Mac users opinion? - Page 2

rcecale · rcecale's Garage

I've been experimenting with a coup[le of flavors of Linux for the past month or so. Red Hat 9 and SuSE 9.1. While similar, they are just "different" enough to make you have to think.

All in all though, I'm really starting to like it and am planning on switching a few of my computers over to it. Even one of my servers will be getting a make-over soon.

Randy

targa911S · 03-23-2005, 06:53 AM

The one and only malicious attack I've had on my Mac was a long time ago and when you booted it would show Homer Simpson laughing. It was easy to dump and actually pretty funny. At least the writer had a sense of humor.

Go Mac you won't regret it........until you start buying software of course.

jyl · jyl's Garage

One thing I like is the Apple Stores. My wife's iBook had a problem (bad logic board), and although I was unhappy that the problem arose I liked being able to simply walk into the nearest Apple Store, spend 1/2 hour with the tech at the Genuis Bar, and leave the laptop there for repair, which was done promptly. Beats spending hours on the phone to India and then rooting through the garage looking for a box to mail the laptop in for repair.

bryanthompson · bryanthompson's Garage

Has anyone else used the Apple tech support? I used it once, because my bird threw bird seed in my keyboard and I wanted to make sure I'd be able to remove the key, clean it out, and put it back together.

Oh my god, the tech support chick had about the hottest voice you could imagine. I swear, she could've talked me into buying a dual G5 machine and I wouldn't have even thought about it.

pwd72s · 03-23-2005, 08:41 AM

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Sebring77
[B]I've had bad luck with Mac. I had an ibook that was a meltdown nightmare. Viruses never got the chance to mess with it as it failed quickly on it's own.

However, I would ask what your applications are? Also, why don't you like windows? What's happening?

Good question...an I'd like to add that you folks are wayyy over my head when it comes to using these things. My main gripe lately has been a series of trash emails...trying to sell me horney housewives, coedine, viagra, other porn...just garbage. I hit "block sender", but the same krap keeps coming, only under new names...4 & 5 of these every day. Are apple user immune?
I mostly surf the car sites, Cindy uses the computer for financial (investment) info...emails to friends and family, of course. We pay McAfee for virus protection, and so far, so good.

bryanthompson · bryanthompson's Garage

Apple's Mail app is pretty smart. I get maybe one email a week that slips past the junk filters, but it catches hundreds a day, literally. I look through the junk every few days to make sure it didn't get anything important mixed in there, and haven't found a mistake yet.

stevepaa · 03-23-2005, 08:50 AM

You need an industrial type, i.e. corporate style, spam blocker to make a dent in all the crap being sent. I am at a major corp and I still get some of that stuff. At home using AOL, there is no effective blocking. It is not the type of machine, but the spam blocking software protection on the email system that you need.

The corportate policy is never to hit any reply button on those emails. That just tells them they hit a live body.

pwd72s · 03-23-2005, 08:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by stevepaa
You need an industrial type, i.e. corporate style, spam blocker to make a dent in all the crap being sent. I am at a major corp and I still get some of that stuff. At home using AOL, there is no effective blocking. It is not the type of machine, but the spam blocking software protection on the email system that you need.

The corportate policy is never to hit any reply button on those emails. That just tells them they hit a live body.

So hitting "block sender" only encourages them? I should just double delete?

bryanthompson · bryanthompson's Garage

Block sender has no effect on anything at all. the addresses they use are spoofed anyway, so it just adds a line to whatever your mail client uses to filter your mail.

bryanthompson · bryanthompson's Garage

Well... I should amend that... some clients will use some info about the message, header patterns, message patterns, subject patterns, how much of what type of content is in the message, and make some new filter out of that criteria when you try to block the sender or when you mark it as junk. The smarter ones do all of this... Outlook, afaik, just blocks the sender, which doesn't exist anyway.

pwd72s · 03-23-2005, 09:18 AM

bryan, thank you very much for the info!

Deschodt · 03-23-2005, 01:10 PM

To the person who said mac minis did not play well with Adobe, can you be more specific ? I've been toying with getting one of those for light photoshop stuff. Could it have been because they come stock with a paltry 256 meg ?

stevepaa · 03-23-2005, 02:20 PM

You can put in a gig if you want.

dd74 · 03-23-2005, 02:29 PM

I think it has something to do with the bus speed as to the reason the minis don't do well with Adobe. I can't recall entirely.

CNET.com should have a review of the Mac minis. Maybe it'll illuminate this issue.

jyl · jyl's Garage

AFAIK, most spam blockers use either blacklists (lists of prohibited addresses) or simple filters (specific prohibited words) or probabliity-based filters (calculates probability of new email being junk based on similarity of its content to the messages you've already marked as junk).

The current crop of junk emails that I'm getting has some innocuous and legitimate-looking words (fragments from poems or news stories, etc) and the Viagra or Hot Sexxx advert is in an embedded image, which the spam filter can't read.

That's why even email apps with good spam filters, like Apple's Mail or Mozilla's Thunderbird, still fail to catch all the junk emails.

Presumably the spam filter guys will start using OCR (optical character recognition) software and get on top of this type of spam, then the bad guys will think of something new.

I don't see a real solution as long as it remains virtually free to send millions of spam emails. If it cost 1/100 of 1 cent to send an email, the economics of spamming would break down. Yes, some legitimate businesses would incur cost too. But if you are sending out millions of emails that only a tiny fraction of a percent of recipients will ever respond to, then I think that's basically spam, even if you are otherwise a legitimate business.

stomachmonkey · 03-23-2005, 03:21 PM

The performance hit with Photoshop will come from the Hard Drive.

Mac Mini's use a laptop drive, 4200-5400 RPM. Desktops use a 7200 rpm drive.

Photoshop makes big scratch files. Writing them to a slower drive will create a hit.

It's not that big a deal. It's like running it on a laptop, perfectly doable and certainly adequate for the average consumer.

There are 2 workarounds if you want, swap out for a Hitachi 7200 laptop drive or simply hang an external usb or firewire drive on it and set Photoshop to use that drive for scratch space.

For moderately heavy Photoshop that box should be fine, just add some RAM, you can never have enough and the stuff is cheap.

Be patient and shop the circulars. My deal of the week, Kingston 512mb pc2700 sodimm for one of my laptops, $70 final price.

SLO-BOB · 03-23-2005, 03:28 PM

I'm not so sure Apple blocks spam better than anything else. I use Yahoo mail and I get very little spam. The filter works quite well. I also use Roadrunner/Time Warner and get no spam whatsoever. I guess you need to be careful where you go on the internet. I hear chat rooms are spam death for your computer.

Based on your needs I wouldn't get a Mac. Not because they are bad machines, but because they're a little spendy vs a windows counterpart. For example; you can buy an ibook (which I would strongly discourage) for around $1300. For half that you can buy a name brand windows laptop that will cruise the internet as well or better than the apple. Why better? Some sites require plug ins that aren't installed on Macs. You can hunt around to make a Mac work, but a windows computer will work right out of the box.

Sign up for a Yahoo e-mail account. I think you'll be happy.

stomachmonkey · 03-23-2005, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Sebring77

Based on your needs I wouldn't get a Mac. Not because they are bad machines, but because they're a little spendy vs a windows counterpart. For example; you can buy an ibook (which I would strongly discourage) for around $1300. For half that you can buy a name brand windows laptop that will cruise the internet as well or better than the apple. Why better? Some sites require plug ins that aren't installed on Macs. You can hunt around to make a Mac work, but a windows computer will work right out of the box.

Dude not again, cruising the net is probably one of the least intensive things that you can do with any computer and does not heavily task them at all. It's by no means a benchmark to use to compare any computers.

Some sites require plug ins that you have to hunt for to make a Mac work? That's the biggest load of BS I've heard.

So prove me wrong and name them. Cause I've yet to come across a site that required an additional plug-in download on my Mac.

Scott

dd74 · 03-23-2005, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by stomachmonkey
Be patient and shop the circulars. My deal of the week, Kingston 512mb pc2700 sodimm for one of my laptops, $70 final price.

Whoa! I might have to buy that.

I'd also like a 7200 RPM drive. Have any sources?

stomachmonkey · 03-23-2005, 03:52 PM

Hitachi is the only one that makes a 7200. They can be had for around $150 and are SO WORTH IT. Buy it online, zipzoomfly or newegg.

I've been running the 60 gb in my 17 in for the last year and it runs whisper quiet, does not heat up and makes the box run like a desktop.

Difference is night and day. Old drive went into a portable USB powered enclosure.

Best computer money I've spent in a while.

The RAM is at Best Buy.

under $100 including tax with a $25 rebate.

Even w/o the rebate it's a good deal for 512 mb of brand name memory.