Actually, getting a Mac is a bad thing. You see, hes fallen victim to the hype. He doesn't truly know what he is getting into yet. When he gets his MacBook, he'll love it for the first few weeks. After that he'll realize he could have gotten so much more for so much less and that OS X is considerably overhyped and he'll wish he had gotten a Windows PC instead.
If you built it in 2003, you should know that the GeForce 6 series wasn't available until 2004. The GeForce 6600 wasn't available until August of that year actually. It was also the mid-range card of the series.
And if you did build it yourself, as you claim (though your statements suggest otherwise later on in your post), you would know that the Athlon64s were MUCH faster and MUCH cheaper (several hundred dollars) than the Pentium 4s. You could have gone with a faster and cheaper Athlon64 and been able to get a high end GeForce 6 instead of the mid-range card and slower Pentium 4.
First, you didn't prove anything with your comment. All you did prove was that you really don't know how to configure a PC, whether it be Windows or OS X. You also completely missed (or ignored) my point.
I bring up DVD playback for several reasons. First, I bring it up because the image quality in DVD Player is awful compared to PowerDVD, WinDVD, Theatertek, and Vista's built-in decoder (with a modern GPU). It looks even worse in Tiger and older versions of Mac OS X.
I bring it up because of CPU use as well. In Mac OS X, DVD playback can eat anywhere between 20-30% of a single core on a Core 2 Duo. Why? Because DVD playback is entirely software based in OS X (plus MacBooks lack dedicated hardware anyway). In Windows Vista and XP, you have DirectX Video Acceleration. You need a modern GPU to be able to take full advantage of it (not all GeForce 6600s had PureVideo, plus those that did did not have any of the features that the 7 series and above have). If you have any modern (from the last 3 years) nVidia or ATI GPU, and any of the semi-recent IGPs from either, you get full bitstream decoding, deblocking, deinterlacing, color correction, etc. etc. This allows DVD playback to be done in a reduced power state, it allows for MUCH MUCH MUCH better image quality, and it allows the CPU to run cooler. As a result, CPU use drops from the 20-30% in OS X down to ~2% in Windows on the same hardware. Even if you don't have a modern GPU, but you have an Intel GPU instead, it has certain hardware features that will take off 10-15% of the CPU load (but OS X does NOT take advantage of this). Honestly, OS X eats up more than twice the CPU time playing DVDs as WinDVD and PowerDVD did on my old Celeron 1.1GHz (and 566MHz before that) and doesn't look half as good as those did while doing it.
I just bring all of this up to point out that WIndows has had this technology since the 1990s. Back in the late 90s, GPUs had support for HWMC. Windows took advantage of it. Then later in the early part of this decade, GPUs had iDCT and HWMC support. Then shortly after they had deblocking, to clean up the compression artifacting. Then they started having HWMC, iDCT, etc. support for MPEG-4 codecs. Then eventually full bitstream decoding (where the GPU does ALL of the video work). Every single improvement was supported by Windows. All while OS X took advantage of nothing and, up until Leopard, did NOT improve the image quality of DVD Player since its introduction way back in OS 8.
The ability to play a DVD "smoothly" has absolutely nothing to do with my point. My points were all about IMAGE QUALITY (most important, and the area where OS X lacks the most), and the technology being used to play said DVD.
The great thing about Windows is how many different stores you can choose from. You're not confined to iTunes.
But honestly, iTunes rental service is terrible. The image quality of the video files is flat out bad. And thanks to OS X's lack of hardware support, CPU use goes up and the MacBook gets hot while watching H.264 video. If the MacBook had dedicated graphics AND OS X had system wide hardware acceleration for video, this wouldn't be a problem.
But why do I want to spend $4 to rent a movie that doesn't look as good as the DVD, doesn't SOUND as good as the DVD (I'm a sound nut, VERY important to me), and I only have 24 hours to watch? DVDs cost the same to rent, have larger window to watch, and are of much higher quality. I can also take that rented DVD and play it on my MacBook, HP, DVD player, upscaling DVD player, game consoles, portable DVD player, etc. etc. etc.
You've already made it clear that you don't take care of your XP based system. You probably haven't updated the drivers.
The MacBook with a DVD writer costs $1400 after taxes. There is absolutely no reason there should be ANY compromise of ANY sort. None. Not when $1400 at HP will get you a 15.4" system with a 1680x1050 screen, blu-ray, high capacity (but not larger) battery, GeForce 9600M GT, etc. If the MacBook with DVD writer was $700, then we could say that its a good value for the money. But for $1400, I expect NO compromise and the best performance possible. The MacBook simply does not deliver.
OpenCL will be in Snow Leopard. OpenGL is what you are looking for.
The OP needs to get the best for his money, and a MacBook simply does not offer that.
I use gmail with IMAP to my iPhone, Mail (OS X), and Windows Mail
Examples?
You're sadly mistaken if you believe there is no trialware for the Mac.
That is absolutely untrue. Go to google and type in Mac Software and begin to try to count all of the software that Apple does not have on its website. Apple only hosts a small number of Mac software.
IF you want stability, you need to avoid Apple like a plague. Both of my MacBooks have crashed more times than ALL of my Windows PCs ever have, combined. While Windows on my MacBook is rock solid, 100% stable.
Apple only checks software for the App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. They certainly have no concept of quality control! It's easy to say that every 199 of 200 paid apps is NOT worth the money. And of the free apps, Pandora, AOL Radio, Remote, and a couple of others are the only ones worth downloading.
Mikogo is hardly mainstream. Why even use that when Windows has been including Remote Desktop software since the Win9x days?
I have yet to experience any sort of crash or moment of instability on my Mac (while running Windows, OS X is highly unstable) or my HP (dv6500t CTO, Vista).
Again, why use that at all when there is free software built-in to Windows?
Second, good free software on Windows that DOES have a paid counterpart if perfectly functional and generally good enough for the user. Look at Comodo for example. It has a paid counterpart, but the free version gives you more options than any other personal firewall (free or paid) and it gives you full system protection as well. No ads, no crippling, nothing.
There is still no equivalent for PowerDVD/WinDVD/Media Center (Vista Premium/Ultimate)/TheaterTek/etc on OS X. There is no equivalent for Nero (sorry, Toast S U C K S). I can go on and on.
Like what? Vista comes with photo management software. It comes with DVD burners (and ISO burners). It comes with video editing software. It doesn't come with music editing software, but Garageband goes unused on probably 9,999,999 out of every 10m Macs sold anyway.
I do my own backups. I don't need the OS to do it for me and eat up precious system resources. Plus, Time Machine canNOT do encrypted backups.
The only thing OS X has delivered me is severe frustration.
Vista had no glitches. Any problems it had were caused by hardware vendors not getting drivers out on time. Quality vendors had quality drivers out, as they had many months to work with final code and years worth of betas to see how the driver model worked. It is not Vista's fault that second rate manufacturers didn't have good drivers available.
It's not like OS X has not had similar issues while Steve Jobs has been doing presentations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsKKQNZG3rE
Both my HP and MacBook are from September of 2007, though the HP was built in September and arrived in October.
HP was $950. 15.4" screen, memory card reader, 3 USB, Firewire, HDMI (HDCP certified), VGA, S-Video, full size ExpressCard, GeForce 8400M GS, Core 2 Duo 2GHz (Santa Rosa platform), extended capacity battery, fingerprint reader, DVD writer, 2GB of RAM, 160GB HDD, TV tuner.
MacBook was $1406. 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo (Napa platform), 1GB of RAM, DVD writer, Intel GMA 950, 2 USB, mini-DVI, Firewire, 120GB HDD. I had to buy the mini-DVI to VGA adapter to use it with an external display. I also had to buy 2GB of RAM. So the total cost so far is about $1470 after taxes for everything.
More than $500 more than my HP and not even as capable.
