Just came off of another thread where a member mentioned his computer and some of the specs.
Wuz wondering what others are running.

Me?

Self built:
ECS A780GM Motherboard w/AMD 7550 Dual Core Processor 2.5GHz
GeForce 9500GT
4GB Ram
1770GB of Hard Drive space
Window 7, Home Premium 32 bit
Two 23" Wide screen monitors

 

MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard.

I am a software engineer and use a PC at work daily to develop enterprise level N-Tier applications for use by the Air Force. I develop applications utilizing C# and the .Net Framework. I do backend development with SQL 2005. I say all of this just to emphasize the point that when I get home, the last thing I want to see in my house is a PC with a Windows operating system on it. Windows sucks.... It always has, and it always will. I got rid of my last home PC over a year ago, and hope to never see one in my home again. If you have never used a Mac, then it is hard to understand just how bad windows is. If you have used a Mac to the level that you understand the underlying architecture of the OS, then you get it.

 

Self Built:
AMD 64 X2 Dual Core 2.61 GHz
ASUS Crosshair MB
2 gig ram
4 drives - 2-250s, 2- 300s
Dual Geforce 7600GT cards
4 -19" monitors
Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate

 

I was always told that by my son...he uses a Mac for Art, he is an art teacher...he hates windows...guess I should check it out sometime...but everything I do is windows based...

 

I used to tell myself that also, but I find that outside of programming, I can do anything on a mac that I need to share with windows users. For example you can use a suite of tools called Open Office that has an equivalent application for every application in Microsoft Office. I even used the PC version of Open Office when I used PCs. And best of all Open Office is an open source project that is free. Even all the apps in iWorks allow you to save the files in a Windows format. On one of my Macs, I installed Windows XP and I can run Windows via Parallels. I have this just for those occasions that I need to do some windows programming at home, or want to flash a ROM on a Windows Mobile cell phone. I find that it is a very rare occasion that I use Windows on the Mac.

If you want to try Snow Leopard, and want to do it on a budget, you could do a hackintosh on a Dell netbook. You could have a mini macbook up and running with Snow Leopard for between $250 and $350 depending on whether you went with a 9" or 10" netbook. There are plenty of how to's on the internet for doing this.

 

I've had Mac and Windows boxes side by side at home for years - I used to work in commercial print and direct mail advertising. Back in the day my Win98 machine and OS9 machines both crashed/locked up a lot. Well, the Win98 machine would display the ol' BSOD but the OS9 box would just plain lock up. Either way, they both needed to be restarted. It should be noted that back then the specs on the Windows computer I had were much better than the specs on the Mac, but the Mac was easily as fast, if not faster.

With the introduction of WinXP and OS-X my current machines are both rock stable - I built my XP box myself - and although the specs on the XP box are far superior to those of this newer Mac, it's speed advantage isn't quite as great as one might think. This time around the Windows machine is faster, no doubt, but then again the Mac isn't a real high end machine. I use the XP box for almost everything, but find that opening Word, Excel, Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXpress, InDesign etc files created on either and opened on the other is a no brainer. Both are connected to our home network so even direct file sharing is a piece of cake. I have noticed that the Internet tends to not be a real Mac friendly place, however. Many, many web pages don't seem to render quite right on the Mac, regardless of browser used.

I do have a serious issue with the cost of most Mac hardware - it's crazy expensive for what you get, and in my experience it's not really worth the additional cost for most users. Now that I'm out of that industry I don't see a real reason for me to ever buy another. No doubt the aesthetics of design are far, far superior to anything I've seen in the PC world and monitor quality is exemplary.

Oh, and another observation: when MS released Vista and people bitched about legacy hardware compatibility, nobody really discussed Apple's intro of OS-X and the gross lack of software compatibility, let alone legacy hardware. That's why all Apple computers that shipped with the new OS-X back in the day were dual boot machines - OS9 was included on all of them because almost nothing would run on X. After a year or 18 months Apple stopped shipping the dual boot machines, but outcry was huge so they reverted back. Of course, those OS-X only machines wouldn't even accept a reformat and install of OS9!! The company I worked for didn't migrate to X for almost 3 years, and I recall reading in a trade journal at the time that 2 years after the intro of X less than 25% of all commercial print houses, graphics studios, and design centers had fully migrated to X. But hey, it was Apple, so apparently it was fine. Had Bill Gates done the same thing, to the same degree (and Vista was nowhere close to that level of incompatibility, by the way) MS would have been vilified even more than it already is.

 

I have used both Mac and PC and liked the Mac much better from a user stand point. It was just more intuitive to use. I have been a computer hardware guy since the 70's. I build my own systems and the current one is:
EVGA 780i motherboard
Intel 2.8GHz Quad Core processor
XFX GF 7900GS video
3GB memory
Promise RAID controller w/ 4x 250GB HDD's
1 80GB HDD (system)
1 250GB HDD
2 multi drives (CD/DVD)
Mozart TX case
ViewSonic 22" display
Windows XP Pro

When I upgrade my box, the old hardware migrates to one of the kids or grandkids machines. I keep thinking about new HDD's but I dont host a server, so this one has more than I really need.

 

Okay all you Mac guys explain this to me (cause I really don't know) Macs used to have RISC chips (Motorolla if memory serves me right) Now they're running Intel chips, CISC chips. But supposedly they still aren't affected by the viruses, malware, etc out there like WinBlows based PCs. how is this so?? Down to the compiler level isn't the code all the same??

 

It is not the chip that makes a computer vulnerable to viruses. It is the operating system.