The Epistle of Pugh
Hello!
This is my first post but I've enjoyed reading for months.
I haven't used a Mac since I switched to Windows in '97. I was willing to make the trade-off at that time b/c its a Windows world. I have a couple of good dell inspiron notebooks, a cheap dell desktop, a cheap emachine.
My old Mac never, and I do mean never, crashed or locked-up. Of course all it ran was a couple of simple games and a word processor.
In contrast, Windows 98 was a pain and crashed and locked up regularly. Windows XP was a good program and rarely crashed or locked up. However, numerous programs such as IE, Oulook Express, etc would lock-up and I would have to restart the tower to enable the program to run again. I was really aggravated when I would do heavy research on IE. After an hour or so of opening and closing tons of windows it would slow down to a crawl. I'd have to delete my internet files and cookies, then empty my temporary file folder. And, of course I would have to run Adaware to clean off tons of crud to make the computer run decently fast again. I'd spend hours and hours keeping the dang thing running.
I was quite enthralled when I learned that Macs could now act as a Windows machine b/c I really like Word and Excel and I have Windows versions of Acrobat 8 Professional, etc.
Now I'm going to get the best of both worlds!
I just purchased a used 24" Imac 2.16 C2D 2gb OS X 10.4.10 that is in like-new condition and was ~11 months old. I plugged in a cat 5 and was on my way. I started it up and I've been using it heavily for the past 6 days
First impressions. Wow, the Mac is so cool and this screen is so big. Internet was up and running all by itself!!! Then I took some pics and the darn thing even has a "flash". The pics look good for a low res camera and adding special effects while taking them was a blast. The kids are having a ball.
My screen looked a little dull and I wasn't to impressed. I thought well, maybe it's lost some of its luster after a year of use. Later I made some adjustments and the screen looks fabulous.
I played some DVD's and they looked great!
Problem is that this DVD player is picky as heck. It likes to hang-up and the DVD's come out really hot.
On to GarageBand. Sadly, I was finding that the Mac wasn't nearly as intuitive as I thought it would be. However, we finally figured out some basics and I am amazed at the sound quality. And, I've only listened to it on the built in speakers.
GarageBand produces a great sound! My daughter is starting to cut CD's in a professional studio and she played around a little with GarageBand and the sound is incredible for this kind of setup. Now she wants a 24" Imac so we are bidding on Ebay for the white version (she is high-strung and says the glare on a glossy screen would drive her insane). So, I'll probably give her this one and I'll buy a new 24" Imac for me.
I was suprised at the lack of intuitiveness in GarageBand. The whole setup of the computer seems this way. Where are my right and left mouse clicks? I keep having to go all the way up to the top of the screen to do a cut and paste with my mouse. In general, I don't have controls at the top of each window but have to go up to the top of the screen and then make sure I have the right window "clicked on" so I can have the tabs for that window and that program. I'm having a hard time finding my files in comparison to XP. My Rebel XTi only shows up in iPhoto--what the heck. Why can't I just go to my computer, open the camera as a drive, and then look at my pics as thumbnails and delete which ones I want right there on the camera via the computer?
I hope all of this will be overcome when I "learn the secrets" to OS X. Wait a minute, I thought that was one of the beauties of a mac--you don't have to "learn the secrets", its just all there in a sensible way.
What's happened in the past couple of decades? I think it was back in the 80's when I tried Mac and it totally blew normal PC's out of the water with whisywig (sp?) and the like. You didn't have to know code to operate the dang machine. It was very intuitive.
I've been using Windows for 10 years and Mac has really taken the backseat. Gates has done a terrific job of copying the Mac way of doing things and making them better (I hope I will acclimate to OS X and feel differently in a couple of weeks.)
And, worst of all... the darn machine will work fast at times and then really slow down. All of the sudden for a little while the internet will start slowing down and take much longer to load pages (I have fiber optic internet at 5+ mb/s). I did a test on my BestBuy black Friday door buster ~$100 emachine and the first time the mac was taking forever to load the page the same happened on the emachine.
However, I was sniping on Ebay and was quickly reloading the window to count down to place my snipe bid. The mac starts to load the pages much more slowly than usual. I went to the emaching and it refreshed the windows very quickly. Here's my new, great Mac and I'm having to slide back and forth to my emachine so I don't ruin my snipe bidding. $100 piece of cheap junk emachine beating my $2200 Imac--@#$%@#!!!
It gets worse... the mac periodically will start hanging up and I have to wait til it will respond. Right before I sarted typing this Mail just quit unexpectedly and a window popped up saying the same!
Now, lets assume that my issues with OS X's lack of intuitiveness are just transitory and is exacerbated by my frustration with the other issues.
I was seeing these kinds of problems when I first started using the machine so I fully reloaded OS X (took like 30+ min or something). I still have the same problems.
Please tell me that I have a hosed-up machine. I was anxiously awaiting my switch back to Mac. But, this really reeks!!! I really don't want to admit it, but even my cheap PC's running XP were much better in many ways than this much more expensive Mac.
Is there a problem with the extra 1gb ram? I don't know what they put in here.
Or, did I just receive a machine that was made on a Monday and will always have probs?
Someone please help! I don't want to go back to Windows!
The only programs on this machine are the ones that came with the factory OS X disks. I am not running any kind of Bootcamp, parallels, etc or any windows programs.
Hello!
This is my first post but I've enjoyed reading for months.
I haven't used a Mac since I switched to Windows in '97. I was willing to make the trade-off at that time b/c its a Windows world. I have a couple of good dell inspiron notebooks, a cheap dell desktop, a cheap emachine.
My old Mac never, and I do mean never, crashed or locked-up. Of course all it ran was a couple of simple games and a word processor.
In contrast, Windows 98 was a pain and crashed and locked up regularly. Windows XP was a good program and rarely crashed or locked up. However, numerous programs such as IE, Oulook Express, etc would lock-up and I would have to restart the tower to enable the program to run again. I was really aggravated when I would do heavy research on IE. After an hour or so of opening and closing tons of windows it would slow down to a crawl. I'd have to delete my internet files and cookies, then empty my temporary file folder. And, of course I would have to run Adaware to clean off tons of crud to make the computer run decently fast again. I'd spend hours and hours keeping the dang thing running.
I was quite enthralled when I learned that Macs could now act as a Windows machine b/c I really like Word and Excel and I have Windows versions of Acrobat 8 Professional, etc.
Now I'm going to get the best of both worlds!
I just purchased a used 24" Imac 2.16 C2D 2gb OS X 10.4.10 that is in like-new condition and was ~11 months old. I plugged in a cat 5 and was on my way. I started it up and I've been using it heavily for the past 6 days
First impressions. Wow, the Mac is so cool and this screen is so big. Internet was up and running all by itself!!! Then I took some pics and the darn thing even has a "flash". The pics look good for a low res camera and adding special effects while taking them was a blast. The kids are having a ball.
My screen looked a little dull and I wasn't to impressed. I thought well, maybe it's lost some of its luster after a year of use. Later I made some adjustments and the screen looks fabulous.
I played some DVD's and they looked great!
Problem is that this DVD player is picky as heck. It likes to hang-up and the DVD's come out really hot.
On to GarageBand. Sadly, I was finding that the Mac wasn't nearly as intuitive as I thought it would be. However, we finally figured out some basics and I am amazed at the sound quality. And, I've only listened to it on the built in speakers.
GarageBand produces a great sound! My daughter is starting to cut CD's in a professional studio and she played around a little with GarageBand and the sound is incredible for this kind of setup. Now she wants a 24" Imac so we are bidding on Ebay for the white version (she is high-strung and says the glare on a glossy screen would drive her insane). So, I'll probably give her this one and I'll buy a new 24" Imac for me.
I was suprised at the lack of intuitiveness in GarageBand. The whole setup of the computer seems this way. Where are my right and left mouse clicks? I keep having to go all the way up to the top of the screen to do a cut and paste with my mouse. In general, I don't have controls at the top of each window but have to go up to the top of the screen and then make sure I have the right window "clicked on" so I can have the tabs for that window and that program. I'm having a hard time finding my files in comparison to XP. My Rebel XTi only shows up in iPhoto--what the heck. Why can't I just go to my computer, open the camera as a drive, and then look at my pics as thumbnails and delete which ones I want right there on the camera via the computer?
I hope all of this will be overcome when I "learn the secrets" to OS X. Wait a minute, I thought that was one of the beauties of a mac--you don't have to "learn the secrets", its just all there in a sensible way.
What's happened in the past couple of decades? I think it was back in the 80's when I tried Mac and it totally blew normal PC's out of the water with whisywig (sp?) and the like. You didn't have to know code to operate the dang machine. It was very intuitive.
I've been using Windows for 10 years and Mac has really taken the backseat. Gates has done a terrific job of copying the Mac way of doing things and making them better (I hope I will acclimate to OS X and feel differently in a couple of weeks.)
And, worst of all... the darn machine will work fast at times and then really slow down. All of the sudden for a little while the internet will start slowing down and take much longer to load pages (I have fiber optic internet at 5+ mb/s). I did a test on my BestBuy black Friday door buster ~$100 emachine and the first time the mac was taking forever to load the page the same happened on the emachine.
However, I was sniping on Ebay and was quickly reloading the window to count down to place my snipe bid. The mac starts to load the pages much more slowly than usual. I went to the emaching and it refreshed the windows very quickly. Here's my new, great Mac and I'm having to slide back and forth to my emachine so I don't ruin my snipe bidding. $100 piece of cheap junk emachine beating my $2200 Imac--@#$%@#!!!
It gets worse... the mac periodically will start hanging up and I have to wait til it will respond. Right before I sarted typing this Mail just quit unexpectedly and a window popped up saying the same!
Now, lets assume that my issues with OS X's lack of intuitiveness are just transitory and is exacerbated by my frustration with the other issues.
I was seeing these kinds of problems when I first started using the machine so I fully reloaded OS X (took like 30+ min or something). I still have the same problems.
Please tell me that I have a hosed-up machine. I was anxiously awaiting my switch back to Mac. But, this really reeks!!! I really don't want to admit it, but even my cheap PC's running XP were much better in many ways than this much more expensive Mac.
Is there a problem with the extra 1gb ram? I don't know what they put in here.
Or, did I just receive a machine that was made on a Monday and will always have probs?
Someone please help! I don't want to go back to Windows!
The only programs on this machine are the ones that came with the factory OS X disks. I am not running any kind of Bootcamp, parallels, etc or any windows programs.
