Should I forget about buying a Dell 8600?

dleutscher

As a newbie on this site, please bear with me while I address what is probably an often-discussed topic.



I want a new laptop to replace my PowerBook G3 Wallstreet running OS 9.1 (will be used by my wife primarily for email) and must decide whether now is the time to change my allegiance to Dell after using Macs for the past 10 years.



The applications I currently use most often are Word, Excel and PowerPoint ?98, Outlook Express 5.01, and Internet Explorer 5.1.6.



If I buy an Apple PB G4 1.25 GHz 15" with 1GHZ RAM, my major concern is software compatibility with the PC world, including but not limited to Safari and MS Office (Outlook and Visio in particular). Secondarily, I fear wanting to (or needing to) run a Windows-only application and not being able to do so both efficiently and effectively, even under VirtualPC/Windows.



If I buy a Dell 8600 with 1GHZ RAM and 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo, my major concerns are the fear of needing to be a near-expert system administrator to keep it running efficiently (I am short on patience) and the issues around viruses.



Then the thought comes to me?maybe I should wait for the introduction of the next hardware upgrade for both systems, but of course that merely postpones the inevitable decision, bringing me back to square one.



The systems are priced about the same, all things being relatively equal (I can already hear your minds working on a response to that phrase).



I have already spent far too much time thinking through this decision, so I would greatly appreciate receiving your comments.

alcimedes

if you want to be fighting with your computer to make it work, get a PC. if you just want to get stuff done, get a Mac. either platform will be able to do whatever work you need (excluding odd software) w/o a hitch.

iwant

Stick with the mac, you wont regret it.the 15 PB is a good machine, very mobile aswell. One more thing... mermory is in Bytes not hertz.

nofeer

my 2cents, all those programs you mention run on mac and are interchangable with pc and easily swap files, besides the mac is much cooler looking, it will last longer keep it's value and give you much less grief. I have had both, now with dell 8100 only because of a single proprietary program for work. I've had a mac since 84 and i have only had to take my mac in to a tech once when i messed up the firmware update when i went to os 10. why go to uncool, backward in customer usage. If i could get rid of this dell i would, and when my program goes to a webbased product bingo, even if i have to get virtual pc running windows 2000 (xp is a mess). ive had 20 years of superior performance and reliability. hey we invented plug and play.....geeeee



another story--when i hooked up my airport, my mac worked immediately, it took me 6 weeks combing AI and Dell, and macfixit to get the dell and it's crappy wireless card to connect. windows are so convaluted, strange, nonintuitive and virus prone, just for virus protection i'd get rid of windows.

another fact, 25% of windows/pc buyers return there purchase due to non-usability, Hmmmmmmm

luca

It's easy for Mac-heads to promote Macs and say why they're so much better than Windows machines. What response did you expect asking at a Mac board? Anyway, I have another approach to answering this question, and that is to look at the amount of progress being made on either side.



Apple has come out with a huge number of new and updated products in the past year or two. They've jumped from the fastest machine being a dual 1.25 GHz G4 at the beginning of the year to the fastest one being a dual 2.0 GHz G5. That's a pretty big leap. They were the first to provide an affordable 64-bit personal computer. They were the first to provide a 17" laptop, and they still have the best 17" laptop around (and they probably will for a good long time). Hardware aside, they also have the iTunes Music Store, and OS X 10.3 Panther, another one of their yearly updates to the OS. And you know they'll come out with 10.4 within a year from now, and 10.5 within a year of that. Apple is making huge progress in all areas.



On the other hand, there's the Windows world. Not much progress there. You buy a Windows machine, and you're buying into an industry that rests on its laurels. You can't even find many Windows machines that have bothered to drop the old "legacy" ports, like Serial, Parallel, PS/2, and the like. This in turn promotes the use of those old interfaces for stuff like keyboards, mice, modems, and printers, when USB could easily be used. Sure, plenty of people have told me that it costs basically nothing to leave in all those legacy ports, but look at how difficult it is to find a USB keyboard on the PC side of things! I wanted a natural, split-key keyboard and I had to buy a USB to PS/2 adapter to get mine to work. Also, Intel at least is going to be 32-bit only for quite a while, because they're insisting on using the Itanium processor, which is woefully behind in development compared to the G5 and the Opteron. Many tech writers think that x86 is here to stay, which is just as ignorant as when they thought that 8-bit or 16-bit computing was here to stay. The next update to Windows won't happen until 2005 or 2006. All the competing digital music services are in MS's pocket, whoring themselves to Microsoft's WMA codec, and providing inferior service and sound quality compared with Apple's AAC files from iTunes.



So... if you're completely stuck on deciding based on the merits of either machine, look at the direction each platform is going in and ask yourself where you'd rather be. And good luck with your decision!

pensieve

Damn, Luca. Nice post! You should stay with the Mac. VPC will work in a pinch.

luca

Yeah, but I'd suggest just looking for an old PC to scrounge up. A Pentium 2 or a Pentium 3 in the 200-400 MHz range shouldn't cost more than the price of the Virtual PC software, and it'll run Windows XP much faster and with actual video acceleration (even if you have something horrible like a Rage XL or an S3 Trio). Old PCs are basically worthless. In fact, for the $129 price of VPC (just the software, not the Windows OS), you can probably get a 233 MHz Pentium 2 and have money left over for an OEM copy of Windows.



EDIT: I forgot, thanks for the compliment pensieve! I wrote all that and looked back and said, "Wow, that's a good post, if I may say so myself!" Just summed up my thoughts on the Wintel world very well. I mean, Windows does work. It works fine. And I think that's the main problem, is that people are in this mindset that as long as it works fine, it's good enough. Apple's not like that. But of course, people are afraid to move to a Mac because many of them are so afraid of their computers "not working" if they install the latest this-or-that. A huge number of people still use Windows 98!