Originally Posted by Superkid11
Thank you Danny, and trust me, I already knew RV was a tad bit aggressive HOWEVER, I'm still somewhat curious about Linux. I'm still taking his suggestion in the interest of fairness...
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You should be curious about Linux. I love Linux. I really, really do. I'm probably one of the biggest supporters of Linux you can find. I love setting it up, making it work with my hardware, tweaking it to how I need it. Sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes it takes days, but for some reason, I actually enjoy getting down into the nitty gritty of the OS and making things work like they should. I love almost everything about it.
However, (and this is a
BIG however), I have consistently found that once I set up Linux and get everything working perfectly, I am pretty much done with the OS completely. There is nothing more I can really do with the system, because there are no high-end applications for it to do the things I usually do (music, games, video editing, image manipulation, etc.) and as a result, I simply stop using it. This has happened probably dozens of times. On a dual boot system with Windows and Ubuntu, I use Ubuntu very frequently for a few days while I'm in that "initial setup" phase. As soon as it's done and working perfectly though, there is nothing more for me to do, and I invariably switch back to Windows because it's where I can actually
do stuff.
Note that this has not been a problem on my Mac -- in fact, I have not felt the need to boot into my Windows partition for over three weeks now, which I find quite liberating.
Originally Posted by Superkid11
Though seriously, the more I hear about it(not just from you) the more awesome Mac seems. Man, it's pretty expensive though. Still less than my Media Center I think, cause from my recollection it was OVER TWO THOUUUSSSAAAAANNDDDDDDDD!!!
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They are expensive. But in my view, they are worth it. They're great computers and they will last you
forever. I just hauled my original first-generation iMac (from 1998) out of storage, put Mac OS X 10.3 on it (the version prior to the current one), and I was amazed to discover that this ancient piece of junk machine (233 MHz processor, 288 MB RAM) actually became usable. It's slow, but it's consistent and it somehow manages to remain graceful. The machine easily functions as an internet terminal or music player. I was extremely impressed (and elated to have another Mac around).
Originally Posted by Superkid11
Oh, and I'm going to send that info on Parralels/VMware and Game Maker programs to a friend of mine who uses a mac. He's dissapointed that he can't play this awesome game maker game on BZPower.
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Excellent. Parallels is a great solution and it should be able to handle just about anything you throw at it, as long as it's not a recent game with an advanced graphics engine.
Originally Posted by Superkid11
There's one more thing I need to ask about it now. You've used Windows a lot before you used a Mac amirite? What's it like adjusting to the new OS?
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I've been a Windows user all my life. My primary computers have always been Windows boxes for as long as I can remember. My first experience with Macs must have been around 1995-1998, but that was in the Mac OS 8 and 9 days (very different to how things are now). Then I moved away from Macs for no real reason, other than that I kept getting new PCs given to me every couple of years and it became less viable to do what I was doing on the Macs instead of the PCs. Last year, though, I decided that I was going to get back into the Mac fold (after their switch to Intel processors). Around June/July, I bought myself the $800 Mac mini (which at the time had considerably lower specs than the current $800 Mac mini). I fell in love. The machine was not blazingly powerful, but it renewed my interest in Macs and I kept abreast of developments from Apple. Eventually, after conferring with Dom and Murray (who both use Logic on Macs), and after deciding that I really hated Windows and wanted to be rid of it (and realizing that I would never be able to use Linux as my sole operating system), I took the plunge and bought the MacBook Pro. I haven't looked back since and don't regret it for a moment.
To answer your question, getting used to the interface in Mac OS X shouldn't be challenging for you. This is a very, very general statement, but I usually describe it as being "different from Windows but generally easier." Of course this isn't true for everything in OS X, but overall, you will have to relearn some basic fundamentals, but once you're in, you're in pretty much all the way and it's very simple from there. I'd say the learning curve is significantly less than a week -- if you're a die hard Windows lover and also an idiot at computers, it
may take you a week to get used to everything. I had adjusted within 48 hours -- I'd give you 96 tops. But you'll be able to do most of what you need to do long before then. Hope that's helpful.
