“Most buyers will go with Windows PCs. But Apple’s new iMac models are an excellent choice. Not only are they beautifully designed, but they also use a powerful processor called the G5, and their prices are actually lower than those for comparable Windows machines. Best of all, users of the current Mac operating system haven’t encountered any viruses,” Walt Mossberg writes for The Wall Street Journal.
“The main downside of the Mac is that it requires buyers to acquire and master all new software. Much of this comes bundled on the computer, but most people will have to spend at least $150 for a Mac version of Microsoft Office, which can handle files created in the Windows version,” Mossberg writes. “If you choose Windows, make sure you wait for a machine that has the new SP2 version of Windows XP, which closes some of the operating system’s most egregious security holes.”
“Even on a brand-new Windows machine, you should immediately obtain an arsenal of security programs, and keep them updated. One recent test showed that a brand-new, unprotected Windows machine became infected with viruses in just 20 minutes on the Internet,” Mossberg writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Are you a Windows user wondering about your next computer? Get a Mac. If you’re worried about having to master new software, don’t worry about it. You’re going to be so happy! Apple’s software is better and more intuitive than most anything you’ll find on Windows (check out Apple’s iTunes for Windows 2000 or XP to see an example of just how good Mac users have it) and if you ever need any help, you can email webmaster@macdailynews.com and we’ll help you personally. We can do this because we know you won’t need much help, but, if we’ve pushed you to get a superior Mac, you’ll want to know how to thank us for your liberation from Wintel Hell. We’re serious: get a Mac, email us for help if you need it, and get ready to actually enjoy personal computing!
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Mossberg: Apple iMac G5 ‘powerful, affordable, virus-free with better, more modern OS than Windows XP’ – September 23, 2004
Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg: ‘The single most effective way to avoid viruses and spyware is to simply chuck Windows altogether and buy an Apple Macintosh’ – September 16, 2004
Mossberg: ‘MSN Music is no match for iTunes – yet’ – September 02, 2004
Mossberg: Dump your Windows machine and get an Apple Macintosh to free yourself of spyware – August 25, 2004
Mossberg: Sony Walkman ‘laborious, weak, lousy, confusing, stinks’ vs. Apple iPod – July 28, 2004
Mossberg likes Apple’s Airport Express, but bemoans lack of remote control – July 22, 2004
Mossberg: Roxio’s Easy Media Creator 7 ‘significantly inferior’ to Apple’s iLife – June 25, 2004
The Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg: ‘iPod mini a gorgeous device, a winner’ – February 11, 2004
Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg: Apple GarageBand a ‘terrific tool, another feather in Apple’s cap’ – February 04, 2004
Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg on making the switch from Windows to Mac – September 18, 2003
Wall Street Journal’s Mossberg: Apple’s iChat/iSight teleconferencing ‘vastly better than any other I’ve tried’ – August 13, 2003
Walt Mossberg: ’17-inch PowerBook a great choice and another design win for Apple’ – April 03, 2003
Mossberg strikes again.
All those antivirus utilities, firewall utilities, etc. don’t come cheap. Wouldn’t you rather spend the $150 on (ugh) Microsoft Office? Which really is not necessary since AppleWorks will handle Excel and Word files.
I have two PC friends who have had to have techs come to their house to remove GB’s of malware from their computers at $50.00 per hour.
dugie my thoughts exactly, if your going to spend money on software right after you purchase a computer, it might as well be productivity software, not to secure yourself from malware (which it does not do very well)
One of the big mistake PC users make is to feel secure because they have an anti-virus program running.
What many do never realize is that an anti-virus stops KNOWN viruses, not new ones for which there is no exact signature on the data base used by the anti-virus.
No matter what anti-virus you have installed, if you do not update the db with the new virus details you simply get infected as if you had nothing running.
LOL, I know of Wintel users simply installing an anti-virus once and that’s it. They truly make it easy to crackers.
And, LOL, I know of PC users having spent on tech repairs at home the equivalent of a Powerbook 17″ but they still say the Mac is expensive.
ROFLMAO
And the above within one year of having purchased the PC against my advice.
Someone truly is deaf: Cannot help those who do not want to be helped.
Yumm…Gwen Stefani…oops, sorry, was looking at the iTunes ad on this page…what were we talking about again?
Tim, I think MDN needs more pictures of her.
Oh, and the WSJ article is cool too.
Dugie, you are a bit off when you say that those utilities “don’t come cheap.” While I am no wintel fan, for personal use you can find good utlities for for AV (Avast), Firewall (ZoneLabs), spyware (Spybot, Lavasoft). Some of the discussions about additional costs for the PC are not comepletely true.
This doesn’t change the fact that the Mac doesn’t need them.
I am legion….
Aargh! Stop it with this Appleworks rubbish. I’ve never managed to get Appleworks to open real documents, the sort I’d bring home from work with a table of contents, large tables, headers and footer and several levels of headers.
It simply won’t work.
If someone send you a letter, which you could write in TextEdit anyway, they it’s OK, but apart from that, it’s rubbish. Even with native Appleworks documents, the kerning is a mess and the output appalling.
There are many, many wonderful things about our platform, but please don’t include Appleworks in that !
This is some of what macuser had to say about it recently:
Where its Mac contemporaries (Word and Nisus) have made the transition to modern word processing with aplomb, AppleWorks still feels stuck in the past. Its text rendering is the worst of all those tested (with the possible exception of the non-antialiased OpenOffice), generating clumpy text that, as a rule, looks nasty regardless of the magnification at which you view the document.
In fact, the whole package is a bit of a visual mess. The toolbar, introduced in ClarisWorks 5, is an obvious attempt to ape Word, but where it was a neat addition in ClarisWorks, the version featured in AppleWorks 6 is bloated and of limited use.
try Mellel http://www.redlers.com/
great compatible and powerful
Apple should bundle Office for Mac with the new iMac G5. That would bring over many more switchers.
Doesn’t it seem likely that Appleworks isn’t up to par because there’s a deal between Apple and M$– probably during the stock buy years ago…
No competition agreement until _______. Then, one day, a brand spankin’ new Office Suite from Apple?
Any takers?
Well I would love them to scrap appleworks and make iworknplay. OSX and iworknplay deserve each other. It would be the greatest boon to the rest of i, i mean me.
I am a Machead like any other, but before we condemn windows-systems entirely, I think we should also take into account that the users themselves really bugger-up their own computer systems. I work in an advertising agency with about 50 G4 Macs, all running pre-OSX OSs and our admin is constantly running around fixing systems, whre the users have haphazardly moved files, changed settings and in general have not kept their fingers off things they do not understand. So, now matter how advanced your OS, how userfriendly it may be, the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) concept applies.
I also have a wintel box at home and generally I do not have too many problems, if I follow my basic rules:
1. run daily spyware, trojan and virus checks on my system (I automate this and have it run at night)
2. once every 6 months, I back up my entire data and reformat the drives. I know that compared to Macs this is a huge schlepp but generally my PC does what I expect it to do.
So, to be fair, windows runs ok if you keep your fingers off the settings and do daily maintenance.
Apple needs to copy Office and Project software from Microsoft. Apple could do this because Microsoft has copyed so much from Apple. It would be fair.
One Guy from Finland >> Are you implying that Apple shout stoop to the tactics employed by the company that we all love so much? I think not. This is what makes Apple so good. Theyr’e innovators not immitators
ph8te
That sounds like a lot of extra work to keep your PC running. Daily virus checks and then backing up and reformatting every 6 months! Yoiks.
I’m not dissing you because obviously it keeps your PC running in good shape.
I tend to back up my Mac every 8 months or so. Should probably do it more. How often do you do maintenance on your Mac? Just curious.
PeterJ >> I agree, it is a hassle with the PC, but what I was trying to say, is that there are ways to keep a PC running smoothly. it’s just that theyr’e tedious.
Ask any PC head… the best way to fix a windows based system is to backup the files and reformat. i know guys that play around with their machines so much, that they spend at least one weekend a month restoring their machines.
Oh, and regarding the Mac maintenance, I basically keep a tidy desktop, rebuild it once a week and do a manual internet chache cleanup once a month. Also I delete Mails i do not need any more. it is amazing how many people keep an email folder for spam, but then never delete the spam. Everytime the mail program starts its gottat read these into RAM. So, to cut a long story short, I spend about 30 Minutes a month making sure my mac runs smoothly.
Backup once every eight months? Are you crazy? This has nothing to do with OS- what if you dump coffee on your CPU or inadvertently bump into it while vacumning, wiping your drive clean w/static?
Get an external drive with Retrospect and let it backup every night (it only backs up changes made since the last backup). For $150 you’re relatively safe from losing data.
If I had to run anti-virus software every day I’d be pissed. The things people take for granted…
[I basically keep a tidy desktop, rebuild it once a week]
You should upgrade to Mac OS X – ASAP, then you won’t have to ever rebuild the desktop.
I dragged my feet moving from 9.2 to 10.2, but I was very happy with the move within two days. No more – rebuilding the desktop; throwing out Finder Prefs; doing Disk First Aid; every other week.
I’ve had ONE kernel panic since Feb03; a few Apps get snarky and freeze up – Forced Quit them (‘Preview’ 2.0 being the most guilty).
ph8te says:
“I basically keep a tidy desktop, rebuild it once a week”
Rebuild your desktop? What’s that? Oh yeah, I vaguely remember that ritual on OS 9. When’r you movin’ to Mac OS X?
I’ve never had to rebuild the desktop.
The first personal computer I ever bought: 17″ flat-panel iMac ran Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in 10/2002.
Panther upgrade 1 year later.
Can’t wait for Tiger!
Don’t underestimate Mossberg, ph8te. Doctorow calls him, ” the granddaddy of gadget reviewers, who can snap your company’s neck like a twig with one twitch of his mighty keyboard”.
And Wired’s profile of the man is good enough to frame or bronze for posterity:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/mossberg.html
I used to watch Mossberg’s commentary on “Digital Duo” before I ever thought of buying a computer, without having a clue what kind of influence the guy has. [/font]
One Guy from Finland…
Why?
Office is great.. do we really need MORE standards in the Word Processing, etc. field?
No…