steppin up from imac 266

[chrisfx811]

i've been watching these boards for a long time and have decided to ask for a few of your "unbiased" opinions.
i currently have a imac crt 266mhz and am looking to finally get a faster computer. mostly i surf, email, basic word proc. tasks. but i now own my own business and would like to do my own bookkeeping and such. my question is if the new imac, and the mac platform in general is a good choice tp suit these needs? gaming is not really an issue as i play console games. is the software i will require for my business needs available for the new os x and is it something my accountant who uses windows will be able to translate on his computer? i will say that i love the simplicity of a mac, as this is my 1st computer and i have little to no experience with windows. if i do make the switch to the dark side, is xp a bad choice for a user like myself?
aside from the above listed requirements, i am interested in basic things like useful chat programs, compatibility with pda's, video-chat, creating digital photo/video products... nothing high end just basic fun stuff.
would i be better off waiting for the new powermacs or going with a cheaper wintel box? i must admit it is frustrating to see all the wintel machines with similair configs but higher mhz for much cheaper, but i want a better user experience.

 

[chrisfx811]

one more question... why does it seem to be the consensus that pc's are faster at web browsing? is this a fault of the mac os or what??

 

[SilvorX]

if your not into dvds, you could get a G4 iMac 700 mhz that has a cd rw drive and it has 40 gigs of storage so that it'll be enough for atleast a few years for using it, its good for digital video n such, or get a pmac with a 23" display but that'dd cost quite a bit, but it'dd be worth it , i saw a 23" display today n it aws one of the most magnificant monitors ive ever seen but costs quite a bit
powermac would be good for if your powerhungry and need lots of storage n such
n imac g4 would be good for just business use and it does have an lcd monitor

stay away from pc since lots of appz such as quicken are available for mac and u could use office x for documents, since its 110% compatible with office xp documents *as they say*

 

[evildead]

Mac's in the work place

The new iMacs would be ideal for you. There is plenty of book keeping software out there for Mac and I think tha Quicken has upgradded to OS X now. If you thinking of getting it soon, you might want to wait untill OSX.2 comes out and is shipping installed on Apple computers. That way you dont have to pay $20 for an upgrade. OSX.2 is a major upgrade and its worth waiting or paying for. I ordered mine a week ago and it's not comming out untill Aug 24th.

Web browsing. The reason why web pages load slower on Mac's and diffrently on diffrent browsers is Bad HTML. Websites code there pages to work best on some platforms and some browers. Some times they wont work at all! If you go to mircosoft.com, you have to use IE to download anything and it loads slower on a Mac than on a PC. But if you go to apple.com on a Mac... it loads very fast. When you connect to a web server, the server can get info from you computer like what platform you are on and what browser you are using. Good programers and good Webmasters will optomize pages so any one will get an great web session.... but many do not.

 

[evildead]

Originally posted by SilvorX
and u could use office x for documents, since its 110% compatible with office xp documents *as they say*

I have used Office X files with no problems with Office XP. Back and forth. Office X is probably the best application that MS has ever made... Mac or PC. I have read several articals about how good Office X is and how its better than the versions for Windows.

 

[SilvorX]

Originally posted by evildead


I have used Office X files with no problems with Office XP. Back and forth. Office X is probably the best application that MS has ever made... Mac or PC. I have read several articals about how good Office X is and how its better than the versions for Windows.

i remember a few years back the computer teacher bragging how office for mac is better than office for windows (he was bragging to the class) n that "microsoft releases office out on mac b4 to windows" lol, even tho thats not true in most cases :S (maybe office 98 came out b4 the 98 upgrades for office 97 (ie: frontpage, publisher, etc)

 

[bousozoku]

Either a Macintosh or a PC with WinXP would do fine for you.

With the PC, you need to be careful about your choice of hardware. In particular, if you buy a Pentium 4 machine and it uses RDRAM, try to get a deal on the memory because it's very expensive. Some budget P4 machines use SDRAM and are seriously degraded because of it.

Still, I would rather not deal with lingering security issues. It's not just Windows itself, but practically all products which communicate with the outside world have some sort of buffer overruns resulting in the possibilty of someone being able to run code on that machine.

Mac OS X is really the only answer for me. The security is there and the developers are arriving. Because the developers are interested, the software should arrive as well.

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by chrisfx811
one more question... why does it seem to be the consensus that pc's are faster at web browsing? is this a fault of the mac os or what??

That's a really good question. I noticed that when I run Win98 on Virtual PC using the shared connection, the Windows-based browsers have bigger numbers at the same web sites that I've surfed with the Mac OS browsers.

I did notice one thing recently. I switched from a G3/400 as my main machine to a dual G4/800 and the numbers improved quite a bit. Maybe processor speed has more than a little bit of influence on the modems.