Thread

Hey,

*** DISCLAIMER: I realise this is a heated subject for the passionate fanboys/girls. However, I ask this question not to induce mud-slinging. ***

First off, I am a long-term XP user. However, next fall I am going away to school and need a laptop. Have I shared my hatred of Vista? Well, in a nutshell, it’s a huge resource hog and I’d rather not buy more RAM to run ZoomText and some other programs. Actually, I’d like to do away with ZT entirely and just memorise keyboard shortcuts, so I’ll probably be giving away my licence when I get comfortable enough to do so. So, seeing as Vista is the “de facto” Windows OS among Windows laptop sellers, I’m going with a Macbook. I went to the store, and tried out the resolution, magnifying, and language tools. It is wonderful. I believe in the few programs I looked at, the keyboard shortcuts were fairly universal. This is a huge plus. Not that KS aren’t fairly universal in XP, it’s just there are too many features that don’t have KS (sub-menus of sub-menus, etc.).

I’ll need to obviously read more into their keyboard (e.g., the up arrow for desktop KS: cmd + d + up. What exactly is up?) but it does look usable.

Have a great memorial day and week,
bobby

Maybe you should read this:

The Tao Of Mac

(e.g., the up arrow for desktop KS: cmd + d + up. What exactly is up?)

Up Arrow?

Nah, It’s not that. The Mac keyboard is a bit confusing in that respect. How are the blind supposed to memorise KS if they can’t see the symbols? Hopefully the docs will come with a section on keyboard support.

Edit: if you’ve got a mac, you can try looking for the desktop link. I believe it’s under Tools on the top bar?

I’ve bought two apple products in the last 5 years—an Ipod and a MacBook.

I regretted both purchases, as I had nothing but trouble with both. Had to send the Ipod back twice since the battery wouldn’t hold a charge. The motor in the MacBook’s CD drive quickly crapped out on me, and then the battery wouldn’t hold a charge.

Ended up just trashing both of them, and bought an Archos for my portable media and gave up on laptops altogether.

PCs aren’t perfect, but I can generally fix anything that goes wrong with them. Chalk it up to years of practice if you want, but it’s just the way it is.

Well it’s started. The Mac vs PC war thread I mean! 😉

I’ve been using Macs ever since the first ones came out and I have to say that I have either been exceptionally lucky or I just treat computers with a little more love but have never really had any problems at all with Macs.

I actually used to love OS9 and the slower speed that it ran at as you could literally hear when you were running a computer too hard and could make sure that you didn’t kill the system.

Not too sure what you mean Bobby by the desktop link though. Perhaps you could let us know some more on that one?

Best wishes,

Mark

I bought my first Mac last year (Aluminium iMac 24”). It has been nothing short of excellent and using a Mac has been a wonderful experience.

The only complaint is that I am not as familiar with the inner workings as I am with XP which makes me feel a bit noobyish but other than that I love it!

The only complaint is that I am not as familiar with the inner workings as I am with XP which makes me feel a bit noobyish but other than that I love it!

Well I don’t really think that would be as much of a complaint as just something that you need to learn really isn’t it? 😉

I think that the great thing about the Mac though is that you don’t need to know the inner workings to be able to get some really really great results out of it. That has always in my mind put the Mac ahead of all other systems. It just lets you get on with what you want to do and never tries to butt in on things 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi Mark,

The reason I say that is because I have a program running a process every 10 seconds and I don’t have a clue how to get rid of it even though I have deleted the program.

I am still investigating though…

Ah ha,

Go to :

Hard Disk->Utilities->Activity Monitor

This will show every process running on the computer and you should be able to sort them to show you what is still running. If you have deleted a program though then simply restarting the computer will normally stop it from happening any more as the program will no longer be running in the memory any more.

What program was it then?

Best wishes,

Mark

This is my Console output.

28/05/08 6:46:52 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.mozy.backup) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds 
28/05/08 6:47:02 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.mozy.backup[31097]) posix_spawnp("/Applications/Mozy.app/Contents/Resources/MozyBackup", ...): No such file or directory 
28/05/08 6:47:02 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.mozy.backup[31097]) Exited with exit code: 1 
28/05/08 6:47:02 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.mozy.backup) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

Mozy is the program. Perhaps I should download, install then uninstall…

Nothing shows up in Activity Monitor.

If a process is running it should be listed in the Activity Monitor. Check that the drop-down menu at the top of the Activity Monitor window says all processes and not user processes or anything else. This will show all processes running on the computer. You may want to order the columns so that you can see the most run process or something otherwise they may just jump about all over the place 😉

Also if you have deleted the application perhaps just run the de-installation program too as there is probably some system level component for Mozy that runs all the while or something (sorry don’t really know much about that program but I am guessing it has something lurking in the background somewhere) but if you run the un-installer and then restart this definitely should go away then.

Best wishes,

Mark

Bobby, from my limited knowledge, Apple’s built in Universal Access makes Macs more usable by sight, hearing, and even motor impaired individuals out of the box.  Sounds like you demoed some of that, but I don’t know if you had opportunity to try customizing it.  And if you buy an Apple laptop, you can always run Windows if you don’t like OS X.  PC World has done more than one review that showed that the Macbook laptops were some of the fastest and bang-for-the-buckiest laptops available for running Windows.  Just slap XP on it with Boot Camp and there you go.

Yep you can run Windows on a Mac but…

… WHY?

Why buy a Mac and then you don’t like OSX and so decide to run Windows on it. Sorry Derek I have to go against that thought I’m afraid. The Mac was made to run OSX and does it exceptionally well. Whilst yes it is good that you can run Windows on it for things such as checking web-sites on that behemoth of a browser that we all love to hate - IE but you are then down to the fact that this is being emulated and usually by third party applications so should anything suddenly not work in the Windows world then you are down to waiting for support from them as opposed to Apple directly.

If you are going to buy a Mac then I say learn how to use the Mac itself and you definitely won’t look back.

I would say that spending extra money on a Mac to then go and run windows is (pardon the expression) a bit backwards. Whilst I am a complete Mac evangelist I would never ever tell someone to buy a Mac and then run windows and not OSX on it as you would definitely be wasting money and time and effort.

Where I work for my day job we only use Macs (makes me happy 😉 ) as we work in a creative field but all my other work colleagues except one are all PC users. All of them within 1 week of using OSX started saying “Why can’t PCs do this?” and “This is so much easier than what I have to do at home”.

Point made really! 😉

Sorry Derek this post isn’t meant to put down what you have said as you are absolutely right in saying that you can run Windows on a Mac but I would say only really do this if you are looking at perhaps running them alongside each other or for running programs that you maybe can’t get on a Mac. If you are going to buy a Mac and then solely run Windows on it then that seems a little bit of a waste to me.

Just my two penneths worth though.

Best wishes,

Mark

That’s an awfully strong reaction to my brief post, Mark, and your argument is misplaced here as I don’t disagree at all about OS X being vastly superior for most people.  Note that I’m not advocating buying an Apple and running Windows instead of OS X.  But for some switchers, just knowing that if they don’t like it, they don’t have a worthless brick or have to deal with selling their hardware, because Apple computers run Windows better than most PCs do.