Another PC convert!

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
My brother, a long, long time Windows user (he's a programmer), made the move to Mac. He bought a tricked out MacBook Pro, 17" screenie. He had a recent batch of crashes with his PC and finally in a fit of good sense placed his order.



What finally made him a switcher? Boot Camp (and/or Parallels). I had been sending him some great stories about PC users who made the switch, and he agreed.



How many people do you personally know who made the switch, and why?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    greglogreglo Posts: 63member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich


    My brother, a long, long time Windows user (he's a programmer), made the move to Mac. He bought a tricked out MacBook Pro, 17" screenie. He had a recent batch of crashes with his PC and finally in a fit of good sense placed his order.



    What finally made him a switcher? Boot Camp (and/or Parallels). I had been sending him some great stories about PC users who made the switch, and he agreed.



    How many people do you personally know who made the switch, and why?



    Me.



    My friend from school owns an iBook G4 and she was always telling me how much she hates Windows. Then I remembered Matt Casamassina, an IGN editor, mentioned buying an MBP on his blog, and using Parallels with it.



    A few months later, I started looking around for a new laptop, to replace the 1.8 GHz Celeron, loaned from the Edcucation Dept., which cannot even download something without "pausing" my computer literally every 2 seconds. So after endlessly hearing how much Windows sucks and realizing my 3 year old computer is old and surviving God knows how (I tried to do system restore once, the only way it would ever reboot was in Safe Mode; it just kept loading and loading...had to take out the battery and put it back in), I painfully made my Opera browser take me to the long fabled Apple Store.



    There I was greeted with the sweetest deal I had ever seen in my life: the MBP and all its goodness for $2K, plus I could also run games through Boot Camp. Yeh, life was good.



    Then I was informed I was reading American prices, expecting a slightly higher price over here I put the .au on the end of the address.



    Well, it seems the "slightly higher price" was about $1000 + BTO etc. So now I'm looking at it for just under $4K. Unfortunately I've been sucked in too much to back out; not that I really regret it, they looked awesome at the store we went to 3 weeks back.



    Only 3 and a 1/2 months to go before I (hopefully) can afford it!
  • Reply 2 of 14
    As some of you know I recently switched back to Mac for the first time since the Mac Classic days. I have been eyeing the iMac for a very long time and decided to make the switch when the 24" was released.



    I'm was a pretty knowledgeable PC user, having personally built, upgraded, and maintained my prior two machines as well as roommates, etc. Because of the age of my current system and the specs in it, I knew I was going to have to upgrade within the next year or so when Vista came out. Earlier in the summer my brother bought a BlackBook and after only a few minutes of playing with OSX I decided that instead of upgrading my PC, I was moving to OSX. I'm glad I did. Everything is much more straightforward and as apple claims, it "just works." I don't have to edit registry files or make other changes to make the system do what I want and features like Expose have already made me much more productive because of the ease at which I can zip around my desktop. I'm a youth minister but on the side I work on a few websites for my former university and a few other projects and the 24" screen has made that entire process much more manageable.



    I'm glad I made the switch and actually laugh at myself for not doing it years ago. This computer is the best one I've ever owned.
  • Reply 3 of 14
    i made the switch.. but i cant get windows media player to work on my computer. For some reason it downloads as a VIC file and i do not know how to switch it or what program to run it with so that it will install.. any help?
  • Reply 4 of 14
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jdcfsu


    As some of you know I recently switched back to Mac for the first time since the Mac Classic days. I have been eyeing the iMac for a very long time and decided to make the switch when the 24" was released.



    I'm was a pretty knowledgeable PC user, having personally built, upgraded, and maintained my prior two machines as well as roommates, etc. Because of the age of my current system and the specs in it, I knew I was going to have to upgrade within the next year or so when Vista came out. Earlier in the summer my brother bought a BlackBook and after only a few minutes of playing with OSX I decided that instead of upgrading my PC, I was moving to OSX. I'm glad I did. Everything is much more straightforward and as apple claims, it "just works." I don't have to edit registry files or make other changes to make the system do what I want and features like Expose have already made me much more productive because of the ease at which I can zip around my desktop. I'm a youth minister but on the side I work on a few websites for my former university and a few other projects and the 24" screen has made that entire process much more manageable.



    I'm glad I made the switch and actually laugh at myself for not doing it years ago. This computer is the best one I've ever owned.



    Ahh...as a media man for my youth ministry, I have switched to Mac recently. I'm spoiled now, I'll never go back. With Final Cut & Motion, I'm finally able to think more about my ministry instead of "Why won't this thing work?"
  • Reply 5 of 14
    mimacmimac Posts: 872member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jmguriel


    i made the switch.. but i cant get windows media player to work on my computer. For some reason it downloads as a VIC file and i do not know how to switch it or what program to run it with so that it will install.. any help?



    Look here..



    http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherpr...d=windowsmedia
  • Reply 6 of 14
    dac0nvudac0nvu Posts: 175member
    After almost 15 years with Windows, I switched in June and never looked back. No Boot Camp, No Parallels....nuttin'. The only thing I use my Windows machine for now is storage for my Mac backups.
  • Reply 7 of 14
    i need help. Somehow I switched the default program to VLC so my windows media player downloads as a video file which it then obviously cannot open. Which program do i need to open it with and how would i switch it to get it to open with that? thank you
  • Reply 8 of 14
    dcqdcq Posts: 349member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jmguriel


    i need help. Somehow I switched the default program to VLC so my windows media player downloads as a video file which it then obviously cannot open. Which program do i need to open it with and how would i switch it to get it to open with that? thank you



    If I understand, your Mac opens .wmv files in VLC. Correct?



    Just right-click or control-click on and .wmv file and select "Get Info" from the pop-up menu (or select it and choose Get Info from the File Menu).



    One of the triangle tabs will be "Open with" and haver the default app listed (VLC in this case). Choose Media Player or some other wmv file player and click the "change All" button.



    I'm using Panther (OS X 10.3), so if you're using 10.4, something might be slightly different. (But it shouldn't be radically different.)
  • Reply 9 of 14
    thanks for your help... but i am saying the actual windows media player install file.. so i need to know what program i need to use to install things
  • Reply 10 of 14
    The WMP install file IS a program - you double-click it, and it installes the Windows Media Player.



    EDIT - is there a .sit or a .sitx at the end of the install file you downloaded? If so, you need Stuffit Expander, which will then give you the actual installer.
  • Reply 11 of 14
    it is downloaded as a bin file
  • Reply 12 of 14
    jabohnjabohn Posts: 582member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jmguriel


    it is downloaded as a bin file



    Stuffit Expander will take care of that bin file for you, and it's free.
  • Reply 13 of 14
    I made the switch because I spend my workday supporting Windows and get so sick of it that I don't want to deal with it in my personal life. I couldn't be happier, I bought my Mac Mini just over a year ago and have since added a 12" iBook to the household. I spend far less time troubleshooting or running maintenance on the Macs and enjoy using them much more than I ever did my PC. I do still have one PC at home running Windows XP just for things that won't run on my Macs but I only turn the thing on once every few months at best.
  • Reply 14 of 14
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lakingsfn


    I made the switch because I spend my workday supporting Windows and get so sick of it that I don't want to deal with it in my personal life. I couldn't be happier, I bought my Mac Mini just over a year ago and have since added a 12" iBook to the household. I spend far less time troubleshooting or running maintenance on the Macs and enjoy using them much more than I ever did my PC. I do still have one PC at home running Windows XP just for things that won't run on my Macs but I only turn the thing on once every few months at best.



    Beautiful. These stories are great. Anyone else?
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