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Mac or Win7?

C

CHICHORNIO

New Member
Pavel, you mentioned that you´ve switched to Mac a few months ago... Is it worth it? I´m planning to do so (because of Color Management, better in Mac OS), but just don´t know which Mac will be right to buy. I think portable (mac book, mac book pro) will be good enough for me, because I have my old but reliable Dell Trinitron CRT 21" monitor that I can properly calibrate by hardware. What is your advice?
 
I'm using 15" Macbook Pro 2.66Ghz/4GB RAM and I'm very happy with it. After 15 years or so spent with MS-based operating systems, it's very refreshing to try and use something new. And OSX is very nice to use and very easy to learn. Of course, I still don't know everything ;) But I'm able to use most of my usual workflow. I have installed also WinXP (via Parallels virtualization), however, I'm using it only very rarely. Just in cases I want to try something or design some icons and graphics in my favorite Realdraw vector-based editor.

The important thing before purchasing a Mac is to make a list of programs you are using on Win and do a research if there are Mac substitutes. For example, many people say that the OSX Finder is just enough for file management. I personally found it similarly pointless as any other single-pane file manager. And I'm afraid, there is no equally capable file manager on Mac platform as is the Total Commander on Win. Of course, there are some nice multi-tab file managers for OSX, but none of them is as powerful as TC. In the end, I bought ForkLift, which I found good enough and the price was very nice too (I believe I paid 9.90USD?). The total number of programs for Mac is maybe not as high as for Win and most of Mac programs are paid. However, the prices are very reasonable and there can be often bough many interesting and useful programs in program bundles for less than 50-60USD. Bundles usually contain 5-10 apps. I already bought 3 bundles with programs I really wanted and saved many bucks. Of course, not all bundles are useful and worth a purchase.

BTW, 15" MBP is not very portable. If you travel a lot and you consider to take the macbook with you, 13" MBP would be most probably a better choice for you? Especially if you consider to use it with external monitor. I'm using MBP without an external monitor, so I'm glad about the larger screen. But it's not very portable. I often miss something smaller (iPad would be just great;))

The only problem I have with MBP is that its power adapter developed a known (and widespread) problem with broken cord near the magnetic connector. But as far as I know, newest Macbooks should be shipped with new Magsafe with redesigned connector. I just bought new Magsafe on ebay, because my existing one is already a pain to use. Sometimes it charges, sometimes it charges not. I heard that Apple replaces the problematic Magsafes on request (even after the warranty). Unfortunately, there is no (official) Apple store in my country so I had no other option than to buy a new one. I hope to exchange my existing Magsafe on my next travel to UK.
 
Thanks Pavel for your detailed explanation, as usual. I was also thinking in a Macbook Pro 13" with at least 4gb of Ram (expandable to 8gb so I can use LR + PS CS5 seamesly). Because I only rely on my Dell trinitron calibrated monitor, my main concern is that the Mac has to be a real portable notebook with the power to do hard postprocessing at home.
And about soft for the Mac OS, my thinking apply as well as my every-day living.... the less, the better.
Guillermo
 
I'm sure the newest 13" MBP with 4GB RAM will be fine for you and you can always expand it to 8GB. I checked some benchmarks and the newest 13" MBP with 2.66GHz CPU appears to be as fast as my 15" MBP form 2009. In addition, it will give you about 10 hours of battery runtime, while my 2009 MBP was only able to make 3-4 hours in its early days. And after one year of hard use, the battery now holds at best 2 hours of runtime. The big LCD with brightness just two points from max surely eats a lot of power and battery life ;)

Good thinking about amount of installed programs! During the years spent with Windows, I installed a lot of programs only to find that I really need only fraction of them. Now with Mac, I'm using everything legal and I'm proud of it. I really don't need everything or the best what's available on the SW market ;)

BTW, you will love the backlit keyoboard and mainly the huge touchpad. Every time I'm forced to do something on a Win laptop, I'm trying to make OSX multitouch gestures on its (usually tiny) touchpad :)
 
I have MB 07' and I love it. Sometimes I use Windows via VmWare fusion, but very rarely. The funniest thing is that virtual windows starts up in 5 seconds or I can reinstall it from the image file in couple of minutes :)
 
Although nobody can win the race to computer technology, I think this configuration will let me be at least closer to the newest for the next 2 years. Check this out (http://store.apple.com/us/cart). Macbook Pro 15" it´s not very portable, but the 13" does not come with i7 processor. And having 512mb of dedicaded memory of the Nvidia card it´s a must.
 
I will be the dissent here. Windows 7 does everything I need and more and its been quite stable. With Windows laptop PCs you have a plethora of options with different sizes, builds and manufacturers. IMO any operating system becomes more unstable when you introduce 3rd party software and print drivers and software for other devices. In my experience Macs and PCs both suffer instability in about equal amounts. Diagnosing these issues has paid my wages for most of my working life, and I've had my fair share of problems in what I would say is equal amount from both platforms. As for the colour control, there is no lack in Win 7 for me. I have in the past added a Spider Pro and done colour correction through that and its been accurate.

The other big issue I have with Apple desktop and laptop computers is getting them repaired cost effectively when out of warranty. We have changed many failed desktop PC power supplies for as little as AU$40 but a Mac G5 power supply that failed recently was upwards of AU$200 and made the Mac uneconomical to repair, it went on eBay for what we could recover its value.

My next computer will be a PC laptop, most likely a Dell, the local AU warranty has been excellent, we have even had a tech onsite (all Apple repairs here I believe are take into shop) to change a mainboard once and that was about the only failure I have seen in a long time.
 
I switched from a powerful PC to a Mac Mini a year ago and I am very happy how beautiful and easy to use even most 3rd party apps are.

For Photography I use Aperture and Photoshop CS5, works perfectly well.
I calibrate with a Color Munki, print with an Epson 1400 and use a NEC wide gamut screen.

The Mac does all I could ever need or want, it is surprisingly fast and I haven't had a single problem since I bought it.
Now I just got myself a magic trackpad, what a funny device this is! For photo editing I use a Wacom tablet anyways.

But yes, you should check if everything you need is available for the mac (or a substitute). If not, you can always buy Parallels and run Windows XP applications alongsinde Mac apps without a reboot.
 
socket":16hxghh2 said:
I'm fed up with my LOUD desktop tower and I'm thinking of replacing it with a base Mac mini.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/s ... TQzMDMxODY

I'm also considering some of the cheaper PC-based 'mini-computers', I guess like this:

http://us.shuttle.com/X350.aspx

Anyone have any comments?
Click to expand...

Socket, these are quite different CPUs in the two computers you have here, the Shuttle has an Intel Atom CPU which is for low power systems and somewhat slower IMO.
This is not quite comparing "Apples with Apples" as they say :D
 
thelps":bmysq3vu said:
Socket, these are quite different CPUs in the two computers you have here, the Shuttle has an Intel Atom CPU which is for low power systems and somewhat slower IMO. This is not quite comparing "Apples with Apples" as they say :D
Click to expand...

Yes, well, I'm open to other suggestions. :D

Actually, I was initially considering a Dell Inspiron 580, which is here:

http://www.dell.com/ca/p/inspiron-580/p ... dhs&~ck=mn

There is also the Dell Zino, which has the form factor of the Mini. Perhaps I should have pointed this out as 'the competition':

http://www.dell.com/ca/p/inspiron-zino- ... dhs&~ck=mn

My impression of these small form competitors is that they are mainly home theatre machines, so may not be appropriate for general use.

For the same price as a Mini, I could probably customize a more powerful machine, but I'm really not sure I would use the extra power. My power requirements are modest. The 2004 Dell Dimension 4700 that I use now is sufficient for most applications, although processing raw files with Silkypix can be slow. I don't play computer games at all, nor am I likely to in the future.

I'm still fascinated with the Mini. Most of the software I use on my current PC is available for Mac, so that's not an issue. Even Silkypix is available, but I'm not sure if it is as good as other raw developers available for the Mac (or even as good as the PC version).
 
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