Foo - Computers At Home: Apple, PC or Both

OK, I checked and didn't see this as a poll in the archives and, given that it's cold in a lot of places, now's a great time for a flame war.

So, never mind what's at work, what do you use in the home?

Us?

Apple / Mac

350 MHz PowerPC G4
733 MHz PowerPC G4 "Silver Streak"
2.16 GHz MacBook

PC

2.0 GHz HP Pavilion 9000 Series Entertainment Notebook

can't afford a mac

My wife and I have the following:

Her desktop computer - Gateway 2.1Ghz AMD w/ 2GB RAM & 250GB HD running XP MCE, with dual 19" LCD monitors
Her netbook - MSI Wind 1.2Ghz Atom w/ 1GB RAM & 120GB HD running XP Home
My computer - Apple MacBook 2.4 Ghz w/ 2GB RAM & 160GB HD running OSX 10.5.5, connected to a 19" widescreen monitor & a 200GB external HD & 80 GB external HD, with Microsoft Ergonomic 4000 keyboard & Microsoft ARC wireless mouse.
Old computer - Gateway 1.4Ghz AMD w/ 1GB RAM & 40GB HD running XP Home
Currently sitting in a closet doing nothing.
Eee PC 2GB Surf - 512K RAM, 2GB SSHD running some version of Linux
I'm going to attempt to install a stripped down version of XP Home on it soon, just for s**ts & giggles.

Clone PC XP Pro
AMD AM2 Dual Core 6000+
4GB Ram
8800GT
4TB

HP DV6000 series laptop 2Ghz Vista HP

Sony Vaio TZ28GN Laptop Vista U

Dell D620 Laptop XP Pro

eMac G4 1.25Ghz Mac OSX

Looking into buying a Macbook Air, but it really just isn't worth the money. The Sony equivalent is smaller, lighter and has better features. But Vaio pretty much sucks too if you ask me. I should rephrase, Vaio's suck until you remove the Sony software library they have installed on it. Then they run quite well.

I use my custom computer. Dual boots Windblows and Linux. I use Windblows most of the time, but once I get a second hdd, I can really see what Linux can do. I just didn't partition out enough space on my current hdd for Linux, so I can't install my games.

We have 3 Apple computers:

Ours: 2002 Emac 400 mhz, 128 MB RAM, combo drive
Mine: 2006 Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz intel core 2 duo, 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
His: 2007 Macbook 1 GHz intel core 2 duo, 1 GB RAM

All Macs:
Off the top of my head: (all Intel core 2 duos)
2-iMacs (aluminum ones) home/kid's area
1-MacBook (white one) wife's
1-MacBook Pro (aluminum one) mine and for work too
2-iMac G3s (print server and game machine)

At work
1-iMac Core2 duo
1-iMac G3 (print & fax server)

1-iPhone 1st generation -wife's
1-iPhone 3G -mine

I have no idea how many iPods.

In the attic the lineage stretches from an original 128k and a 512k fat mac through a couple of Classics through a couple of Performas to several PowerMacs. Including my collection of coffee destroyed PowerBooks: a g3 Lombard, and a PBG4 titanium.

Have been using Macs and Apples since the Apple // in 1979. Purchased my first Mac in '84.

zac

I do web design and graphic design (years of previous experience, and it's one of my jobs at the bike shop), so I have both.

PC: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
3GB PC2 6400 DDR
(2) 320GB SATA2 HDD
Windows Vista (ick!) and MEPIS Linux dual boot

Laptop: Toshiba Satellite 1.5GHz 2GB DDR - very old and slow. lol

Mac: iMac-DV :: OLD iMac. 400MHz - 2GB memory - 80GB HDD - OS 10.2 (Was called "DV" for digital video. ie: it has a DVD ROM instead of a CD-ROM. Oooooo! lol!)

All Microsoft, with the exception of an iPod Nano.

2 laptops running Vista Ultimate
1 media server running Vista Ultimate
1 office machine running Vista Business
2 HTC 8525 PDA phones running WinMobile 6.0
X360 and Xbox game systems
1 Zune

Main Rig:
C2D E4500 OC'd to 3.4GHz, 500GB + 250GB + 40GB, GF 8600GTS, 24" Dell LCD, 4GB RAM - Vista x64 and OS X 10.5.2

Extra:
P3 - 1GHz, 512 MB, 40GB + 20GB, GF4 Ti4200, 24" Westinghouse LCD, WinXP

Laptop - work machine:
Dell Latitude D630, C2D 2GHz, 2GB RAM, 80GB - WinXP

Server:
Dual 1GHz P3, 2GB RAM, 40GB + 2x 80 GB(RAID1) + 2x 250GB(RAID1), Mandriva Linux 2007 - serves up website and handles home server stuff.

All connected via Gigabit LAN.

I miss my old PowerMac G4. That was a Gigabit G4 400MHz upgraded with a Sonnet 1GHz chip, 2GB RAM, 80 + 250GB drives, Radeon 9200, ATA133 card and a USB 2.0 card. Really nice running machine, but I needed more power.

Also have parts to throw together a couple more downstairs gathering dust.

Mac and HP-PC.
I could/would never go back to a Microsoft based OS again.
Thanks Mac. :(

The cool thing about macs is that I can use Fusion to run
WinXP, Fedora and Ubuntu in addition Mac OSX ( all
at the same time on my macbook pro :)

We also use a Mac Mini as a generic home server.
On the server I run:

1) A domain name server for my home lan
2) A subversion server for the code I occasionally write
3) A Wiki that I use for trying to remember configuration details
4) A rsync server to ease making copies of stuff ( think iPhoto...)

We also have a PC laptop that dual boots XP and Fedora. On the
Fedora side I also have a virtualized WinXP available using Sun's Virtual Box.

My wife uses a Mac G4 ( Quicksilver).

Jerry

We have PC based and Apple based computers here. I don't run Windows on any of them. Mac OS X on the Apples and Linux on all PC based equipment - several desktops and laptops. For Linux I usually run CentOS on the household server and Fedora or Ubuntu on the others.

Our household has been Microsoft-free™ since 1993.

IBM Z50 (133MHz MIPS) running NetBSD
Sony (400MHz PII) C1XS running Red Hat 9
HP L2000 (AMD Turion) notebook running Ubuntu
iMac (2.4GHz Core Duo) running OS X

Life is Good Without Satan's Software Under the Hood™

:-)

My home - 3 MS OS computers.

My office - 25,000 MS OS Dell machines, plus about 100 or so Macs here and there.

Why did you just set poll for home use? That skews the results, doesn't it?

At home (i.e. my apartment in San Diego): a MacBook Pro 17" (1st of the Core2 Duo ones)

At work (my personal computer, owned/maintained by me): an iMac G5 17"

At my parents' place during holidays (i.e. all children home, only counting actively used computers):
for personal use: my MacBook Pro, my sister's MacBook (Core2 Duo), my sister's MacBook Pro (Core2 Duo), my sister's Sony VAIO 15" laptop (Pentium M, bought in 2003)

for a mix of work use (for my dad's office) and personal use: my dad's Sony VAIO 15" laptop (identical to my sister's), a new cheapo eMachines desktop

for work use: MacSE (in original spec of 1 MB RAM and 20 MB hard drive)

Why did you just set poll for home use? That skews the results, doesn't it?

I think that's the point. Not many of us have a choice of what to use at work (I sure don't), so to answer "What do you use at work?" wouldn't really indicate what we'd use if we could choose for ourselves.

can't afford a mac

Can't afford a PC.

I have a workstation-grade laptop that I use for photo-editing and work for clients (HP nw8240, Windows Server 2008).

I also have an e-mail server that is LINUX-based (Dell XPS T450).

I then have my laptop that I used to use for work, but is now my sort-of media center. (IBM Thinkpad R40, Windows XP Professional).

Then there's the retired server that I will probably restore and make the main media and SMB storage server. (Dell Dimension CPa, last had Windows 2000 Server)

I have a super cheap laptop (which I discovered it's cheapness when I finally got it up and running), which I was giving to my sister, but I might either donate or switch its role with the Thinkpad (Compaq Presario 2100, might put Linux on it)

Then there's the laptop I'm really giving away to my sister, but I used for a little while as the workhorse computer (IBM Thinkpad R40 WFU, Windows XP Professional).

I might be inheriting another server, which it's purpose has yet to be determined (HP Vectra 400 MHz).

Finally, I have a laptop sitting in my cabinet that's out of service, but I will restore and will use for learning the roots of Linux (Dell Latitude CPi, Slackware Linux)

No Macs yet; I thought I had a need for it some time ago, but it turns out that I don't. I used to have a iMac G3, but it was a PAIN IN THE BEHIND to upgrade to 10.4 (when it had 10.2). The internal CD-ROM gave out, and there was nothing you could do to get it to accept an external CD-ROM. Bummer.

When Apple starts charging reasonable prices, I will consider becoming a customer. I hate getting ripped off.

When Apple starts charging reasonable prices, I will consider becoming a customer. I hate getting ripped off.

When MS starts making OS software that doesn't blow so hard I will consider becoming a customer. I hate getting ripped off.

By the way, I'm a little biased, I got my first Mac in June of 1984, which is nearly 25 years ago. I did own a PC for a couple of years. Utter and complete waste of time and money in every respect. But MS Flight Simulator is cool.

my wife and i have the following:

her desktop computer - gateway 2.1ghz amd w/ 2gb ram & 250gb hd running xp mce, with dual 19" lcd monitors
her netbook - msi wind 1.2ghz atom w/ 1gb ram & 120gb hd running xp home
my computer - apple macbook 2.4 ghz w/ 2gb ram & 160gb hd running osx 10.5.5, connected to a 19" widescreen monitor & a 200gb external hd & 80 gb external hd, with microsoft ergonomic 4000 keyboard & microsoft arc wireless mouse.
old computer - gateway 1.4ghz amd w/ 1gb ram & 40gb hd running xp home
currently sitting in a closet doing nothing.
eee pc 2gb surf - 512mb ram, 2gb sshd running some version of linux
i'm going to attempt to install a stripped down version of xp home on it soon, just for s**ts & giggles.


fify?

When MS starts making OS software that doesn't blow so hard I will consider becoming a customer. I hate getting ripped off.

Windows ME was horrible, but no troubles otherwise.

Maybe we should rate hard drives. I'll never purchase another Seagate ever again.

I'm upgrading my puppy (which is about the size of a tank) I already put in a new power supply (PC Power and Cooling, the best). This week a E8500 cpu goes in (great bang for the buck) and Xmas day I get a GTX260 card. It's a freaking monster, powerful enough to play games at hi rez on a 24 inch monitor.
The monitor we'll get with the tax refund.

I've had no issues with Seagate HDs....

When Apple starts charging reasonable prices, I will consider becoming a customer. I hate getting ripped off.


Ironic. Id like to see some type of poll relating to who favors what type bike/computer :).
For bikes, Im strictly decades olde stuff, Bell parts from K-Mart or Target to keep the
junquetiques running up to mediocrity....For comps, Ive lost sooooo much stuff and wasted
soooo much time rebuilding resumes and other important docs, I dont see the extra
money spent on a Mac as a rip-off, only as insurance for not getting some bizarre restart-
system failure event at the worst possible moment :eek:
Im trying an Asus/Linux rig next so that might even eliminate cost issues that the MAc has.
:)

I do software for a living in a company that makes silicon logic devices for a lot of computers for both of the main camps and nixes too.

I also did graphic design a long time ago and my wife's photo business is getting serious. So I just ordered a Mac Pro. We have Mac Minis and a MacBook plus some old Macs (before G3) and G3. Just retired them recently

When you go to the workstation level. A MacPro is actually cheaper than a Dell, HP or IBM/lenovo equivalent, almost 1500 cheaper same hardware actually almost same. All new Macpros have a 1600 frontside bus and using 800 MHZ RAM. A dell with a dual Quad 2.8 1600MhZ FSB xeon is about $4k without memory.

Build your own, by the time you got yourself 2 Xeon 2,8 Quad cores with a 1600 mHz and a a dual socket motherboard, you will have paid more than you'll get for a basic 2 proc Quad Xeon MacPro and 8 out 10 you will have to RMA something back because it doesn't work (drivers and stuff)

Yes Mac get's you in the laptop and desktop level where they cost too much, but seriously consider them if you really need a powerful workstation. You can always run windows on them natively.

If you want to really tinker. Get one of those embedded devices and run embedded linux to control your water sprinkler system. Nothing will geek you out than compiling Linux from scratch

Can't afford a PC.

This is actually very true. Anybody serious about any graphic design work should buy a Mac Workstation. It is actually cheaper

Even in the scientific community, Macs are the choice. Also use by mining and oil engineers as well.

Also the graphic software companies have already rewritten a lot of their software to really run 64 bit on the Mac. There may be a lot of software written for XP but most of it is not good software.

I like Microsoft though, well some of it. We have found out that .NET can out perform Java as an interpreted platform

At work we made a computer cluster out of 11 mac minis and pitted it against 10 Dell XPS bull-dogs which had faster processor and nosier fans. The windows based cluster lost... and used 10 times more juice than the Mac mini's.

BTW I still have a Digital Alpha workstation. Running 64 bit back when NT just started out. It is serving as my router and firewall for my house.

I got Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac the other day. I had to spend TWO HOURS on the telephone with MS tech support to simply import my database from MS Office X, which is an older program (7 years old) that MS had stopped supporting. But it's typical MS: we had to first install the Office 2004 demo (an interim version), import the data into that, then import it into Office 2008. God what a clusterfck. And this is Business as Usual at Microsoft. Friggin aholes. That's ridiculous. This is a newer generation of a program they sold me 7 years ago. You should be able to import the friggin data in five minutes, and you certainly shouldn't have to burn up 2 hours and one of your TWO free tech support incidents (that's big of them, eh?) to get started with the program.

I'm telling you, if you really think MS can get away with pissing on their customers forever, you are incorrect. Ask GM about that.

Microsoft technical support usually is a clusterf*ck. They are my ultimate, be-all-end-all last resort for support of any kind.

PCs:
Dual-core Athlon64 X2 5200+, fanless GeForce 8600GT, 2GB of RAM (I think), 500GB hard drive, Apple Cinema HD, Ubuntu Linux.
Compaq notebook of some sort, 1.8GHz AMD Turion64, 1.5GB RAM, yada yada, Ubuntu Linux, used occasionally.
Graphite Power Macintosh G4, dual processor 533MHz, 15" Samsung LCD, OS X 10.3.x, in the closet.
Macintosh SE/30, 16MHz 68030, 32MB RAM, 1GB SCSI HD, lots of external accessories, built-in 9" monochrome display (:)), System 7.1.x, also put away.

Non-PCs:
1930 Royal Portable manual typewriter.

This is actually very true. Anybody serious about any graphic design work should buy a Mac Workstation. It is actually cheaper

Even in the scientific community, Macs are the choice. Also use by mining and oil engineers as well.

Also the graphic software companies have already rewritten a lot of their software to really run 64 bit on the Mac. There may be a lot of software written for XP but most of it is not good software.

I like Microsoft though, well some of it. We have found out that .NET can out perform Java as an interpreted platform

At work we made a computer cluster out of 11 mac minis and pitted it against 10 Dell XPS bull-dogs which had faster processor and nosier fans. The windows based cluster lost... and used 10 times more juice than the Mac mini's.

BTW I still have a Digital Alpha workstation. Running 64 bit back when NT just started out. It is serving as my router and firewall for my house.

Anything can outperform Java. I like programming in Java, as it removes a lot of the manual dirty work that I would have to do in C++, but it's seriously a dog. Programming UIs in Java makes it strikingly obvious.

can't afford a mac

Yes, you can! :D

Microsoft technical support usually is a clusterf*ck. They are my ultimate, be-all-end-all last resort for support of any kind.

The point is not the poor quality of their support. It is their inferior software. Because if their software didn't suck so hard, I never would have called them in the first place.

Ironic. Id like to see some type of poll relating to who favors what type bike/computer :).
For bikes, Im strictly decades olde stuff, Bell parts from K-Mart or Target to keep the
junquetiques running up to mediocrity....For comps, Ive lost sooooo much stuff and wasted
soooo much time rebuilding resumes and other important docs, I dont see the extra
money spent on a Mac as a rip-off, only as insurance for not getting some bizarre restart-
system failure event at the worst possible moment :eek:
Im trying an Asus/Linux rig next so that might even eliminate cost issues that the MAc has.
:)

Might try a linux machine next time.

The only times I've had substantial failures, it's been with hard drives - not OS or software.

The point is not the poor quality of their support. It is their inferior software. Because if their software didn't suck so hard, I never would have called them in the first place.

I had to call Apple one day because my iPod refused to boot. Does that mean that their hardware sucks?

As they say on Slashdot, correlation does NOT equal causation.

We have about 4 Mac's at home (if you count the Macintosh Classic 8" black-and-white which stills work over 20 years later).

We use Mac's at work. I'm the boss so no PC's are allowed. Xp sometimes on VMWare if someone sends an odd attachment that iWork or OOo can't open.

Even in the scientific community, Macs are the choice. Also use by mining and oil engineers as well.


Outside of mining and oil engineering (which I'm not familiar with) where are Macs "the choice" in the scientific community?
I've worked in biotech engineering for the past 15 years, and the only two departments I've seen a Mac in have been the HPLC lab at P&G Miami Valley Labs (as legacy equipment) and in my current company's Art Department.

Made the switch a couple years ago and am much happier with the operating system. I own a Macbook (2.0 ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM) and although I love the OS, I've had a couple problems with the computer itself.

1. Case gets dirty too easily. Seems obvious but there wasn't much choice: black picks up oily prints (and was more expensive) and white is...white.
2. Bad heat control. Computer gets VERY hot and overheats easily. The tiny fan in the back doesn't quite get the job done.
3. Crap case durability. Case has started to come apart at the seams and has multiple cracks from regular use. I know 7 people with Macbooks and 4 have this problem. One person had it happen twice. I imagine this problem will not happen with the new Al case.
4. Poor battery life. The screen isn't particularly large (which is good for portability) but the battery really doesn't last long considering screen size and brightness. When brand new, the battery lasted almost 3 hours with the screen on the dimmest setting and WiFi off doing word processing. About a year and a half later, the computer began shutting off randomly. Applecare said the battery indicator was malfunctioning and said it was "normal" because it was at 300 charge cycles (though the condition still indicated "good"). Now at 370 the computer shuts off at ~50% battery life.

Can't say I'd necessarily get an Apple for my next computer. Love the OS but the laptop itself has been disappointing at best.

^^^ Having owned a black car and a white iBook, I'll say that the black car was immensely more difficult to keep looking clean. The iBook has scratches all over it, but I can't see them unless I look for them in the case's reflection.

The battery is typical of li-ion batteries. Work it once in a while and it should've been fine.

I have a 2.2 core 2 duo Macbook running 10.5.5, a home built PC (3.2 Ghz Pentium 4) running Slackware Linux and a home built Shuttle Mythtv box with Gentoo as it's OS.

I like to build and tinker with my own bikes and computers, making them just as I like them. Anything that goes wrong is my fault, and I never have to call tech support.

Not one Mac/Apple product in the house, about 13 PCs between work and here.

^^ exactly.

Anything that goes wrong is my fault

What happens if you have a defective part :mad: or operating system :roflmao2: ?

both.

5 Mac laptops, 17 Mac desktops, 1 Apple desktop, 3 Windows desktops, and i don't know how many boxes of parts to build more.

We have several PCs around the house, two that we used regularly, and two older ones we have just sitting around.

I used to be a HUGE MAC-only snob until I got a PC because it cost less and the software I needed to use was PC-only. I will never go back to a MAC. I find PCs to be more flexible and cheaper, etc, etc, etc.

PC. Built it myself and hand picked every component. I play too many games to go any other route. It's also nice to have a cutting edge computer for only ~$1300.

I got a mix of OS7.5 and OS X Macs, Windoze boxes, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris stuff. My monthly energy bill is killing me tho.