h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I formally apologise to h2g2 Towers in case the servers overload and blow up because of people rushing to respond to this one.

Well my PC was more reliable but my Mac has got more character so I think I prefer the latter! It is just more human, it has bad days too!

Neither. All computers are evil creations of the devil, sent to destroy civilisation.
Or something.

kay......

I think that it depends on what apps you're trying to run. Compatability obviously has to be taken into account (although a die hard Mac fan will argue that with you). Macs seem to be racing ahead with movie making and various other muti-media capabilities and they do have a lovely user interface. PCs just seem to be everywhere (thanks to Microsoft...). I've only worked in two offices where Macs were the puter of choice (one in college guidance office and one at a non-profit org where someone donated new Macs to them and so they didn't have the option of PCs).

In general, Macs are more pricey, although the price has come down a fair amount in the last few years. PCs are almost a dime a dozen.

I do agree that the Mac has personality and style in spades! It's a hard comparison to make all in all.

I love my Mac Using a PC at work takes years off your life. Macs are designed by people for people. They are the natural choice for h2g2: that little smiley face has to be the nearest equivalent to 'Don't Panic' in nice friendly letters.

I often transefer work home and back again, from PC to Mac. If there are problems, it's always that the PC can't get its head round the Mac; the Mac has the versatility to cope.

Call me fluffy, but I've used may for nearly 15 years, and I wouldn't let a PC over the threshold.

Doh! reposted without the errors:


I love my Mac Using a PC at work takes years off your life. Macs are designed by people for people. They are the natural choice for h2g2: that little smiley face has to be the nearest equivalent to 'Don't Panic' in nice friendly letters.

I often transefer work home and back again, from PC to Mac. If there are problems, it's always that the PC can't get its head round the Mac; the Mac has the versatility to cope.

Call me fluffy, but I've used my Mac for nearly 15 years, and I wouldn't let a PC over the threshold.

Depends what you want to do. Both are even better than they start out when you go and put a free unix type operating system on them (netBSD or linux).

Still, neither type has enough buttons on the mouse usually

I've grown up with PCs and hence like them... I've never used a Mac, but I shudder at the thought of only one button on a mouse... my latest 'puter has five, which has got to be better, hmmm?

If you haven't got a clue what you're doing and you haven't got a friend who does, you're probably better off with a Mac, I'd think.

Then again, PCs have never been better value for money, especially at the lower end of the price range...

One thing, though - always get at least a 17" monitor. I seriously dislike working on anything smaller, as will you when you've got the hang of using all that extra space...

26199

I prefer my VIC 20

No!! Don't touch that - it's a valuable antique!!

Nah - ZX81 was the best.
Each key could type a whole word...i.e. ALT+H was "GOTO", and once you spent the whole day typing something in from a magazine the ram pack would fall out the back, proving that it had a sense of humour.

Seriously folks, arguing which is better, Mac or PC is like arguing between labour and conservative...they are exactly the same thing but with slightly different boxes

Let the unholy wars begin! Which is better a Mac or a PC? You would get less of an argument if you asked if Jesus was the messiah or if God is real. GEE WHIZ.

Which is better? A PC running UNIX (Linux) is more stable that a Mac or a PC running Windows, but takes more training to know what you're doing. A PC running Windows has more software written for it, like 90% of the software is written for Windows. A Mac is the most user friendly and easiest to use.

But what you are really arguing over is which is the best Operating System.

Best comment I heard on the debate is

The PC is the computer designed by accountants for accountants
The Mac is the computer designed by designers for designers

(but as CC says only the mac has a happy smiley face )

Correct. PCs running Windows are for business Applications, not that good for graphic design. Macs are great for graphic design, but their business applications suck. UNIX PCs are for alpha geeks, (people who love playing with code and costomizing GUIs and building thier own interfaces) but there are UNIX (linux) GUIs (window icons) that are easy to use.

Unix systems are built by engineers for engineers. The people who build these systems.
I don't like playing with code and customising my GUI. I use unix because that is where I can get the apps to do my job the best (from chip design to systems administration). For other jobs I use the tool that does them (hmm perhaps my brain is too much of an engineer )

Neither is better inherently. First you must ask what you want to do with it. If you want to play all the latest greatest games, then there is an obvious choice. You want to get a Windows box. And not a cheapo one either. You need processor power, RAM and a good graphics card for the best gaming. For some really specialized purposes, one or the other might come out ahead. If you need x piece of software that's only written for y operating system, then you'd probably better get that one. (iMovie, the Apple software that makes quick work of capturing and editing video from a DV camcorder, is but one example.)

For everyday home or office use, though, you'll be quite well-served by either type of machine. You can choose by which you're most familiar with. Or you can choose by which one will look cooler on your desk. It doesn't really matter. First-time users may be slightly better served by a Mac. Pricing at the low end is getting really close. If you compare a good name-brand entry-level Windows box (like Dell) to the lowest-end iMac, they're pretty similar in price and features. And speed. Don't get fooled by that higher MHz number. You can't take two totally different processor architectures (the Intel in the Windows machines and the PowerPC G3 or especially G4 in the Macs) and directly compare those speeds. Windows is faster at some tasks, the Mac will be faster at many, even with the "slower" speed. And the sheer volume of Windows machines really isn't a good reason to choose one. The Mac community (and it really is a community) is very strong, and the fact that the market share is in single digits really doesn't matter to much to it. It's not in danger of going anywhere. (In fact, it could be in danger of getting larger.) And in most cases you needn't worry about one person having a PC and another having a Mac and wondering how you'll share files or whatever. Files can be translated, most of the common ones are quite cross-platform anyway, so it really doesn't matter.

Basically, you use what you like. I have to deal with both systems for work, more and more, though we still run a surprising amount of things on Macs. But my main personal computer is unlikely to ever be anything but a Mac. Right now, it's a PowerBook G3.

Oh, you know, I didn't mention Unix systems in my post, but they are, of course, the most stable of all systems. So far, they don't have the edge as far as usability for the average consumer, but there are efforts to change that. (Some original Mac engineers are working on a GUI for Linux, for instance.) And Apple's own new Mac OS will in fact be Unix-based, so it gets harder to classify there. It's almost as if it's going to come down to Windows or Unix. The only difference so far is that you still need Apple's own hardware to run their OS. But that OS will, as of next year, be just an Apple-designed face on top of Unix. It will isolate users who want to be isolated from those underpinnings, but power users can open a command line and get busy if they want. Should be interesting to see.

By the way, there are a handful of Unix/Linux distributions that are for Macs, so getting the Apple hardware for the looks doesn't necessarily preclude you from going with Unix even right now.

Isn't Apple OSX supposed to be a unixy sort of operating system for the mac that gives you the best of both worlds?

My memory of UNIX was it was built by engineers for engineers - but that was a couple of years ago before linux became so popular.

If you had the time and experience UNIX was very powerful but there was a lot to learn and set up before you could do anything interesting. If you didn't know quite what you were doing you could also do some pretty scary things to your system (voice of bitter experience)

Unix has been around for a long time (1971), see http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/unix/ for a family tree of the various versions.

OSX is built on top of a BSD derivative (FreeBSD I think). Apple then go and put their own interface on top of this base. It should be a nice good stable system.
This isn't the first time Mr Jobs has dabbled with unix, he did head up NeXT between Apple appointments.

The thing is with this kind of discussion is that they always center around the OS and software support for it.

As far as the Architecture goes G4 macs are quite impressive machines, let down by the fact that they run OS9, Any machine capable of Running Linux or BEOS is Fine by me, I simply prefer my Humble IBM AT Clone clocking 500Mhz but still running very similar code to it's 8Mhz predecessors.

We use win98 at college and I can't stand it next to NT5 or Linux.

OSX looks promising from what I've seen, aparantly based on BSD, but apparantly it'l only run on G3 architecture.

Windows 2000 is the best M$ OS, BEOS 5 is quite impressive, OSX Looks like it may make the Mac more popular, Mac OS<9 is a feeble excuse, FreeDOS is Fun and LINUX ROCKS!!

UltraSPARK2 is the Best there is, running Solaris.