Possible New imac Owner

same boat as you..

however i do know that Norton Anti Virus is not needed for any up-to-date MACS.
anyway lemme know how you do. ill certainly be buying my iMac over the Summer.. just waiting for a good time. --> Cramn n Jamn

Col Colt said:

I've been looking at the imac G5 for a few weeks now and was wondering if anyone has one of these and what you think of it. With the advent of the Intel chip, would it be a good investment now? Always having just a PC, can one download Windows programs to a mac or is this our of the question? I do know that Norton makes anti virus/firewall software specifically for the mac. Would a router be a good idea as I've always used on on my Dell. As you can gather, I've never owned a mac...yet.

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I bought a 20" G5 iMac in January, and it's worked perfectly ever since. I added an extra 512Mb RAM to the (then) stock 256Mb, and it happily copes with anything my family throws at it (no games though). The Intel chip is a red herring, as the iMac will be upgraded to a new cpu chip at some point anyway - who cares if it's Intel or a G6. The iMac you buy today will still be doing what you want in a few years time anyway - ALL systems will be obsoleted by the next generation within a year or so.

Windows programs will not work on a Mac, unless you run them in an emulator, such as VPC. I switched to a Mac a year ago, and haven't turned on my Sony Vaio laptop for about 4 months, so it may be that you can get everything you need running on your Mac.

A router is a good idea for any system. There are no known problems with viruses, trogans or spyware on the Mac, so you can liberate yourself from the regular scanning and cleaning you have to do with Windows. Having said that, some people like to run an anti-virus utility so that they don't accidentaly pass on a virus received in an email or a document (which has no effect on the Mac) to a Windows user. I personally have not used an anti-virus utility or spyware scanner since I got my Mac.

As a long term Windows user (since Windows 2.0) I have totally switched to Mac/OS X now. It's hard to describe the experience of using a Mac until you've spent some time with one, but for me it's smooth, stylish, cool, liberating, and it just plain works. Run, don't walk, to the Apple store and you'll never look back.

All the best, and keep us posted. The fine people on this forum always bid a warm welcome to a new Mac owner.

As I have said before, there are other cheaper Macs if you are worried. eMac and Mini don´t cost you a fortune, so you don´t have to be worried.

I´ve an iMac and need a second computer for my home. I don´t want to spend a fortune for a computer because they are all fast. Even eMac isn´t slow..

Personally i'm looking forward to the change to intell processors!

Since in my own self centred world it means that i should be able to get a G5 iMac for cheaper if everyone keeps waiting for intel ones.

So realy if you want the iMac have the money now is a perfect time to buy since PPC is going to be supported for the next 5 years or so by most mac software companys.(personal guess, maybe longer?) This is all thanks to fat binarys that see what cpu you have. All the software that is availible now will still be available. Your computer will keep doing what it needs to do no matter whats coming out of the apple factory. Arguably you may be left behind in the games department but that will happen no matter what kind of computer you buy

Ulimately by the time you want another computer all the bugs, plus all of the cool stuff will be figured out for the intel based macs and you'll be able to jump in with both feet

Just my viewpoint

You are going to love having a Mac...so more worries about spyware or adware or viruses.

Check the refurbished machines on Apple.com.

You can usually get a good deal on a machine, and it still covered by the full warranty.

Col Colt said:

I assume programs like Diskeeper and an equivalent to Word will be available for the mac. I haven't researched all this yet but I do understand there is an equivalent to Firefox, Mozilla and the like called Safari. I don't know if you can get Firefox to work with a mac or not but, I do like that tabbed browsing. Anything's better than IE.

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Microsoft Office 2004 is available for the Mac, as is OpenOffice and some other free alternatives if all you need is word processing. Firefox will work just fine, Safari is also fine and supports tabbed browsing - your choice which you end up using. There are other browsers such as Opera and OmniWeb that some swear by. Fragmentation is not too much of an issue with the Mac filesystem, so you may not need a Diskeeper equivalent at all.

Good luck!

I just bought my Rev. B iMac last weekend. I love it to death. I know Intel will be coming to Apple computers but I wanted it more for the OS than anything else. It was either suck it up and buy a great machine now or wait 2 years. I'd rather spend the money now and enjoy life without spyware and viruses.

Col Colt said:

So, gone are the days of Spybot, AdAware, Trojan Hunter, BoClean, Winpatrol, CWShredder , a-squared, etc. That's some of what I had on my PC to keep out the nasties not to mention at one time Norton Internet Security and a Linksys Router. What a pain!! I've got a 16 x 20 of an imac G5 in my bedroom!! Just waiting for reality.

I've heard the mac doesn't have a registry. That doesn't make sense to me but that also would be great. Nothing to get inbedded in there that you have to search out.

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No, none of the apps you mentioned are necessary any more - cool huh?

No the Mac doesn't have a registry (nor do any other Unix systems). The application and other preference settings are saved in files within your home folder. Applications are actually packages (kind of like a zip file) that contain everything they need buried within the package. That means you don't usually need to run an installer or a de-installer. Mostly you just drag the application into your applications folder, and it's installed! Similarly if you drag it to the Trash, it's un-installed! There are some apps that have installers though.

Most apps you download come in a .dmg file. This is a disk image, and if you double-click it, it will mount just like a disk drive. You drag the application from the disk image into your applications folder and you've just installed it. Now you can eject the disk image file and Trash it. Coming from Windows it feels too easy to be true, but it really is that easy.

i got my new iMac in may. its really amazing in every way. i really could care less about window programs because compared to mac applications they are terrible. (i was a pc user my whole life before i switched this may) i really cant believe the mac operating system. its so user friendly...nothing crashes, no virus to bother me...its really good. im never going back to using PCs. spotlight is great and so useful. when you go back to using a windows you wonder why they dont have it and it fustrates you why they dont have it.

GET IT NOWWWW!!!

Macs dont get viruses as easily as PC's do, so those problems arent anything to be focused on.
BUT, Macs are not perfect...

Considering it might be 2 years before a Intel chip makes it into the iMac and then you'll probably want to wait until Rev B comes out, now is the perfect time to buy. When you iMac is ready to be replaced, the Rev B iMac should enter the market. If money is a big deal, get the low end iMac.

lasuther

If you need a virus scanner (no likely), check out clamXav. Best of all, it's free(ware).

Theman2290 said:

Macs dont get viruses as easily as PC's do, so those problems arent anything to be focused on.
BUT, Macs are not perfect...

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Yeah, but OS X certainly beats almost everything Windows offers.

Read this website that compares Windows to OS X: http://www.XvsXP.com/

or

Visit Apple.com's Mac OS X page: http://www.apple.com/macosx/