Has Anyone Here Come From Mac OS to Vista?

  • Thread starter Thread starter emanon
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emanon

I'm qualifying that to *here* because I'm sure *somewhere* there is someone
that has. If there is, I'd be interested in hearing why and what their
experience has been like. I'm trying to decide what my next computer is
going to be, so I'd be interested in hearing about conversion to Vista from
Mac.
 
I don't use Macintosh computers (Apple).
What is the official name of their operating system?
How is it different from what they use on the Power PC's ?
I keep seeing people say things like "Mac vs. Windows", which is disturbing,
as Windows is an operating system, not a computer platform.

My biggest gripe (peeve?) of course, is this "x86" and "x64" bewilderment.
the "x" in "x86" means any of "80?" being 80, 801,802,803, etc (Intel
CPU's).
the "x" in "x64" means nothing. Who put that their? I don't know!
If you want to talk about 32-bit and 64-bit fine. But what the f*ck is "x64"
?
There's no such thing as "x32" or "x64".

-- Andy
 
yeap, I come from a Mac experience system. I have been using vista for only
one week so I can not fully give an opinion, though, for now, I must say I
prefer Mac...for now....maybe in a few weeks when I get the hang of this
system I will have a different opinion....
Good luck in your search
 
I used a Mac in days gone by (pre-OS X) and switched because everything I
needed to do worked better, the same, or almost as good on Windows while I
could never make that same statement the other way.

It basically came down to the realization that regardless of anything that
might be "better" on the Mac, so many things just flat didn't work
(incompatible) that it "just didn't matter".
 
I used both Windows 2000 and Windows XP throughout my Mac OS X usage and
experience. This also included using VMware to run other Windows
predecessors for testing software, support and other reasons. I started
to run Vista when it was in Beta 2, the public beta, and now have it
installed on a non production system. I installed Windows Vista
Business 32-bit version. The installation process is better than
previous Windows installations -- I performed a clean install on a blank
hard drive. Since Vista is a much different than Windows XP, I didn't
want to endure the usual upgrade pains of drives, software, etc.

I set up Vista on my non production system while the main production
system continues to run Windows XP Pro SP2. I installed all programs
that I normally use in XP in Vista. This process took a while after
needing to install updates and upgrades to accomplish this task. After
about a month now, Vista remains lacking software that I need to use,
including a couple minor Vista drivers from manufacturers.

Based on my Vista experience, including a few others that I have been
following closely with my assistance, Vista is not really ready for
prime time when its getting installed on an existing computer. If you
are wanting to run Vista with minimum problems, buy a new computer with
Vista pre-installed and hopefully the pre-installed software is Vista
compatible too.

Ah... the Mac OS X experience... I remember... the Mac OS X experiences
differ from Windows experience. With Mac OS X, to upgrade, you just
install the latest Mac OS X version to your Mac. You don't have to
decided which of the multitude of operating system versions to install.
Mac OS X 10.1 through 10.4 will basically run on G3 and G4 Macs.
However, with Apple's change to Intel CPU's, the latest Mac OS X 10.4
and the upcoming 10.5 release will run on proprietary Mac systems
without any problems. With a Mac, Mac OS X is pre-installed and suited
for the hardware. Using a Mac is a great experience and after seeing
Vista so far, Mac OS X seems like a better choice.

Although Dell is starting to sell Linux on select Dell systems, I may
consider buying a Dell system with Linux pre-installed. I ran Linux for
some time and thereafter on-and-off. I mostly stopped due to lack of
software, but searching for software that I need is no longer an issue.
Plenty of linux programs available for what I and others do where its
just a minor to minimal learning curve to use linux daily.

There are also debatable and economical differences when it comes to
linux compared to Mac OS X, but in short, linux is free and you can
optimize linux to your hardware.

I can write a ton more about Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, but there is
enough of that already occurring on various forums, newsgroups, etc.

At this point and seeing and using Vista, which I received for free
through a Microsoft offer, I would not have paid for Vista. I may
continue my Vista testing and possibly later use Vista on a 'Vista
Ready' computer (hopefully at a company rather than one of my own
computers), but Linux may be the 'alternative' or next operating system
I may start using on a daily basis. When I ran linux for three years,
never really had problems and seldom ever needed to restart the
computer. I remember my uptime at one time on the linux computer was
over four months.

Sorry for writing so much on your question.

The real question that you need to ask yourself, which operating system
is right for me; including what software available is available on that
platform that I would use or need to use?
 
yeap, I come from a Mac experience system. I have been using vista for only
one week so I can not fully give an opinion, though, for now, I must say I
prefer Mac...for now....maybe in a few weeks when I get the hang of this
system I will have a different opinion....
Good luck in your search
Click to expand...

Go buy some A list games for your Vista machine and you will soon change
your mind. Not into games, you say? Then you should have stuck with the
Mac. A PC is for hardcore fun and a Mac is for sandal wearing poofs.
 
You nailed it in your last parragraph. Since I just bought a new PC in
January, this is a longer range evaluation. Right now, I'm looking at
software availability of what I already have on the PC for the Mac. So far,
only one critical appliaction is not available for the Mac. Yes, I can find
a Mac replacement, but I'd much rather not face two learning curves at once:
the OS and a new app. My hand held GPS software is a minor snag as the maker
has promised an OS X comptible version in 2Q-3Q 2007. If not, I can always
run that from my laptop.

I, for one, appreciate your indepth reply. Makes it easier to evaluate than
some of the quick one liners "such-and-such is crap" that a lot of people
tend to post. If there's nothing to back up the opinion, it's not really an
opinion, is it?
 
Pipboy said:
Go buy some A list games for your Vista machine and you will soon change
your mind. Not into games, you say? Then you should have stuck with the
Mac. A PC is for hardcore fun and a Mac is for sandal wearing poofs.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by that, Pipboy. Are you saying that no one uses
a personal computer of any type for work?

Better yet, how does your answer relate to the question? Did you come from a
Mac to Vista? That is the question.
 
emanon said:
I'm qualifying that to *here* because I'm sure *somewhere* there is
someone that has. If there is, I'd be interested in hearing why and what
their experience has been like. I'm trying to decide what my next computer
is going to be, so I'd be interested in hearing about conversion to Vista
from Mac.
Click to expand...

I switched to XP from a Mac notebook. I had bought the Mac notebook on the
advice of a friend who's a Mac snob. He said it just worked better, the
notebook battery life was longer, etc... For me it turned out to be bad
advice. Every time I wanted to add something it seemed I was paying three
times the rate I was on my home Windows network.The final straw was when I
decided to upgrade my dvd-rom drive to a burner. I could only find one or
two models and they had to be special ordered at $299 (at the time).
CompUSA and Best Buy had scores of burners XP compatible from $69.00.

I decided to switch to Windows XP and bought a laptop with XP Media Center
2003. I haven't looked back since. I can run pretty much any software and
I think it's crashed once on me (a long time ago). I upgraded to Vista Home
Premium the week it came out. I must say I think MS got it right with this
one, but then that's just my experience. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones.
I just got the licenses for the rest of my home network and will be
upgrading the other three machines this weekend.

HTH,

Art
 
I'm qualifying that to *here* because I'm sure *somewhere* there is someone
that has. If there is, I'd be interested in hearing why and what their
experience has been like. I'm trying to decide what my next computer is
going to be, so I'd be interested in hearing about conversion to Vista from
Mac.
Click to expand...

I think you'll struggle to many (or any?) answering 'yes' to this.
People in general don't switch platforms on a whim; investments in
software and familiarity with what they know being the main reasons.
There usually has to be some fundamental reason to make such a
significant leap.

As such, if someone is a Mac guy, and was willing to put up with the
negatives of such up until now, then I don't really see that Vista
offers them anything more that XP didn't... barring the resource
sapping eye candy of course, which OS X isn't exactly lacking in
anyway.

You may however find a few Mac users dual booting Vista on their Intel
Macs for those minority of times when some piece of software
absolutely positively insists on it; or morbid curiosity of course.
They are probably the best placed to make a side by side comparison,
running both on the same hardware as they do. But I'd guess you'd
find them on Mac newsgroups rather than here.
 
I'm qualifying that to *here* because I'm sure *somewhere* there is someone
that has. If there is, I'd be interested in hearing why and what their
experience has been like. I'm trying to decide what my next computer is
going to be, so I'd be interested in hearing about conversion to Vista from
Mac.
Click to expand...

Noted tech guru David Vogue (of Vogue Press/Missing Manual Series, and
New York Times column fame) has worked extensively with both.

I've gathered that he's primarily a Mac user but since he's written
columns and a pretty good all around-book (Windows Vista: The Missing
Manual) on Vista he knows more than most about Vista as well.

From what I've gathered he's quite impressed (just not enough to make
it his primary OS as I suspect).

His columns and books (be it a book on OS X or Vista) are
straightforward with no BS and he'll tell you what sucks and what
doesn't regardless of the subject.

You can actually email the guy and he'll respond as well (cuz he's
cool like that).

http://www.davidpogue.com/
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.
 
Go buy some A list games for your Vista machine and you will soon change
your mind. Not into games, you say? Then you should have stuck with the
Mac. A PC is for hardcore fun and a Mac is for sandal wearing poofs.
Click to expand...

So sandal wearing poofs run UNIX?
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.
 
I used a Mac in days gone by (pre-OS X) and switched because everything I
needed to do worked better, the same, or almost as good on Windows while I
could never make that same statement the other way.

It basically came down to the realization that regardless of anything that
might be "better" on the Mac, so many things just flat didn't work
(incompatible) that it "just didn't matter".
Click to expand...

I had NO interest in the Mac (pre OS X). But now the only reason I
don't have on is I can't get past the price. If I made 80k+ a year
(and were still single with no kids) I'd get one.

I love the GUI and even better, I love that it's got Darwin[1]
(FreeBSD variant) under the hood. I'm a bash shell junkie (OS X
terminal beats the hell out of cmd.exe) AND most Linux GUI apps are
ported to Darwin, thereby allowing you to run them from within OS X.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

Speaking of the bash shell, I finally got around to trying Cygwin[2]
last week. I now use it about 8X more than cmd.exe

[2]http://cygwin.com/

The Windows command line sucks. I use it, but I don't like it nearly
as much as bash (or any other UNIX-type shell).
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.
 
I'm qualifying that to *here* because I'm sure *somewhere* there is someone
that has. If there is, I'd be interested in hearing why and what their
experience has been like. I'm trying to decide what my next computer is
going to be, so I'd be interested in hearing about conversion to Vista from
Mac.
Click to expand...

And more thing.

I run multiple OS. At any given time I'll have 2-5 installed (Windows,
Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD).

You can do that with a Mac AND dual boot with Vista (of course you
have to buy a full version of Vista to do so) or you can run Vista in
a Virtual Machine (e.g. Parallels).
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.
 
I switched to XP from a Mac notebook. I had bought the Mac notebook on the
advice of a friend who's a Mac snob. He said it just worked better, the
notebook battery life was longer, etc... For me it turned out to be bad
advice. Every time I wanted to add something it seemed I was paying three
times the rate I was on my home Windows network.
Click to expand...

I can't speak for Mac Notebooks but from what I've gathered most
internal hardware (Video Cards, Hard Drives, Optical Drives, RAM....)
is compatible with Mac desktops since they switched to the PCI BUS
(and more recently PCI Express) a number of years ago.
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.
 
I think you'll struggle to many (or any?) answering 'yes' to this.
People in general don't switch platforms on a whim; investments in
software and familiarity with what they know being the main reasons.
Click to expand...

I would have agreed with you till I decided it was time to get a new
computer 2 years ago (I replace my existing one every 4-6 years).

For the first time ever, I seriously considered a Mac. I didn't have
any "major" investments in Windows software. Paint Shop Pro X and
Office 2003 Student and Teacher, were about it when it came to "high
priced" stuff.

I was most attracted to OS X's BSD-based guts, coupled with the
terminal and it's bash shell. AND the GUI blew XP away (that's not as
true with Vista).

And you can run X-Window [Linux, UNiX, Solaris, etc etc) apps in OS X
also). And since that time, they switched to Intel which makes it
even more appealing.

But I could not get past the overpriced hardware and while you can
custom order if you buy from Apple, you don't get nearly the options
you do, when you custom order a PC online..from virtually anyone).

The biggest adjustment for me would be the Mac menu bar vs the app
menu bar being in each individual app in Windows).

I've played with Macs a bit and I find that a bit awkward.
--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.
 
Well I have both. One laptop running Vista, and another running OSX, so I
can answer pretty much any questions you have
 
Well I have both. One laptop running Vista, and another running OSX, so I
can answer pretty much any questions you have.
Click to expand...

Shoudn't there have been at least a few paragraphs after that?

--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.
 
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