are apple laptops better then pc for computer bassed music.

[steve_1979]

Anyway, back on topic to the Mac vs PC debate....

I've never met a person who owns a Mac say they would go back to a PC. But I've met several PC owners who are sick of their PC's having problems and would prefir a Mac.

 

[idc]

My Vaio looks nicer than a Mac, and that is why it is better at making sweet, sweet music.

 

[Paul.]

idc:My Vaio looks nicer than a Mac, and that is why it is better at making sweet, sweet music.

If your not careful you'll get this thread back on topic...

 

[Anonymous]

steve_1979:

I've never met a person who owns a Mac say they would go back to a PC.

I know a couple actually Steve. But they are probably luddites as well.

 

[Anonymous]

I think the thread established earlier on that a pc with an optical/hdmi or wireless/ethernet connection will be at least as good as a mac for music. And both can be good solutions - provided u are happy to have ur computer on.

I prefer to use a hdmi equipped media streamer connected to a NAS for the ease of use and built-in wide format support.

Now the topics moved on to general mac bashing, pointing out that macs (both laptops and desktops) - whilst looking very nice - do not use the latest processors or graphics cards, and so lag a fair way behind a windows pc in terms of performance.

 

[Alec]

TechMad:

I think the thread established earlier on that a pc with an optical/hdmi or wireless/ethernet connection will be at least as good as a mac for music. And both can be good solutions - provided u are happy to have ur computer on.

I prefer to use a hdmi equipped media streamer connected to a NAS for the ease of use and built-in wide format support.

Now the topics moved on to general mac bashing, pointing out that macs (both laptops and desktops) - whilst looking very nice - do not use the latest processors or graphics cards, and so lag a fair way behind a windows pc in terms of performance.

LOL no really?

 

[Anonymous]

Wovian:steve_1979:

I've never met a person who owns a Mac say they would go back to a PC.

I know a couple actually Steve. But they are probably luddites as well.

Same here... anyhow I guess it's not "cool" to prefer Windows so many folks just keep quiet about it. What's more, I've heard Mac fans admitting some of the Windows functions are actually better

Going back to the OP's question, if you could live with a desktop instead, I think Mac Mini comes as close to the ideal as possible, being stylish, extremely quiet and low on energy consumption.

 

[steve_1979]

areluc:.I guess it's not "cool" to prefer Windows so many folks just keep quiet about it. What's more, I've heard Mac fans admitting some of the Windows functions are actually better

Personally I like Windows 7 best, it was a big improvement on XP and Vista. I do admit though, there is alot to like about Mac OSX and it's easy to see why many people prefer it to Windows.

 

[professorhat]

Perhaps people can explain this to me. I missed Vista - just went direct from XP to Win 7. However, on the few occasions where I've used it on someone else's machine, it looks and seems to work pretty much identically to Windows 7. So why is Windows 7 considered so superior? It confuses me, but then I admittedly never used Vista enough to really get a handle on it so would be interested to know.

 

[Alec]

professorhat:

Perhaps people can explain this to me. I missed Vista - just went direct from XP to Win 7. However, on the few occasions where I've used it on someone else's machine, it looks and seems to work pretty much identically to Windows 7. So why is Windows 7 considered so superior? It confuses me, but then I admittedly never used Vista enough to really get a handle on it so would be interested to know.

Good question. From vague memories of comments before Win7 came along, I think people disliked UAC in Vista and I think it was generally less stable, but someone who's better with these things will come along hopefully, and I bypassed Vista too so i cant speak from experience.

TBH, though, i think there's plenty of silly unnecessary window dressing in Win7. On teh other hand, ive no huge functional/stability related complaints.

 

[Anonymous]

OSX doesn't have stability problems. Also, unlike windows you don't need to re-install it every six months because it is running so slowly.

 

[professorhat]

Grottyash:Also, unlike windows you don't need to re-install it every six months because it is running so slowly.

Hmm, that hasn't really been true for a while now. Unless you're someone who likes installing and uninstalling lots of applications all the time or likes to explore the "darker" side of the internet, since XP, there's been no need to reinstall Windows really except every few years maybe, just to clear out the inevitable rubbish. But even that isn't necessary in my experience.

And if you do like to do the first couple of activities, just get a virtualisation product (like VMware) and do your worst in there - it's then very easy to restore a snapshot / rebuild from a template to undo anything you've done or picked up within it, leaving your normal Windows instance hassle free and safe.

Don't get me wrong, I love OS X and Apple is my main platform at home (along with a Windows 7 laptop), but there's a lot of mud slinging which goes on from both sides which generally isn't actually true for most users of either system.

 

[Anonymous]

professorhat:
Grottyash:Also, unlike windows you don't need to re-install it every six months because it is running so slowly.

Hmm, that hasn't really been true for a while now. Unless you're someone who likes installing and uninstalling lots of applications all the time or likes to explore the "darker" side of the internet, since XP, there's been no need to reinstall Windows really except every few years maybe, just to clear out the inevitable rubbish. But even that isn't necessary in my experience.

And if you do like to do the first couple of activities, just get a virtualisation product (like VMware) and do your worst in there - it's then very easy to restore a snapshot / rebuild from a template to undo anything you've done or picked up within it, leaving your normal Windows instance hassle free and safe.

Don't get me wrong, I love OS X and Apple is my main platform at home (along with a Windows 7 laptop), but there's a lot of mud slinging which goes on from both sides which generally isn't actually true for most users of either system.

Reinstalling was never necessary, if you knew your way around Windows, but the fact is for most users it was an effective shortcut. Windows Vista users still seem to like it as an option. Haven't heard much about Windows 7. Your VMware solution sounds a good one, but it does underline the ongoing difficulties with Windows that you have to suggest it at all.

 

[DavieCee]

professorhat: there's a lot of mud slinging which goes on from both sides which generally isn't actually true for most users of either system.

Shhhhhh!

You'll give the game away. Where would the fun in that be?

 

[Anonymous]

Win 7 doesnt need to be re-installed.

Real men use Ubuntu

 

[Anonymous]

TechMad:
Win 7 doesnt need to be re-installed.Neither did most of the previous windows incarnations. Trouble was, you had to know a lot about Windows to avoid doing that.

 

[Alec]

Or use summat like Acronis to put right any ** ups.

 

[Paul.]

TechMad:
Real men use Ubuntu

Real men don't get in online arguments about who has the superior operating system

Real men hunt crocodiles with their bare hands, cold-forge engine parts with their fists and other assorted cliches!

 

[steve_1979]

professorhat: Perhaps people can explain this to me. I missed Vista - just went direct from XP to Win 7. However, on the few occasions where I've used it on someone else's machine, it looks and seems to work pretty much identically to Windows 7. So why is Windows 7 considered so superior? It confuses me, but then I admittedly never used Vista enough to really get a handle on it so would be interested to know.

I think Vista has a bad reputation because when it was first released it had a lot of performance and stability issues. These have (mostly) been fixed with updates over the years and Vista is now a solid and reliable operating system with no major problems. Also 3rd party software developers have now had several years to update/replace their products so that the compatability issues you inevitably get with a new operating system have been fixed too.

Windows 7 is very similar to Vista in most ways. I far as I can tell there are only two big differences between them. Firstly, Windows 7 is a bit more user friendly and intuitive to use. Secondly, Windows 7 seems (in my experience) to be better optimised. I've tried both Vista and 7 on an old computer with a slow processor and only 1GB of RAM and found that Windows 7 ran faster than Vista.

 

[Paul.]

I think it was also Vista's weird ram caching functionality (pre-fetch maybe?) meant that machines had to have very high ram to function fully.

Part of Microsofts problem it's that the end user is not its customer, it is the hardware vendors first and foremost. When Vista first came out, it was very difficult to get full functionality on alot of recent machines (and I'm talking average users machines, not the l33t hax0r's that frequent forums ) and this was entirely on purpose to force hardware upgrades.

There was problems I remember with machines that were released before Vista by dell, that were advertised as made for Vista, and you would get a free Vista copy when it was released. These older cheaper machines would only run the basic OS without the Aero interface, so basically XP. This annoyed alot of people!

Microsoft learned its lesson with the net-book and then tablet craze, as it needed to lean down its OS to get it to run on lower power machines.

 

[Alec]

Paul Hobbs:These older cheaper machines would only run the basic OS without the Aero interface, so basically XP. This annoyed alot of people!

But this is the (tangentially related) thing. The Joe Schmoe end user (and although i frequent a couple of techy forums one a PC forum i count myself here, as will anyone who has talked to me about this stuff lol) only notices the cosmetic stuff which is, as i nearly sort of hinted earlier, essentially useless.

The reason it used is to get people going "ooohhhhhhhh" because otherwise people just get a load of talk about usability, intuitiveness, stability (i would never use such phrases

) and do no tknow what to make of it.

 

[professorhat]

steve_1979:professorhat: Perhaps people can explain this to me. I missed Vista - just went direct from XP to Win 7. However, on the few occasions where I've used it on someone else's machine, it looks and seems to work pretty much identically to Windows 7. So why is Windows 7 considered so superior? It confuses me, but then I admittedly never used Vista enough to really get a handle on it so would be interested to know.

I think Vista has a bad reputation because when it was first released it had a lot of performance and stability issues. These have (mostly) been fixed with updates over the years and Vista is now a solid and reliable operating system with no major problems. Also 3rd party software developers have now had several years to update/replace their products so that the compatability issues you inevitably get with a new operating system have been fixed too.

Windows 7 is very similar to Vista in most ways. I far as I can tell there are only two big differences between them. Firstly, Windows 7 is a bit more user friendly and intuitive to use. Secondly, Windows 7 seems (in my experience) to be better optimised. I've tried both Vista and 7 on an old computer with a slow processor and only 1GB of RAM and found that Windows 7 ran faster than Vista.

Thanks Steve - makes sense in that Windows 7 was really just a refinement of Vista in the same way XP was a refinement of 2000 following Microsoft's release pattern for OSes of major release / minor release / major release / minor release etc. Expect Windows 8 to be widely panned in which case!

 

[iMark]

steve_1979:
Windows 7 is very similar to Vista in most ways. I far as I can tell there are only two big differences between them. Firstly, Windows 7 is a bit more user friendly and intuitive to use. Secondly, Windows 7 seems (in my experience) to be better optimised. I've tried both Vista and 7 on an old computer with a slow processor and only 1GB of RAM and found that Windows 7 ran faster than Vista.

That looks very similar to the situation with Mac OS X. My partner bought a MacBook Pro in 2006. It came with 10.4 (Tiger). We later upgraded her machine to 10.5 (Leopard) and last year upgraded it to 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It's got an Intel Core2Duo processor so we expect that it will run 10.7 (Lion) when released later in 2011. The only thing that is flaky in the machine is the optical drive. Might try a DVD cleaner. Of course it's too expensive now to replace the drive.

Her machine runs faster now than when she bought it. It obviously has helped over the years that she bought an extra 1GB of RAM back in 2006. The machine cost a whopping EUR 2000 back in 2006 but it still works well (except for the optical drive). It also makes clear why MacBook Pro's are very valuable in the second hand market.

 

[Paul.]

iMark:

That looks very similar to the situation with Mac OS X. My partner bought a MacBook Pro in 2006. It came with 10.4 (Tiger). We later upgraded her machine to 10.5 (Leopard) and last year upgraded it to 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It's got an Intel Core2Duo processor so we expect that it will run 10.7 (Lion) when released later in 2011. The only thing that is flaky in the machine is the optical drive. Might try a DVD cleaner. Of course it's too expensive now to replace the drive.

The only significant functionality you are missing out on is hardware encoding of h.264 which gets you major battery performance increases whilst watching youtube etc. You do have hardware encoding for open cl etc, which is why all the nice shiny shiny eye candy doesn't slow your machine down

Do you use your DVD drive much whilst out and about? I only use the DVD to burn disks whilst at my desk, so I was debating using an external drive for DVD burning and replacing the internal drive with a second hard disk. A scratch disk would speed photoshop and video work up no end!

 

[DavieCee]

iMark:The only thing that is flaky in the machine is the optical drive. Might try a DVD cleaner. Of course it's too expensive now to replace the drive.

I had trouble with my disk drive being too fussy for re-ripping some of my old CDs (mid 80s) so i bought an external DVD drive (Samsung?) for @ £30 which does the job fine. Plus it is quicker than the built-in one. I read somewhere that the built in ones are throttled back for processing purposes

Anyway, it is small, cheap, efficient and it can be powered off an additional USB so no plugs etc. Could be a solution to your problem maybe?