Daryl

Here and then some

Pot, kettle, black

ScoobyDoo555

My beef with PC is during my job (sound engineer), PC's have caused me so many problems due to being sh1te. Period. Unreliable. Problematic. Primarily down to the OS and the incompatible hardware. Needless to say a client paying £1200 per day, doesn't like to lose half the day with a techie trying to sort out a PC......

Macs are reliable. Always have been. Mainly due to a rock-solid OS, and hardware components that work well together.

In the media industry, it is standard due to this very reason.

This is MY experience. For my area of work, Mac wins hands down. PC is good, but more generic.

Dan (writing this from my PC - used for day-to-day stuff. Mac is on in the studio at the moment!! )

Iain Young

Not at all. If you actually read my posts, you will see that I think Macs are great machines. I just think that Pcs are great machines as well. It seems that if you own or use a Mac it means that you must be of the opinion that all pcs are the spawn of the devil, which clearly isn't the case.

andy.downes

iTrader: (1)

Shouldn't every piece of hardware be plug and play - wouldn't that be easier for us all. I am extremely computer literate as thats what I do for my job. I never approached a Mac until I started working at my present employers, I took the plunge and it was the greatest decision I've made in computing. Windows and Pc's are needlessly complicated, allowing very unexperienced operators access to core systems and files.

As was quoted earlier, everyone is loyal to their side of the 'computer fence', seriously, you'll get a lot less hassle from a Mac.

Iain Young

Ok, so what make / brand of pc are you trying to use then? You should never get incompatible hardware problems with a well made machine. I work daily with a couple of hundred pcs, and none of them have ever caused us any problems like this, (other than the occaisional hardware failure - which you'd expect from machines that are run 24/7).

Very true. However, I can say exactly the same about my pcs and XP Pro / Server 2003 installations.

I still think the main reason people knock the pc is because they have either bought cheaper machines which have not had the level of testing that the good brands have, (and so there are hardwareincompatabilities), or they use buggy software (which is not the fault of the pc or the operating system).

Iain - typing this from my XP Pro dev machine at work which hasn't been rebooted for about 6 months now...

RichB

Iain - You are clearly one of the lucky ones!

I would be interested to know what perecentage of the PC using flock actually have the need to go poking around under the Windows bonnet.
Give them a Mac mini to do their surfing/emailing Aunt Agness, typing up tupperwarte party invites and they will probably never experience anything like the blue screen of death ever again...

This site is not a good gauge of the general public because it would seem most are lazy or bored (or both) IT people!

It seems to me that in the general scheme of things most people could get through life using either but as soon as you get a problem with it, the PC user will be stuck for longer. At one of my client sites, there are about 7 women, 2 of them have a PC but no longer use it because it doesn't work or the modem has stopped or they have some sort of virus.
One of them had a Dell delivered, we installed a couple of apps on it, within a week the machine was shagged, you can't even open the control panel, it hangs.
I can't get it to connect to the internet because it won't recognise the usb router.
I tried reinstalling Windows XP but now half the stuff is missing, just waiting to dump in on my (predictably Pro-Windows-Anti-Mac) mate to sort it out. Incidentally, if you have any ideas on why this would be I would love to hear them!
What concerns me is that (and I know the insults will come flying in ) if I, a Mac software developer of 10 years and web developer of 5 years, can not simply install WinXP how the bloody hell does Mrs Miggins down the road?
The answer is, she can't, she leaves in the corner gathering dust (which is where PCs should be )

Iain Young

I suppose I must be. Then again, I'm just careful about what software I install.

No comment, for fear of incriminating myself

So the machines weren't properly configured then. If they were, it should not be possible (or at least very unlikely) to get a virus.

I've never seen that happen before. I'd be asking what else had they been installing when you weren't there. Alternatively a hardware failure (bad sectors on the disc) could cause that.

You mean it hasn't got an ethernet port on the back of the machine? I can't imagine why you'd want to connect a router to a pc via a usb connection.

Sounds like they've been installing dodgy software to me.

Erm, reboot pc, stick in windows xp cd, select install from the menu, let it run by itself for half and hour, job done. The only user intervention required during an xp install is to choose the language settings etc. Once the OS is installed, they you just need to install any device specific drivers you may have (graphics card, modem etc). You can do the whole job from a blank disc in under an hour.

I think some of the problem with XP is that you have easy access to do so much stuff under the covers, and this can cause problems for unexperienced people who start fiddling with things they shouldn't. People wouldn't consider servicing their own cars if they knew nothing about it, so I've no idea why they seem to think that can work with the innards of XP...

I've been developing software for pcs (and more recently java / servlet based web applications) for over 11 years, (I've even worked on OS2 if you can remember that) and have never experienced problems like you are describing, especially since XP came out, (windows ME was a bit of a nightmare - I admit that ).