Thread: From Mac to PC
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Luca
ಠ_ರೃ
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
 
2004-10-04, 11:01

Okay, this has been in the works for at least a week now, but I haven't told a lot of people. But I think it will provide an interesting discussion, and perhaps separate the mature among us from the immature .

I'm switching from my Mac to a PC. Yeah, that's correct. I built a cheap $400 PC about two weeks ago from new or lightly used parts, and it runs circles around my Mac at pretty much everything. I bought a KVM switch so I can have the Mac and PC hooked up to the same keyboard/mouse/monitor set, but I rarely use the Mac anymore.

Now I'll try to explain why I decided to switch to the "dark side":

I use my computer for a few simple things... listening to music (iTunes), AOL Instant Messenger, surfing the interweb, basic organization functions (contact list, calendar, to-do list), image manipulation (Photoshop Elements), DVD playback and burning, and gaming. I don't make home movies, I don't make music or anything... just those basic functions. Normally, I'd just stay with what Mac I have, since it's fine for all those things. Except gaming. I put a Radeon 9800 Pro in the Mac, and upgraded the processor to a 1.33 GHz G4, and it still sucks for gaming. The PC has an Athlon XP 2400+ (runs at 2.0 GHz), half the RAM of the Mac (512 MB), and a Radeon 9600 Pro video card... and it completely kills the G4 at anything involving 3D acceleration.

I came up with an interesting analogy for my situation. No, not a car analogy. A strip club analogy . Bear with me (pun intended). There are plenty of strip clubs that cater to different audiences, but the two most basic ones are the lowest common denominator club that isn't too expensive and is geared towards college students, and the classy, upscale "gentlemen's club." You might spend $50 at a cheap club while an upscale one might cost $100 or $150 for a night out. And at this point in my life, I don't really appreciate all the little niceties that you'd get from a gentlemen's club. So I just go to the cheap one and have fun, and either way, I see boobs . Maybe in a few years I'll have more money and learn to appreciate the nicer club, but until then why not just go to the place that is specifically targeted to me?

Same with Macs and PCs. I'm a tinkerer, and while my computer always ran the Mac OS, I didn't treat it the way one treats Macs. I kept trying to get more out of it by adding ridiculously expensive upgrades. I'm just too much of a tinkerer and I don't have enough money to truly appreciate the Mac. I would never even dream of getting an iMac - they're not expandable at all! But perhaps in five or six years, when I am on the road to a successful career and computers take a back seat to the finer things in life, I can once again buy (and appreciate) a sleek, elegant, and efficient Mac. Macs aren't meant for people like me, gearheads who want the latest and greatest stuff for as cheap as you can get it.

So, what do you guys all think of this? Want to disown me yet? I still like Macs, in case you're wondering. They're just not right for me (yet).

P.S. If anyone wants a PowerMac, I'm selling mine. 1.33 GHz G4 upgrade, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB hard drive, 8x DVD burner, Radeon 9800 Pro, USB 2.0 PCI card, with a Quicksilver 2001 motherboard and case. It's a screamer, about on par with the iMac G5s, and the Xbench score is generally around 130-140. I'm looking to get a grand or just slightly more for it, which I will use to build a very nice, tricked out PC. This old POS PC I'm using now isn't really up to my standards if it's going to be my only computer.
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