Back on Mac

11 Sep, 2007 | ComputersTdp

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm back on a Mac. I'd been thinking about a new PC for a while, thinking I would get a cracking laptop, but as I prefer using my computer at my desk with a full-size keyboard and mouse, not to mention two monitors, and I was thinking of replacing my desktop I decided it was a better idea to get a new desktop and just keep my existing laptop. Looking around I wanted something powerful (I transcode videos quite often and wanted to convert my VHS collection to digital) and, most especially, quiet. I also liked to idea of running OS X and Windows, which the new Intel Macs can do.

I didn't want an iMac, I didn't need the screen and they had no upgradeability, so plumped for a Mac Pro. Oh yes.

So I now use a machine with quad Xeon cores, upgraded to 4Gb of RAM, with a 500Gb HDD. To be honest, the difference is negligible in terms of raw speed, although it can happily transcode a video and still remain perfectly usable.

Here's a few things (mostly gripes) from my experience over the last couple of months:



Overall, I'd quite happily switch back to XP, I find OS X slow and unintuitive to use. Partly the hassle of shifting is stopping me, and also, Scrivener. What a great piece of software that is, if you're writer of any kind, I urge you to give it a try. Anyway, my level of respect for Windows has gone up, maybe it's just the way I work, but OS X is far from perfect and fails on so many basic things you wonder why anyone uses it and just how much productivity is being lost by people using a system that, frankly, doesn't work very well. My ideal would be to run Windows and access OS X via a parallels-esque virtual machine.