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General => General Discussion => Topic started by: DannyG on December 10, 2012, 08:48:31 PM
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As the title asks....any imac desktop users amongst us?
We are about to buy, or seriously considering buying one as our main computer at home.
We have always been windows users and for the money we are going to spend on an apple we can buy a really nice windows pc but being iPod, iPhone and iPad users we may as well be iBloody iMac users as well!
I have to admit besides itunes and no flash player support on the ipads we really love apple products and all my research suggests the iMac desktops do everything we need with no down sides that we can tell.
So I guess I am asking for any pro's or con's of using an imac instead of our usual windows systems???
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Yes I have an imac. Love it and would never go back to the other p.c. Easy to use and just fantastic to use. I am not a computer whiz by any means, but manage it very well for most things. I do have sons that help out if need be. My sons are apple users as well. In fact one of them is apple everything. He swears by it, as he puts it, no virus's and when you buy a windows p.c. after about a week they are already getting slow with crap on them. Mine is 4 years old and still going strong. In my opinion there are little or no cons. Still there are others out there that would not agree. It is just that I find it easy and beautiful to watch with the big screen and fantastic graphics and the photos are superb on it. All apps are really good. Still I am now biased. It really is a personal choice, but I know I could never go back to the other side.
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Love the iMac. Simple to use and none of the annoying system issues that plague PCs.
Would never go back to a pc.
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Hi Danny
I have been a Mac user for years. Gone from Windows to Linux to Mac. Still use Linux now and then and Windows at work but have to admit I love using the Mac. I myself use an iMac, my wife and daughter both have MacBook Pro's. we even have a Mac Mini under the tv solely used as a media centre.
I believe that the Mac is easier to maintain and configure than Windows. Also anything that I used the Windows machine for, I can do on the Mac..... With more fun lol. If I turn the Mac off (which is very rarely), I know for a fact that if I need it on (and usable), it will take around 30-40 seconds.
Really it depends on what works for you. I'm lucky that the Mac is a joy to use.
Cheers
James
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
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Yep, I use a 27" iMac for work, have one in the bedroom running an eyetv for tv recording and streaming to iPads around the house and another on in my study, plus a MacBook air for portable music creation and design editing. You won't go wrong and I doubt you'll ever look back. Design, photos, video, music all easy and very stable. In last 8 years never had an Mac fail on me.
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Oh and we are slowly converting my workplace over to Mac or at least macs running parallels with windows. My marketing team all use macs now as do most of the senior management. Any specific questions let me know... Not IT qualified but am Brand and Innovations manager for large real estate firm plus assist it department as well.
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We got an iMac years ago as part of the "whole Apple Environment" thing. To be honest I never actually spent the time to learn it properly and therefore I am not a huge fan to be honest.
Having said that I love all the portable iDevices and would consider another iMac as long as I actually did a short Win to Mac course or something so that I understood how things worked.
I am IT based and as I know Windows well I found it difficult to find stuff on the Mac.
bunyip
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Toyota/Nissan much??
I did some contract work for an Apple company in St Kilda, they used all windows machines.
All the I fanboys will say Itoys, and the windows will say windows..
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Danny, short story - long.
I was a PC person until my son and a colleague convinced me to change. The first 6 months was somewhat difficult not being able to do things intuitively on the Mac (24" iMac circa 2010) that I could do on the PC. HOWEVER, I've come to terms with it and would never go back. Things Mac/Apple just work.
No blue screen of death. The integrate so well. I recommend in the strongest terms that you take out Apple Care Protection on each device you purchase. This gives extended warranty and phone Tech Help for up to two years or so after purchase (depending on the item).
As an example, Apple Care on my iMac cost, I think, $150. A about 18 months of age, my iMac developed a green line down one side of the screen. Within half an hour of phoning Tech Support (133622) I had received two phone calls from Apple people telling me of the progress of the rectification. A couple of days later a bloke appeared at my front door in Kuranda. He'd driven from Townsville (5 hrs ish) with a replacement screen, which he fitted in my kitchen at home. Then drove home to Townsville. This happened 6 days after the initial call. There was a weekend in the middle and I was away interstate with work on the Monday. The ENTIRE cost was covered by Apple Care!
Bloody brilliant service if you ask me.
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Been in IT nearly 20 years. Have used Linux, windows and mac. Just get the mac and never look back!
The Mac environment is a bit more locked down than pc and certainly more than Linux but unless you are a geek you won't notice or care. I run VMware so I can have one virtual windows machine. The only two reasons for it is Oziexplorer and etax.
And.... I hate to sound like a fanboy but.... OMG! The latest iMac is just such a beautiful machine. The hardware and software are built for each other.
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Have an iMac 27 inch blah blah and love it. No need to update virus blah blah all the time and because we have iphones and daughter has imac laptop for school it made sense to integrate- some things are a bit tricky for us but wait till the daughter learns it and then she can teach us.
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We have one but I prefer my windows laptop. My wife wanted the imac so technically it's all hers.
1) I need to use excel spreadsheets for work and i edit them at home and the imac's spreadsheet prog does not integrate well with Excel, at least the imac 'numbers' spreadsheet program is free. I tried using it but when trying to save info so it can be used by other windows work pc's it loses info. I gave up and went back to my windows pc.
2) I HAD to buy another 2TB portable harddrive just for the imac. We already have a 2tb external hard drive full of backed up files but because it's formatted in NTFS the imac could do nothing with it. imacs don't do NTFS apparently. I had to buy another 2tb hard drive, format it into fat32 then transfer the info from the NTFS hard drive to the Fat32 hard drive so the imac could use the data. Well at least i've now got a backup of my backup...
3) Our laser printer (which i use for work) does not have support for imac's. We looked and looked but the manufacturer (Cannon) does not and will not provide support because the printer is 2 years old. When my wife brings up a webpage or anything on her imac that she wants to print, it has to go onto my windows laptop so the laser printer can print it. I ain't buying a new laser printer just for the imac. Screw that.
4) I find the imac a bit buggy with the itunes stuff, it locks up a bit sometimes when surfing and trying to run multiple programs/windows. The imac is 2 months old but my 6 year old sub $1000 windows laptop does these tasks fine, even though the imac is supposed to be super fast.
5) i find the imac a pain to try and organise photos videos and files in general.
6) On the plus side, i use it for editing my home movies and uploading to youtube. It does this very well and efficiently and fast but i only don't do this on my laptop anymore because it's way too slow. I only use the imac for video editing and web surfing. But lord no i hope i don't need to print anything.
We have apple TV which works BRILLIANT with the imac for our downloaded itunes movies/tv shows. I highly recommend the Apple TV if you use itunes for movies/tv. I have a 5 year old iphone (longest serving phone i've ever had), several 160gb ipods (mine is 7 years old) an ipad, they work well and do their tasks fine. I don't hate apple stuff at all but i just wish the imac had more compatibility with windows.
just my thoughts.
this was written with windows :)
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It is interesting how a lot of the views are based on XP (over 10 years old) to the latest Mac gadget.
I must admit I don't know what all this virus and slowdown talk is about either and I run Windows 8.
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Of course they compare it to XP, everyone knows it was the only system that worked with any great success.
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In 2008 we decided to go MAC.....we now have nearly everything MAC in the house including AppleTV.
As the saying goes. 'IT JUST WORKS'......and it does.
MarkVS
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2) I HAD to buy another 2TB portable harddrive just for the imac. We already have a 2tb external hard drive full of backed up files but because it's formatted in NTFS the imac could do nothing with it. imacs don't do NTFS apparently.
Out of the box, Mac OS X can only read, but not write NTFS. A third party addition provides read / write NTFS access -
http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/ (http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/)
I've used it for years without issue.
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Play with windows and unix servers at work. Use macs at home. I don't need to spend hours tinkering to get something to happen..
And the mac version of excel is just like the PC version!!
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I was always having trouble with windows and and laptops. I was travelling all over the world and doing a lot of presentations etc for my work, and windows kept failing me. Switched to Mac around 6 years ago and have not had an issue since. I can still run windows if needed by running a virtual machine with vmware, but I rarely need to use it. Microsoft Office for Mac is very good if you need excel / powerpoint / word and is compatible with all these file types made on windows . Now have all macs at home as well as apple tv's and can watch movies, stream / listen to music on any system in the house, works great, simple and very easy to set up.
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I have mac word, and some of the other stuff from my old computer on the mac, they do have compatible programs that you can run from the old system. I transferred some old windows stuff across successfully. Like I said earlier, no virus's to this point and it has never slowed down in all these years. Where as the other one took more than half an hour to start up and I had to configure it all the time. After about a month of having the old one, it got so slow and just got worse by the day.
I got an imac for my daughter recently after her old laptop died and just jammed up all the time. I also recommend apple care, we used it once and was on the phone for 2 hours . They were fantastic , I had to reset everything on the computer, and in the end it was the modem that was stuffed not the computer. However they had to do it to isolate the problem. I am now in the process of trying to get more apple care for my daughters imac. The big screen and graphics are second to none! My photos never looked so good. My son does a lot of video editing and he use to use the old pc and honestly the swearing and abuse that went on was blue as hell. He nearly threw it across the room! He got an apple macpro and never looked back. Awesome for doing videos and editing. He sold it to his brother when he went to Tassie and now wants another one, as the laptop , good as it is, finds it a bit too much to handle. THe stuff he does is very professional and I put his video on this site a couple of months ago. It was a desert video from a recent trip. There is so much you can do on the mac's.Of course I am now biased.
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Thanks very much everyone for the advice, it seems to us that the majority of it is positive and the few concerns mentioned are either no longer concerns as apple have addressed them or they are not something we need to worry about.
I have looked into all the larger professional programs I like to play around with from time to time and all the users of those love the programs in question on mac so thats also a bonus.
I under stand there will be a learning curve coming from windows to mac but I am sure we will get our head around it quick enough, my wife and kids have used my wifes fathers Mac quite a lot and they all swear by it, so it is only me that needed convincing really.
SOOOOOOOO, guess who is about to unload a heap of iCash on a Mac!!!!
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Like the wife said "once you have black you never go back" same goes for Macs :cup:
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Like the wife said "once you have black you never go back" same goes for Macs :cup:
LOL Oh she has tried the black then? :)
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Buy a Mac (15 Ads in 1 Pack) HQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5z0Ia5jDt4#)
all the Mac v PC adds......
Just bought Lil another macbook pro after her 17" macbook pro died after 7 years......Pfffft.
Software was always upgraded and never had a need to format and reinstall, never had any virus's.....just worked. She was a PC girl and wouldnt have one ever again now.
Ive always been a mac guy since G3 days.........Everything is just there to work.
I dont think you could actually own a PC for 7 years and never have reinstalled the OS unless you never switched it on ;D
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now I'm back on a better computer, just a tip..
apple run via their website a Rerfurb store. these machines are returns, ex display (ex mac store) reworks QC fail machines, etc,
the products have been repaired/reworked/ (or repacked) some have never been used, just moving stock, etc by apple, they come with the same basic 12 month apple warranty and coverage, same in store support, exactly the same as a new unit, and have the same ability to add applecare extra warranty to this..
its the same as a new one you might pay full price for...
they often arrive with more than what was paid for,, (Ive had two refurbish imacs turn up with more ram and bigger HDD's than the spec I purchased)..
you have to keep an eye on the store to see what comes and goes, note that some are the older models, **the imac has JUST in the last 4 weeks seen a product refresh/update so the new models on the refurb store might take some time to arrive/show up, and they will move quickly when they do.
other than that, JB hifi will price match and discount if you PUSH hard on the price, most other places wont, dick smith have 10% off macs sales every now and then, (but not on custom order devices (extra ram is a custom order)
and if you have kids in schools, you can buy via the educational apple online store and get a decent price as well.
they also have other i products cheaper. generally %15-20 off the RRP..
http://store.apple.com/au_epp_10011/browse/home/specialdeals/mac (http://store.apple.com/au_epp_10011/browse/home/specialdeals/mac) is the link
http://store.apple.com/au_epp_10011/browse/home/specialdeals (http://store.apple.com/au_epp_10011/browse/home/specialdeals)
i would never buy a new mac again, and havent for a number of years, ($10000 of refurb macs over me/family/friends with no issues) always had refurbs and always had very good experience. :D
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LOL Oh she has tried the black then? :)
Not yet Danny, she wants one for her 40th birthday :-[
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I have been using an iMac for past 5 years with no issues and love it, wouldn't go back to PC. It does everything I would be looking for in a PC plus more, best move I made. :laugh:
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HI Danny
We were in a similar position to you four years ago. Always had MS with all the usual issues - reinstalls etc.
Walked into an apple shop in Hobart and impulse bought an imac.
What amazed me about it is you plug it in and it just works. In four years we have had one issue where it was freezing and I could not work it out so did a reboot. Then found one of the kids had put something on a second wireless keyboard and it was holding down a key and that was what the problem was - LOL...
Never had a virus, never had a system crash, never lost a file.
It just works!
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Gotta love the arguments.
Apples just work. And they have a refurb service. Ummm, what do they refurb? Broken Apple boxes!
Office on a Mac is just like the PC version. Who makes Office? Oh yes, the main opposition (And i'm not a fan of M$ Office.).
Get the machine you feel comfy with, which is what you have done.
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Most of the time it's store demo stock. Or moving older production stock actually. And yes. Sometimes they have a hardware problem. And you get a new one. And they fix the old one.
I happily buy from sunbeam factory shop. Etc. why pay full price? It's no different.
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Most of the time it's store demo stock. Or moving older production stock actually. And yes. Sometimes they have a hardware problem. And you get a new one. And they fix the old one.
I happily buy from sunbeam factory shop. Etc. why pay full price? It's no different.
How often do they replace the showroom demos? How many compared to the units needing to be replaced? Don't think they could keep up.
Older stock? Use by date exceeded?
No computer is immune to failure. Components are similar/same between end manufacturers. There is a limited number of suppliers of bits and pieces out there.
identical machines break at different times of their useful life. Had PC's that never fail. Had Apple gear that never failed.
Get a new one? Same for any manufacturer. Fix it and it is good to go.
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once you had a mac you will never go back
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For what it's worth I'm not a fan of refurb, only got experience with the guys iPhones at work which have a bit of hit and miss....
I know it's not the popular or cheap option, but with tech I always opt for the buy best once, buy less often... With the speed tech moves you will spend less by upgrading less. Max the computer out with ram, processor and hard drive even if you think you don't need it now, you will in a year or so!
Just my opinion, many will disagree ;)
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We were a windows family, but with 3 kids surfing the net, i found that i was reimaging the pcs every 2-3 months, since by then they would be full of rubish, running slow etc etc.. Always have antivirus running on them..
Then bought 1 mac laptop for the eldest son.. 4 years later, not one thing went wrong with it... Upgraded hard drive for more space, but still going well..
We now have 2 more macs in the family... No issues..
I work in IT and the last thing I want to do have to fix the pcs at home.. Amazing how many IT people I know do the same at home..
Macs just work.. Most people dont muck around with them as much as pcs too, and that helps..
Still hate iTunes though..
The only problem I currently have with the macs is that i cannot get timemachine to backup to my d-link nas drive..
I will need to relent and get a timemachine compatible nas, for backups..
Ras
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No computer is immune to failure.
I think the point being made by most is that the apple product seems more reliable than windows. Maybe major failures are similar however the experience that most apple users that I have come across is the exact opposite - no issues - ever.
Strange how some people get so defensive when ms users swap to apple. Dont quite understand it myself.
The ONLY thing that disappoints me is the transition of Office products to mac. Frustrating when you have ms at work and apple at home.
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I use Mac at home but sadly, MS at work. The only issue I have with the transition between platforms, if that Excel for Mac won't process the Macros used in some of the work spreadsheets.
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I have MAC's at home, and I work in IT too.
I run a Macbook Air 13" and run a Windows 7 Virtual machine on it. Interestingly, the battery on the Air, runs about 10-11 hours, but as soon as I crank up Win7, 3 hours max.
I have iMac 27" on the bench at home, my wife, daughter and youngest all have Macbook Pro laptops (love scholarship funds).
For backups, I run an Ubuntu server with 8 TB of capacity and Time Machine runs well.
As has been said before, Mac just work. Yes, there will be issues with some Windows based things like Excel macros, as they can be Visual Basic scripts. There MUST be a way to do it..... There is with everything else....
Love my Macs.
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We were a windows family, but with 3 kids surfing the net, i found that i was reimaging the pcs every 2-3 months, since by then they would be full of rubish, running slow etc etc.. Always have antivirus running on them.
I havent reimaged my PC in around 4 years.. Havent had 1 blue screen, or issue running slow.
Maybe your doing it wrong.
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Have a look at the market share difference here http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8 (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8) .There must be some good reason why Windows has about 81% to Macs 6% share. Each to there own but. My PC is 10 years old now and yes I reloaded the o.s. once when I did an upgrade (something you can't really do with macs) but I've never had a virus.
Cheers
Wes
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Have a look at the market share difference here http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8 (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8) .There must be some good reason why Windows has about 81% to Macs 6% share. Each to there own but. My PC is 10 years old now and yes I reloaded the o.s. once when I did an upgrade (something you can't really do with macs) but I've never had a virus.
Cheers
Wes
I think the market share is because of many factors, not necessarily because something is better than another.
Id love to see a market share in Australia with Imported Campers vs Local these days.
I think Apples restrictions on any open source environment really restricts its market, people just dont like the captured market thinking. I didnt either, but the older I get the less I want to fuss around with things, I just want them to work :)
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Have a look at the market share difference here Seasonally Adjusted Figures (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8)There must be some good reason why Windows has about 81% to Macs 6% share.
Marketing. And business would be a massive chunk of %...
Although its becoming trendy to have iEverything...
interesting ot see that the Iphone has lost the sales race to Android. but I dont trust many "Figures" these days..
http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/android-overtakes-apple-in-australia-20121212-2b8q2.html (http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/android-overtakes-apple-in-australia-20121212-2b8q2.html)
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We were a windows family, but with 3 kids surfing the net, i found that i was reimaging the pcs every 2-3 months, since by then they would be full of rubish, running slow etc etc.. Always have antivirus running on them..
Then bought 1 mac laptop for the eldest son.. 4 years later, not one thing went wrong with it... Upgraded hard drive for more space, but still going well..
We now have 2 more macs in the family... No issues..
I work in IT and the last thing I want to do have to fix the pcs at home.. Amazing how many IT people I know do the same at home..
Macs just work.
x2 except that we now have 3 MacBook Pro's, 3 IPhones and an Apple TV. I work with Windows machines all day and the last thing I want to do at home is fix computers. After reimaging the kids PC's over and over and then being struck by the Dell battery / power issue I brought a Mac and saw the light.
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I havent reimaged my PC in around 4 years.. Havent had 1 blue screen, or issue running slow.
Maybe your doing it wrong.
Do you have teenage kids surfing the net? That's why we need to reimage the machines - visits to innappropriate sites :(
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Do you have teenage kids surfing the net? That's why we need to reimage the machines - visits to innappropriate sites :(
Maybe you need to use something like Deep Freeze - http://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze (http://www.faronics.com/products/deep-freeze) and get a fresh machine image on each reboot.
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Do you have teenage kids surfing the net? That's why we need to reimage the machines - visits to innappropriate sites :(
I have 2 kids surfing the net from the time they walk in the door till they are screamed at to go to bed...
Maybe you need to block those sites on the firewall.
I surf porn sites regularly, still no issue.
we have 2x toshy A9's, 2x Dell Tablets, main PC, and all are running like silk....
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I have 2 kids surfing the net from the time they walk in the door till they are screamed at to go to bed...
Do you live in my house, Lost?
Sounds like my place, but I have three of them...
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Do you live in my house, Lost?
Sounds like my place, but I have three of them...
The Xbox got that bad, we started with a 1 day ban.. then weekend, then week, then Whole school TERM, he still didnt learn his lesson and attitudes didnt change, so now its a life ban off the Xbox at home
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Do you have teenage kids surfing the net? That's why we need to reimage the machines - visits to innappropriate sites :(
Blaming the kids hey - noise!
8) ;D :D
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Teenagers, teenagers.... I sound like an old man!!
Interesting to note that at work, the only department with macs is marketing/advertising..
But a lot of people have iPads/iPhones...
I personally use the iPad at work as much as the laptop..
There is a blurring of home vs work, in terms of IT capability.
Ras
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I surf porn sites regularly, still no issue.
LOL The female side of Tassie Devils wants to try the black for her 40th, now we have this statement from Lost.........any other admissions ready to come forward?? ;D
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LOL The female side of Tassie Devils wants to try the black for her 40th, now we have this statement from Lost.........any other admissions ready to come forward?? ;D
Come on Danny surely you must have a dark secret?
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Come on Danny surely you must have a dark secret?
Secret? More like secretS, None that I should mention on here though ;D
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LOL The female side of Tassie Devils wants to try the black for her 40th, now we have this statement from Lost.........any other admissions ready to come forward?? ;D
ok i am coming forward I have been known to be quite a big fan from evidence of the amount of $$$$ i spend and consume on apple products but I have to admit that the apple cider is the next best cheapest option next to beer MMMMMMM Bulmers :cheers:
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I think the point being made by most is that the apple product seems more reliable than windows. Maybe major failures are similar however the experience that most apple users that I have come across is the exact opposite - no issues - ever.
Strange how some people get so defensive when ms users swap to apple. Dont quite understand it myself.
The ONLY thing that disappoints me is the transition of Office products to mac. Frustrating when you have ms at work and apple at home.
Apple devices seem to be more 'controlled' where M$ devices can be manipulated, or more easily - hence, prone to failure?
Had a BSoD recently on a four year old laptop running Adobe SW. Not the laptop, Adobe or OS fault, I fiddled with the swap file trying to get a better response by placing the swap file on a SSD. Put the swap file back to original and all is fine >:(
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Apple devices seem to be more 'controlled' where M$ devices can be manipulated, or more easily - hence, prone to failure?
Had a BSoD recently on a four year old laptop running Adobe SW. Not the laptop, Adobe or OS fault, I fiddled with the swap file trying to get a better response by placing the swap file on a SSD. Put the swap file back to original and all is fine >:(
I have been using Macs since they came out in 84 or thereabouts. Have been using them professionally for approx 20 years.
I don't want or need to manipulate or modify them. They work exactly as I need and want as they are. I've never had problems with them, other than designers having about 10000 fonts open and wondering why a program is slow. I think I can count on one hand days lost to faulty machines in the studio in that time.
Of course I also know friends who swear by PCs but they love to modify, hack and program. Suits them but I can think of nothing more tedious than having to fiddle around with a computer to get it to work for me.
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Little bit of a learning curve but so far very very impressed. Had to do the mac version of the old 3 finger salute when messing around with things we didn't know anything about so its not totally fool proof! Everything I have downloaded and installed is working really well and integrates perfectly....hardy har har
Hopefully we wont be need to buy another home computer for a while ;D
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Very shiny. If you are near a capital city. Apple church runs free tutorial sessions. Just visit a store and you can get preached at. (Byo Steve jobs skivvy) :)
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I havent reimaged my PC in around 4 years.. Havent had 1 blue screen, or issue running slow.
Maybe your doing it wrong.
LOL... I dare you to come into my office and say that.
Total nerds here... EMC (squared). Most lads run mac at home. Most office/engineering PCs don't last 6 months before being re-imaged. The local PC boys don't even bother trouble shooting any more. Re-image the OS and restore user data.
Now that's confidence with a capital B.
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I use an imac for our home PC. Dont think I will see myself swaping back to windows again. I still use windows at work (cant see business swapping anytime into the future).
Mac PC's are a bit more expensive than the windows running equivelents, however when I've needed to use apple waranty I've never had a issue - definatly recommend the extra applecare warrenty.
As the new mac all run similar hardware to most PC's its now fairly easy to build a PC from standard parts to run OS X a hell of a lot cheaper than what apple charges for their products.
Just dont get sucked into the apple marketing hype or you'll be forever broke