Buying a New Computer

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Buying a Mac is its own reward.

I assume any sane person would be using a web browser to connect to the Internet, rather than IE. Anyways, IE hasn't been available on the Mac since about version 5. And even so, I still say the security software is mostly a placebo.

I converted my friend to Firefox and showed her some benefits over IE7 (updates had 8, but I left it be)
I hate some videos as "PC vs Mac" this is more like Windows vs Apple. I think the best way to compare the PC and the ... um... PC would be to install the same OS on both platforms. I say PC and PC cos the Mac uses the Intel which uses the x86 architecture at least. Making the Apple Macintosh a "Macintel" like most Windows based computers are "Wintel" because of the x86 architecture

It's true - "Macintosh" no longer exists. They are more like the Mac "clones" of the 90's - different hardware, running the Mac OS.

That one made my day.




If you knew the people I worked with, you'd think otherwise.

Apple is easily the single most popular brand in my school's computer science department (among both students and faculty) and Mac OS X may actually be used more than Windows within the department (many of the people on non-Apple hardware run Linux since Windows is virtually useless for serious computing).

Fair enough, then, I've really never gotten to see what all you're able to do to screw up Windows (doesn't it come broken enough as is?)

But Mac and Linux definitely do not need any sort of anti-malware. The only way you can get any malware on a Mac right now is to download a pirated copy of iWork. And Symantec really drags down performance badly in OS X, so it's not worth it- just don't pirate stuff, and OS X has nothing to fear.

Thanks for the answers from my previous reply, it's appreciated! The views that everyone presented were clear and more understandable. Just a couple of more questions, since everyone here is so knowledgable.

On my current PC I use CCcleaner and Defraggler and I think they're great pieces of software. If I get a Mac computer can I use these programs or would they have something different?

I love how all of these people are riding on the Apple propaganda machine.

You wont need them. I am not sure about OSX' file system, but I dont think it requires defragging. In linux defrag linux happens on the fly(in a sense we dont need to defrag). Windows ntfs and especially FAT16 and FAT32, do need defrag, as you know.

What the modern file systems feature is called journalling, and these are a proactive way to prevent fragmentation. Windows ntfs format is getting better at it as well.

As for CCleaner, OSX will have a built in mechanism for this. Geeky linux, of course, has several ways.

Sounds like you are settling on an Apple computer! You are going to have to ask computerlove for advice, because I am reaching the limit of my OSX knowledge! Hes really smart even though he pretends he isnt.

Seriously, fragmentation is not as big an issue as was in the past because of the increase in harddisk size.

HFS+ is still affected by fragmentation. Its design isn't any better than NTFS. The real difference is that OSX will try not to reuse deleted space as much as possible whereas Windows seem to do that more often.

Apple doesn't provide a full scale defrag program but it will:
1. relocate any file <20MB that has >8 fragments when the file is opened.
2. keep a list of frequently read files (not written to, <10MB) and move them to a fast section of a disk in idle.
(not unlike Windows' background defrag)

So, is that better than Windows? I'm not sure. Windows may have slightly worse fragmentation but it provides a free defrag program and there are zillions of freeware that can do a better job. Whereas on OSX, Apple asked you to do a full backup and restore?!



I don't follow the Linux news as close as Windows, but my understanding is that while the ext4 team finally realized that no file system is immune to fragmentation and has begun to write an online defragger, it's not even in alpha yet.



Journaling is mainly used for recovery. In fact it tends to increase fragmentation because data is written to an unused space first before replacing the old data.

Not unless you boot into Windows, and even then they won't clean or defrag your HFS+ partition.

There's a program call iDefrag that can defrag your harddisk.

Not sure if there's any program like CCCleaner though. However, I'm sure mac fans would tell you that is not needed.

I've migrated from ext2 to ext3 and lately to ext4.

Ext3 added journalling, and like you said, thats more for recovery. Ocassionally, every 30 boots or so (debian) linux would check the integrity of the file system. This was a rather slow process and one of the things that ext4 introduced was a reduced need for that, and a speed up when it happens.

Another thing that was added was the functionality of requesting and reserving space. Because of this the files are tracked by their size, and things that grow lots get a large reserve, including being moved if that is required. This in effect defrags, and the reserve area prevents files from being butted up against each other.. which is what causes fragmentation.

All in all ext4 had a noticeable improvement in performance.

I would hazard a guess that the use of a separate partition for swap space is very beneficial to linux. Windows should switch to a system like that, as page files probably cause a good deal of the fragmentation issue.

There is no real equivalent to Ccleaner. Old cruft can be automatically deleted for you by a free program called AppTrap, which removes unneeded files whenever you uninstall a program. Careful though- if you have multiple programs of the same name (such as Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6) and you delete one of them, you can risk losing files that the other one needs. Ask me how I know... Of course, Ccleaner has similar risks- a friend of mine lost large portions of his iTunes library to Ccleaner.

Fragmentation isn't a huge issue in HFS+. It happens to some extent, but unless your hard drive is full to the brim it won't affect you. With hard drive sizes these days, that shouldn't be a real concern.

I used to be so OCD taking care of my last PC!
OSX does a good job, so you'll spend less time messing with all the utilities software you used to need on your PC, and now you'll be able to spend more time doing what the computer is really meant for (:

It comes with software to make music (Garageband), movies, and the latest Quicktime player can convert videos for iPhone use (just open the video and select save as). Oh, and you WON'T need Adobe Acrobat to view PDF files! Included there's a little program called Preview that loads PDFs, image files and even vector files (EPS for example), it can also do some basic editing (resize, crop, annotations).
Quickview (also included) lets you view common files (documents, images, PDFs) just using the spacebar, almost instant way to see files.

Wha? Would you trust a guy that looks like this?
@Fuzzy: I'm gonna start collecting royalties for namedropping me ¬_¬ =P

Yeah, bunch of fanboys...

Macs are built using mostly the same components used to build Windows-based machines. They use the same processors, RAM, hard drives, et cetera. In fact Apple works directly with Intel to make Macs work well with Intel's chips, and Apple and Intel are working together on a new interface called Light Peak, which should replace several different ports on current computers.

Macs and Windows-based computers built within the last ten years or so can also use almost all of the same peripherals. A monitor, printer, mouse or keyboard that comes with a Mac can be used with a Windows computer, and a monitor, printer, mouse or keyboard that comes with a Windows-based computer can be used with a Mac(as long as the mouse or keyboard use USB). And even if the parts used aren't identical very often the chips that are used to make those parts are the same(meaning there may be two vendors selling different products which are actually both based on the same chips and can use the same drivers).

Even the types of screens used in Mac monitors and monitors from other companies are often exactly the same. The cases and packaging are different, but the actual screens are the same.

There are few peripherals which will work on Windows and not Mac OS X, and even fewer that will work on Mac OS X and not on Windows.

Video cards are one exception. Someone asked whether Macs support multiple PCI express video cards. They do. Macs supported using multiple video cards since 1987, which was several years before it was possible on Windows-based computers. The main issue with video cards now is that video card manufacturers know that more people play advanced games on their Windows computers, so they write the drivers to make their cards work with Windows first, and either take a really long time to make the cards Mac-compatible or don't even bother.

So if you want to play games, a Windows-based computer that you have customized might be a better choice.

I prefer Macs because I like familiarity.

Macs have the menus at the top of the screen, always in the same location.

Mac applications tend to be more similar than Windows applications. For example, on Windows, Windows Media Player looks nothing like Microsoft Word 2007 and neither of those look like Firefox. The toolbars behave in different ways, and the menu order and contents differ, with some Windows applications not having any menus at all. On the Mac, Quicktime has many of the same menus as almost every other Mac application, as does Safari, as does Apple's mail program, et cetera.

Macs are much more consistent. They are great if you want to know exactly what to expect from your computer. Apple tries to make things as simple and as familiar as possible. If you have used one Mac and you start using another Mac the second Mac and the apps on it are likely to be familiar to you. If you have used a Windows-based computer and start using another Windows-based computer the computer and the apps on it might be set up in a very different way.

Windows has more software available for it(although Macs can run Windows, so it could be argued that most Windows-based software can be run on Macs while no Mac-based software can run on Windows).

If you want a computer that is consistent, then getting a Mac is a good choice.

If you are planning on playing a lot of games, I would go to a Mac forum and ask if anyone has played the games you want to play, and how well those games work on Macs. If so then a Mac would probably work, but if not, then a Windows-based computer might be a better choice.

Last edited by matt on 21 Oct 2009, 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.