PC vs. Mac for dummies...

Lol, I remember when I asked a Apple/MS system question :D.

Mongo, if you go Apple and use any special programs, consider you will have to buy an Apple version of that program, IF it is available.

Either way you go you'll have to learn something. With Apple the new operating system. It may be easy and great but it will be different, which means times spent on it.

SPXTrader has the most to lose from Virus, et al. so listen to him for uber tight security.

If you stay with XP, you need to set up some extra security. Once set up, it is pretty maintanence free.

I run Ad-Aware and SuperAnti-Spyware always on, with the SuperAnti-Spyware scanning daily. I also have Spy-Bot for passive resistance and the occasional scan. For main security, I use BitDefender, which also scans daily.

Other than security programs, follow the advice others already outlined. The biggest is to never download or hit ok from random popups. If it claims "windows" needs an update, close that popup down and go to windows homepage and see what needs to be done. Especially if viewing videos or pics, never follow the advice given directly from that site.

Another easy passive block is to go into your options and block popups. If you need a popup to do banking, for example, you can actively allow popups from specified sites.
 
Arrrrrggggghhhh! I'm starting to get a frickin' headache! I checked out Mac stuff today... promptly shat myself when I saw how much it cost. I just want a damn computer that won't shut down due to viruses etc. So what if I alledgedly visit a pron site or two.... There's gotta be a way to make even that safe, alledgedly. I am supposed to get my fricken' work computer back maybe tomorrow. Hopefully it will be fixed/virus free and some beefier anti-virus installed.
 
As has already been said, No one really cares about Macs and haven't bothered to attack them. However, that may be ending.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2009/04/22/Mac-users-note-new-computer-virus/UPI-73661240441079/



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Well, the securest would be live CD of ubuntu probably. You boot from the CD (or USB stick) and nothing gets written to the disk It all runs out of RAM. You'd probably have to customize it a bit so you have flash and some hardware drivers, but that's not impossible.
 
Any Mac I touch seems to cost too much, run too slow, and freeze up. Any PC I touch doens't, including mine. And I run Vista.
 
UffDa said:
As has already been said, No one really cares about Macs and haven't bothered to attack them. However, that may be ending.
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You are aware that Apple's market share for newly sold computers is pretty close to 15%, right? Because for all the derisive comments, Apple's market share keeps growing, and Microsoft's keeps sliding...
 
gnius said:
You are aware that Apple's market share for newly sold computers is pretty close to 15%, right? Because for all the derisive comments, Apple's market share keeps growing, and Microsoft's keeps sliding...
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Based solely on mocking or jeering comments, Apple's market share is increasing? Not to be disrespectful or anything, but are you kidding me? Am I to believe that because, according to you, the bad mouthing of Apple is causing people to buy their products?

Based on your logic, the Yugo should have been car of the year. :D
 
SPXTrader said:
Gnius said:
You are aware that Apple's market share for newly sold computers is pretty close to 15%, right? Because for all the derisive comments, Apple's market share keeps growing, and Microsoft's keeps sliding..
Click to expand...
Based solely on mocking or jeering comments, Apple's market share is increasing? Not to be disrespectful or anything, but are you kidding me? Am I to believe that because, according to you, the bad mouthing of Apple is causing people to buy their products?

Based on your logic, the Yugo should have been car of the year. :D
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29. in spite of: He's a decent guy for all that.
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WOW!! You guys and I mean all of you guys know way more than I do about computers. My household has two DELL DESKTOPS about $1,300.00 each and a Dell Laptop, price unknown. We are running Norton 360. About a month ago it popped up and said I was basically under attack and showed how many Trojans and what kinds and where they were. It was something like 1000 Trojans, and worms. Not kidding, they were in red and flashing under each section of my hard drive? For instance, it said your documents and then under it, it said 365 Trojans blinking in red, and so on. Anyway, The Norton 360 told me what to do, and I did it. I haven't had a problem since then. I thought this was a knife site. LOL!
 
It is a knife site, and our computer discussions are on the cutting edge. This is the Gadgets & Gear forum, and computers are certainly either gadgets or gear.

I see that you're relatively new: welcome aboard.
 
PCs in general will run you -much- cheaper since Apple always gouges you for hardware and software. The main issue about securing yourself can be solved with a few free programmes such as Avast Anti Virus (www.avast.com), Spybot Search and Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org) and possibly Hijack this! if you're up to it (http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html) But I wouldn't recommend Hijack this if you don't -really- know what you're doing.

Anyhow, as far as functionality is concerned, Mac is a purely front-end basic system. You can read mail, type documents, surf the web, etc and everything will be fine and dandy. The second you try and customise it beyond a few looks, you'll run into a huge wall.

PC, is still the mainstream standard. If you want to play games, do work, and still have options available to you as of some of the deeper technobabbly stuff which I won't get into, buying one will be fine and dandy so long as you're careful (constant vigilance should be a familiar term hereabouts).

Linux, as far as it is now, is probably only good for a computer newbie as a front end workstation system as well. The sky's the limit with Linux, and basically everything in it is free, however you'll need to learn a number of new commands, interfaces, and have to deal with using the Open Source equivalent of regular software since most companies don't come up with Linux compiles for their stuff.

Overall, I'm personally still a PC person since I'm a gamer, and still probably going to be a gamer for quite some time. I run a little Linux on the side, but overall that's more of my own hobbyist stuff for now. If I were to dedicate it purely to Linux, I'm sure I could improve a number of things over what I've got inside windows, but as far as gaming compatibility is concerned Linux loses, hands down.

Also: Don't buy Vista. It's not worth anyone's time.
 
Kilroy Higgins said:
PCs in general will run you -much- cheaper since Apple always gouges you for hardware and software. The main issue about securing yourself can be solved with a few free programmes such as Avast Anti Virus (www.avast.com), Spybot Search and Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org) and possibly Hijack this! if you're up to it (http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html) But I wouldn't recommend Hijack this if you don't -really- know what you're doing.

Anyhow, as far as functionality is concerned, Mac is a purely front-end basic system. You can read mail, type documents, surf the web, etc and everything will be fine and dandy. The second you try and customise it beyond a few looks, you'll run into a huge wall.

PC, is still the mainstream standard. If you want to play games, do work, and still have options available to you as of some of the deeper technobabbly stuff which I won't get into, buying one will be fine and dandy so long as you're careful (constant vigilance should be a familiar term hereabouts).

Linux, as far as it is now, is probably only good for a computer newbie as a front end workstation system as well. The sky's the limit with Linux, and basically everything in it is free, however you'll need to learn a number of new commands, interfaces, and have to deal with using the Open Source equivalent of regular software since most companies don't come up with Linux compiles for their stuff.

Overall, I'm personally still a PC person since I'm a gamer, and still probably going to be a gamer for quite some time. I run a little Linux on the side, but overall that's more of my own hobbyist stuff for now. If I were to dedicate it purely to Linux, I'm sure I could improve a number of things over what I've got inside windows, but as far as gaming compatibility is concerned Linux loses, hands down.

Also: Don't buy Vista. It's not worth anyone's time.
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Perhaps you should do a little research on the topic before making statements like that. While there are a few programs that run only on PC's (and a few that run only on Mac's), the majority of programs nowadays are pretty much cross platform. The thought that Mac's are only good for reading emails and surfing the web is ludicrous. Mac's are used for everything -- science, engineering, graphics, etc. You might also be interested to learn that Mac's are very customizable. In great depth, too, if you want to delve into the Unix base. Oh, and by the way, Linux is no longer simply a command line interface suitable for servers.
 
dawsonbob said:
Perhaps you should do a little research on the topic before making statements like that. While there are a few programs that run only on PC's (and a few that run only on Mac's), the majority of programs nowadays are pretty much cross platform. The thought that Mac's are only good for reading emails and surfing the web is ludicrous. Mac's are used for everything -- science, engineering, graphics, etc. You might also be interested to learn that Mac's are very customizable. In great depth, too, if you want to delve into the Unix base. Oh, and by the way, Linux is no longer simply a command line interface suitable for servers.
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Graphical editing and video production, yes. Far as Science and Engineering go, we tend to use Linux here at my University (University of California San Diego; we host part of the DNS backbone). And from what I've seen we have a lot of hardware from Sun Microsystems.

Macs are only customisable if you want to break the EULA or the OS itself.

And I run Linux, I know that it's a GUI, please do take a second read of my post.
 
Kilroy Higgins said:
Graphical editing and video production, yes. Far as Science and Engineering go, we tend to use Linux here at my University (University of California San Diego; we host part of the DNS backbone). And from what I've seen we have a lot of hardware from Sun Microsystems.

Macs are only customisable if you want to break the EULA or the OS itself.

And I run Linux, I know that it's a GUI, please do take a second read of my post.
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With all due respect, UCSD is not all there is. In the outside world, Macs do get used for many other things, including science and engineering. I'm not in the least surprised that you use a lot of Sun equipment, but for what? It's a big world out there, and other people/other disciplines use things other than Sun and Linux.

Break the EULA? What kind of customization are you talking about? Millions of people go through their daily lives using Macs customized for business and personal use. I get the feeling that you've never actually used Macs, since you seem to be regurgitating a lot of misinformation that can be easily cleared up with a little research. I'm not picking on you, by any means, just the misinformation you presented as fact without having sought the truth.

I see that you're in San Diego. UCSD is a fine school, although I'm a SDSU man myself.
 
dawsonbob said:
With all due respect, UCSD is not all there is. In the outside world, Macs do get used for many other things, including science and engineering. I'm not in the least surprised that you use a lot of Sun equipment, but for what? It's a big world out there, and other people/other disciplines use things other than Sun and Linux.

Break the EULA? What kind of customization are you talking about? Millions of people go through their daily lives using Macs customized for business and personal use. I get the feeling that you've never actually used Macs, since you seem to be regurgitating a lot of misinformation that can be easily cleared up with a little research. I'm not picking on you, by any means, just the misinformation you presented as fact without having sought the truth.

I see that you're in San Diego. UCSD is a fine school, although I'm a SDSU man myself.
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We have a saying for SDSU, It's where people go when they couldn't get into UCSD. Well that and there was a rather large cocaine bust not too long ago over there. On a level of personal opinion I'd challenge their moral standing, but that's another issue.

And the customisation I'm talking about is more on a conceptual hardware basis as well as some of the other things like task schedulers. I'm going to go ahead and cede I don't know as much Unix as I'd like to to really get deep into this argument since I'm still learning, but for my experience I can say I'm not too much of a fan, since in their simplification process they create a number of problems. I.e. SSID compression where two networks with the same name get marked as the same network and are considered one, so if you have a primary one which is secured with a password, and another public access one, the mac tends to only detect the secure one.

And by Breaking the EULA, I mean things like Hackintosh; I'm on a triple boot of Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, and a hacked version of Mac OSX that works on PC hardware.

I think we're getting a bit too far afield though if we're talking about recommending a PC or a Mac to someone who's probably not going to be using it for much more than workstation duty.
 
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Kilroy Higgins said:
We have a saying for SDSU, It's where people go when they couldn't get into UCSD. Well that and there was a rather large cocaine bust not too long ago over there. On a level of personal opinion I'd challenge their moral standing, but that's another issue.

And the customisation I'm talking about is more on a conceptual hardware basis as well as some of the other things like task schedulers. I'm going to go ahead and cede I don't know as much Unix as I'd like to to really get deep into this argument since I'm still learning, but for my experience I can say I'm not too much of a fan, since in their simplification process they create a number of problems. I.e. SSID compression where two networks with the same name get marked as the same network and are considered one, so if you have a primary one which is secured with a password, and another public access one, the mac tends to only detect the secure one.

And by Breaking the EULA, I mean things like Hackintosh; I'm on a triple boot of Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, and a hacked version of Mac OSX that works on PC hardware.
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LOL. I graduated from SDSU back in 1973, so I'm not up on all the latest stuff. As I said, UCSD if a fine school. One of my sons was going to attend until he decided to major in girls and surfing at UC Santa Barbara (he took the easy way out, though he did finally end up getting his masters from Berkley).

I am not as well versed in IT/backbones as you, so I can't speak to that. What I can say is that Macs work very well for a lot of people outside of those disciplines. I know: I'm one of them. I've used Macs to make a living for a very long time now.

As far as that kind of customization (Hacintosh), no, they won't let you do that. They do like to control the software/hardware combination so they can control the quality. If you're into building your own, Macs aren't for you. On the other hand, 90 percent of the computer using public just wants to buy something off the rack that does what they want it to do. They want to do work on their computer, rather than work on their computer.
 
dawsonbob said:
LOL. I graduated from SDSU back in 1973, so I'm not up on all the latest stuff. As I said, UCSD if a fine school. One of my sons was going to attend until he decided to major in girls and surfing at UC Santa Barbara (he took the easy way out, though he did finally end up getting his masters from Berkley).

I am not as well versed in IT/backbones as you, so I can't speak to that. What I can say is that Macs work very well for a lot of people outside of those disciplines. I know: I'm one of them. I've used Macs to make a living for a very long time now.

As far as that kind of customization (Hacintosh), no, they won't let you do that. They do like to control the software/hardware combination so they can control the quality. If you're into building your own, Macs aren't for you. On the other hand, 90 percent of the computer using public just wants to buy something off the rack that does what they want it to do. They want to do work on their computer, rather than work on their computer.
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I'd agree there, Mac works off the shelf, keeps working, has at least a decent (if a bit snobby) community that'll help out. But for what I wanted, which is full out customisation on a level beyond daily use, Macs just aren't for me.

Here's a link by the way:
http://hubpages.com/hub/San-Diego-State-Drug-Bust---SDSU-Drug-Raid

My generation has a different outlook towards SDSU, probably the most common referencing to them is STD SU; I believe a recent study (back in late 90's or early 2000's) found that 1 in 3 students had an STD.

Times have changed, and sometimes it's a damn shame to hear about it.
 
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