“‘I’m getting a computer for my daughter. She keeps using mine and messing it up,’ he said. Pause. ‘But she wants a Mac. And I want to get her a PC,’ he continued. Then silence, until I realized he was waiting for my thoughts (he knew I wrote these columns about computers, having for years noticed my constant incoming flood of test software and systems),” Phillip Robinson writes for Knight Ridder News.
“He finished, ‘Macs are more expensive, and all she wants to do, really, is e-mail and download music,'” Robinson writes. “‘Everyone I know who has a Mac loves it,’ I said. ‘And they’re great for music.'”
“‘But you use PCs, right?’ he asked. ‘I use everything,’ I said. ‘…[But,] if I had to get rid of all my computers but one, the Mac is the one I’d keep,'” Robinson writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good advice.
Grandma would be much better off with an eMac than with a Linux box from walmart though !
Has anyone factored therapy bills in to the Windows TCO ?
That a child is only interested in games and IM says more about the state of parenting these days than about the appropriateness of a Mac as a personal computer. Especially since, as was pointed out, there’s no IM issue with Macs. Games I can see being an issue, but a console is the best solution there.
“That’ll change with SP2.” Are you serious? Just like it changed with 98 SE, ME, 2000, and XP? Until m$ starts over, it won’t change, it’ll just be a patch.
Well, so far so good with SP2, it changes more than you probably know…But in-case you dont click below:)
http://www.calpoly.edu/~doleary/youare.swf
Doh!
Don’t have to mess with SP2!!!! Got rid of the pc in the office and replaced it with a 17″ iMac. I know, I know, if I would have waited, I might be getting one of the newer ones, but when the boss said “OK” I wasted NO time – certainly didn’t want any changing of minds taking place…
Quote
” Don’t have to mess with SP2!!!! Got rid of the pc in the office and replaced it with a 17″ iMac. I know, I know, if I would have waited, I might be getting one of the newer ones, but when the boss said “OK” I wasted NO time – certainly didn’t want any changing of minds taking place…” End Quote
Good move. and good luck
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You think SP2 will fix XP’s problems? LOL Win2000 is on what, SP4? <sarcasm> They sure did a bang up job with that one. </sarcasm>
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People are free to get both OS’s if they like. But you’re in denial if you think Windows is anywhere near free of problems like OSX.
Where would I put SP2? On my Mac? Work computers can’t handle xp, after all, they’re 3 and a half years old. Don’t come close to the specs required for xp.
Which is why our IT dept is going to wait until NEXT YEAR to roll it out… !
(I’ll be happily installing Tiger then, BTW, as will many of us…)
My iBook is a Claim Shell SE 466, 320 RAM, running OS 10.3.4 and Mac Office 2004. It’s on the coffee table downstairs for word processing, e-mail and iPhoto stuff; upstairs is a 17″ iMac and Gateway 800 MHz running XP (four years old) all networked with Airport Extreme. This iBook keeps up rather well with the Gateway. One would be hard pressed to find a five year old unmodified 500 MHz PC handling XP. Macs are impressive.
treadlightly:
We’ve got PIII 500s. Essentially 4 year old machines, and they’re plugging away with XP just fine. Their mobos even have a 384 MB limit for RAM, and that hasn’t caused problems. Granted, we loathe working on them, I just wanted to point out that it’s possible to run XP on a lot more than what they say are the system reqs.
As for grandma being better off with Windows. She may be, but if you’re her ONLY technically inclined contact, are you going to be better off?
Please… sure you can run XP on old machines, but you said it yourself… you loath working on them.
As a self-employed network engineer and computer support tech for small businesses, I turn down many potential clients because they think they can run the latest software on old hardware.
I may want to make a buck, but I also want to keep my sanity.
“But you’re in denial if you think Windows is anywhere near free of problems like OSX”
GIVE ME A BREAK… LIKE ANY OS IS FREE OF PROBLEMS..IVE HAD TO RE-INSTALL OS X ON MY G5 3 TIMES BECAUSE OF KERNEL PANICS AND THE CRAPPY MEM THAT APPLE SUPPLIES WITH IT..SO DONT GIVE THAT..OS X HAS NO PROBLEMS…BLAH BLAH BLAH..
Party Mud,
WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING? You seriously need to consider switching to decaf, man. Two of my brothers have degrees in comp.sci and years of extensive experience in network and system administration with all variants of Microsoft OS’es, and after I persuaded them to switch to Macs they have never been happier. I’ve never used Windows, so obviously I’m not equipped to pass personal judgement on it, but I’ll take them at their word when they tell me that OS X is far easier to set up, maintain, work with, secure, etc.
One of them called me just last week bitching about his wife’s new XP machine (she has an iBook and had to get a PC laptop for her job, much to her disgust) and the way it kept dropping the WiFi connection for no apparent reason. I pointed him to articles on Wired News and Ars Technica that had reported the problem (which Microsoft denies exists), but I don’t know if he ironed it out. So yes, anecdotally, and from experts with first-hand knowledge of both systems, I’d say that OS X is much more problem-free than WinXP.
I’m really tired of Windows people yelling about how good Xp is compared to a Mac. I use both Mac and Windows everyday – and have since my first computers in 1984. There is no comparison. XP is eye-candy (and lollipop at that) on top of Win2000. It’s a pain to use and maintain. OS X is rock solid. My last crash was April, 2001. Poor “Party Mud (Poo Poo)” who landed either a bad chip or whatever. One anecdote like his doesn’t say squat about the system. Like I said, I use both everyday and have for years. XP is crap and OS X is grrreat and getting more Tiger like…
I’ll tell you one thing. Win XP is a lot better than Win Me. There is no way you can dispute that.
However, I give my iMac a big ‘hug’ every time I get back home and I get to use OS X again.
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