anonymous]

If you go with a MacBook Pro even with an external Blu-ray drive you still won't be able to play Blu-ray discs, because Mac OSX does not support it.

You would need to load Windows onto your Mac via Bootcamp/Parallels and use PowerDVD or similar to play the Disc.

However it's the big Mac Event next week, so let's Steve has anything new to say on that front.

 

[Anonymous]

... and the Apple Mac myth lives on.

The Macbook Pro will come with very basic applications, some are akin to "my first computer" so purchased software will be better. The Mac will occasionally stutter and hang just like any other operating system, it is also open to the same vulnerabilities as other operating systems too.

Look at what you need the PC to do before deciding which PC works best for you. Better still go to an Apple store and a PC store and try the products out. PC wise I've always found John Lewis to be the most helpful and willing to let you have a play of the computers, their range also come with a two year warranty. Apple Macs come with a 12 month warranty which can be extended via AppleCare (variable cost depending on product purchased).

Several years ago I got fed up of rebuilding my Windows PC so I went down the Mac route even though I had a HUGE investment in PC software. Unfortunately I've never fully converted to being an Apple only user because the Mac cannot service my needs and when it does sometimes the Windows PC does things better.

A decent Sony (or Dell XPS 16) PC with Windows 7 is an excellent choice, the Mac will of course if you use Boot Camp, Parallels or VM Fusion will give you best of both. (I've made no reference to VirtualBox which cannot compare to Parallels or VM Fusion).

Design wise Apple were the style kings although the others have caught up, HP with Envy, Sony Vaio, Dell Adamo XPS and Acer Ferrari.