New PC/Mac.......which?

[Andrewmcm]

RAM is cheap these days. There is absolutely no reason to have any less than 4gb in your PC. You might not need it but it's bloody cheap and your PC will run that much better for it.

Again, that is only of any use if you're running 64-bit Vista or have a PC that has up-to-date 64-bit ready components in it. Windows addresses memory in such a way that regular Vista users won't see any benefit of having any extra RAM above around 3GB. See http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archiv...m-problem.aspx for details. Snow Leopard will be fully 64-bit and will support as much RAM as you can shove into a Mac.

If you want to convert to a Mac but still have legacy Windows programs that you need to use you can buy virtualisation software that allows you to run a virtual Windows machine inside the Mac. VMWare Fusion and Parallels being the main examples of this type of software.

[Dave B]

I used to be a PC zealot, but I was given a Macbook Pro for work and now I'm a convert. And for one simple reason - Macs just work. Everything works how it should do with minimal faffing around with lots of 3rd-party software.

I'm going to do my best not to sound like a PC-fanboi, but wil probably fail miserably! Anyway, here goes...

"Macs just work"? So do PCs. There's a lot of rubbish talked about Vista's unreliability, incompatibilty, bloat and speed, almost all of which are RTFM issues.

In my opinion Microsoft dropped a ball in releasing it slightly too early - there were some glitches that SP1 solved - and a lot of hardware manufacturers bundled it on wholly unsuitably-specced machines.

Add this to the perceived annoyance of UAC by people who didn't understand it, and the frustratingly slow indexing of files (once only) and you can perhaps appreciate why Vista quickly gained a poor reputation.

On a halfway sensible machine Vista zipps along happily. I'm running 32-bit Home Premium on a Dell laptop with a mere 2GB RAM (sorry Daniel!) and it's lightning fast.

"Faffing about with 3rd party software"? All of my old hardware worked instantly with no driver updates; the one and only piece of software which didn't was so creaking and old that I'd have replaced it anyway (an MP3 editor, since you ask). I understand that there were a few early issues with incompatible hardware but that's down to lazy manufacturers, not Microsoft.

Anyway, it's horses for courses. If a Mac does what you want it to, and you can find the software which fits your needs, then go for it. Likewise a PC. I honestly don't know why the subject so often creates such polarisation!

[Andrewmcm]

Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I still use PCs a lot and find them useful for most things. Almost all of my work is done on supercomputers, so I need native Unix shells and X-windows - PCs do that kind of thing quite badly so Macs fit the bill on that score. Of course I could always buy a PC laptop and put Linux on it, but I'm too lazy to mess around with different Linux distributions...!

[Daniel]

Again, that is only of any use if you're running 64-bit Vista or have a PC that has up-to-date 64-bit ready components in it. Windows addresses memory in such a way that regular Vista users won't see any benefit of having any extra RAM above around 3GB. See http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archiv...m-problem.aspx for details. Snow Leopard will be fully 64-bit and will support as much RAM as you can shove into a Mac.

If you want to convert to a Mac but still have legacy Windows programs that you need to use you can buy virtualisation software that allows you to run a virtual Windows machine inside the Mac. VMWare Fusion and Parallels being the main examples of this type of software.

If I want legacy support I'll buy a 486 running Windows 3.1

Most if not all PC's on sale these days will support 64 bit from a hardware perspective anyway. I'm most annoyed that Windows 7 isn't 64 bit only. It really is silly and will only result in headaches for people in the future

[Daniel]

I'm going to do my best not to sound like a PC-fanboi, but wil probably fail miserably! Anyway, here goes...

"Macs just work"? So do PCs. There's a lot of rubbish talked about Vista's unreliability, incompatibilty, bloat and speed, almost all of which are RTFM issues.

In my opinion Microsoft dropped a ball in releasing it slightly too early - there were some glitches that SP1 solved - and a lot of hardware manufacturers bundled it on wholly unsuitably-specced machines.

Add this to the perceived annoyance of UAC by people who didn't understand it, and the frustratingly slow indexing of files (once only) and you can perhaps appreciate why Vista quickly gained a poor reputation.

On a halfway sensible machine Vista zipps along happily. I'm running 32-bit Home Premium on a Dell laptop with a mere 2GB RAM (sorry Daniel!) and it's lightning fast.

"Faffing about with 3rd party software"? All of my old hardware worked instantly with no driver updates; the one and only piece of software which didn't was so creaking and old that I'd have replaced it anyway (an MP3 editor, since you ask). I understand that there were a few early issues with incompatible hardware but that's down to lazy manufacturers, not Microsoft.

Anyway, it's horses for courses. If a Mac does what you want it to, and you can find the software which fits your needs, then go for it. Likewise a PC. I honestly don't know why the subject so often creates such polarisation!

Well said. Windows PC's do just work. Apart from one strange issue with the onboard wireless on Caroline's PC which is more to do with the choice of chipset than Vista both of our PC's work flawlessly and were far far far cheaper than the Mac equivalents.

Before I installed Vista 64 on my PC I just downloaded all the drivers and after I did my install all I did was plug my flash drive in, install the drivers, do some updates and I was firing on all cylinders.

On a halfway sensible machine Vista zipps along happily. I'm running 32-bit Home Premium on a Dell laptop with a mere 2GB RAM (sorry Daniel!) and it's lightning fast.

2gb of RAM?!?!?!?! JUST 2gb of RAM?!?!?!?!?! It's people like you who are what's wrong with Britain in this day and age! To be fair Caroline's PC only has 2gb of RAM in it too but I did build it about a year and a half when memory was still a bit more expensive

I'm really hanging out for Solid State Drives getting cheaper. Can't wait till I can throw a cheap and fast drive in my PC. If you're happy with a Mac then good but a Windows PC/Laptop if specced properly will do the same job and be just as reliable if not moreso for less money and will be more versatile which is a big thing for me. With a little extra money spent on your case and monitor it can look as nice as a Mac too.

I saw a Macbook air the other day and it just felt flimsy and somewhat pointless to be honest. Why would I need something so pointlessly thin?

[Sleeper]

"Saved" RAM eh?

In ye olde days the more RAM you had free the better your PC would generally perform. But what Vista does is load your most commonly used programs into the RAM which means that when you want to load a program it loads quicker becuase it's already in your RAM which is faster than your loading the program from your hard drive (which is slow) into your RAM which is fast. I'm at work now but when I typed that post before my PC was probably using 3gb of RAM of so just caching commonly used files. 3gb with just itunes, a couple of IE7 windows and Messenger open might sound crazy but it works oh so well and is ever so punchy when it comes to performance.

RAM is cheap these days. There is absolutely no reason to have any less than 4gb in your PC. You might not need it but it's bloody cheap and your PC will run that much better for it.

Saved as in saved from running pointless cosmetic touches on the desktop, after all who needs a bloody shadow behind the icons.

You say RAM is cheap these days but that depends on your idea of cheap, it might be too much for me, and I'd be surprised if I could fit 4gig into my PC which was a very cheap one over a year ago.

[Daniel]

Saved as in saved from running pointless cosmetic touches on the desktop, after all who needs a bloody shadow behind the icons.

You say RAM is cheap these days but that depends on your idea of cheap, it might be too much for me, and I'd be surprised if I could fit 4gig into my PC which was a very cheap one over a year ago.

Saved as in saved from running pointless cosmetic touches on the desktop, after all who needs a bloody shadow behind the icons.

You say RAM is cheap these days but that depends on your idea of cheap, it might be too much for me, and I'd be surprised if I could fit 4gig into my PC which was a very cheap one over a year ago.

*sigh*

If you've bought a desktop in the last 2 years I'd be very surprised if you couldn't put 4gb of DDR2 in it.

You don't seem to grasp the fact that "saving" RAM does nothing positive for the performance of your PC. In fact switch aero off and switch off prefetch and all that happens is your applications will load slower, Vista won't look as good as it could and you can tell impressionable people who will take your word for it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfetch#SuperFetch
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ed,1532-6.html

Superfetch kicks butt

[veeten]

Personally, I'll wait for Windows 7. Past experience with Vista (from Beta & RTDs to Home Premium/Business) has brought me to this point.

In some ways, it reminds me of Millenium Edition (ME), except that this took 6 years to develop, only to become the resources hog stemming from the basic problem: too much code.

7 will be to Vista what XP was to 2000/ME; the product that should've came forth in the first place, but was pushed aside for loftier reasons.

[Daniel]

Personally, I'll wait for Windows 7. Past experience with Vista (from Beta & RTDs to Home Premium/Business) has brought me to this point.

In some ways, it reminds me of Millenium Edition (ME), except that this took 6 years to develop, only to become the resources hog stemming from the basic problem: too much code.

7 will be to Vista what XP was to 2000/ME; the product that should've came forth in the first place, but was pushed aside for loftier reasons.

Ah come on

I really don't think Windows 7 will be any better in terms of resources and speed as most of the early reports are bad. I would love to beta test it but I don't have a spare hard drive to chuck it on.
http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Benc...ticle13405.htm

There is one key difference between Vista and ME. Vista works for me, perhaps it could have been better but it works. ME on the other hand does not work at all. Everytime I've sat down in front of a PC with ME it has broke in some way shape or form.

One would hope that Windows 7 is better than Vista but I doubt there will be any major changes and the main things people are critical of (the interface and RAM hungriness) will stay.

[veeten]

I really don't think Windows 7 will be any better in terms of resources and speed as most of the early reports are bad. I would love to beta test it but I don't have a spare hard drive to chuck it on.
http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Benc...ticle13405.htm

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/te...35&tag=nl.e106

remember this is a pre-beta, which is not the same as a full functioning OS.