Mac or IBM?

[hndpaul]

I am sick of windows crashing, crashing , and crashing. Today I had around 10 crashes in windows, and have decided to switch to Apple. I have heard that Apples are really stable and fast- but I've never used one before so wouldn't know :-P Are they? I am looking at the new dual CPU 450 G4 system, because my wife is a web designer and needs to run apps like Photoshop etc. How do you rate Macs and the MacOS??

I might be putting Linux on my PIII system now, but I haven't had good experiences with Linux at all over the last year, so am reluctant....

Thanks for your help people!

Paul, UK

[battousai]

hah i have a friend who had a dual g4 500 and he ran OS9 and it crashed two times in 5 minutes the last time i talked to him. But it does run photoshop nicely....

[alfredo]

I heard that Photoshop 6 scorches on the Dual. It will be ready for OSX when launched.
I have been using a Mac since 95 and have not had one hardware failure. It took lightening to kill my 7100/80. That was a rock solid machine. If you need Windows, VirtualPC will give you the ability to run Windows on a Mac.

OS9 has been fine with me. Sherlock 2 is great. It hasn't crashed from anything other than my stupidity. The goal of the MacOS is to make the OS "invisible." they want nothing to get in the way of getting the job done. Watching a pro graphics artist work a Mac is like watching a dance. The one button mouse doesn't seem to slow them down. If she needs a three button mouse, there are plenty to choose from.

I have heard good things about eDesktop by Caldera and Mandrake. So yeah, put Linux back on your PIII, and use the Mac for her web design business.

Show her GIMP. There might be some tools in there that she might need. Maybe someday soon GIMP will catch up with Photoshop.

[Moldy]

My old mac is stable , VERY STABLE.
my G4 isn't as good. crashes alot...
course, i use it heavily... and i mean HEAVILY!
server, dnet, and when im on it, usually 6 or 7 other apps

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MoldyCR.net (http://moldycr.net)

[DrDrake]

I got a PIII 733 (homebuilt) that I run windows ME on without a crash for over 30 days on a regular basis (playing halflife: counterstrike, subspace, and webbrowsing). I also have a P166 that hasnt crashed yet, been 5 months on debian.. As for macs, cant say I have seen bad stuff really, just the price for performance makes me wonder. (Mac guys say a G4 500 would kill a 1ghz.. but a 1.1ghz is under $500 for the processor, and parts are availible from many vendors, rather than just 1 company)

[hndpaul]

Thanks all!

You've confirmed what I thought, and I'm going ahead with the purchase. Mac for web design and the PIII 500 for Linux (yes!). Freedom from Windows :-)

As for Millenium Edition running for so long without a crash: I used it for a week and although it didn't crash as much as 98SE, it DOES have serious bugs. IE5.5 under ME on a LOT of machines is crashing and not opening web pages with DNS server error messages, and I even talked with MS personnel to get that one fixed and it has them perplexed. A visit to the MSN Computing Central forum under "ME" will show you that that is becoming a very common bug, as well as Kernel32.dll errors, freezes, BSODs and a host of incompatibilities. I find it hard- VERY hard- believing that a windows desktop OS could stay running without reboot or hang to free up memory again for more than a week let alone a month :-P

Anyway, thank you all again for your help!!

Take care all, and happy Penguin keeping :-)

Paul, UK

[alfredo]

Tux does his victory dance.

http://mklinux.org/graphics/dpenguin.gif

[bighara]

Don't know firsthand about the dual H|G4, but my brother and also a friend at work got the Cube (G4 500) & it ROCKS! I've used Macs for years (as well Win9X machines) and I find Mac to be more stable overall.

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"Intercourse the Penguin!"
-Monty Python's Flying Circus

[White Shadow]

I work on Macintoshis at work G4s and G3s. I found that my G3 machine crashes about ever 2 hours. Running Quarkxpress (newspaper) and photoshop. yes I'm a poor graphix artist. The G4s I work don't crash as much, maybe once every 3-4 hours but still do (running the same apps). Then I go home and use my PC for linux and windows 98 & 2000. I find my windows machine not crashing at all unless I do something stupid. I can run photsho, quarkxpress, and illustrator and be on the internet at the same time with no problems for 8 or so hours. (got to sleep sometime)

So that is my opion coming from someone who works on both pc and macs equally every day.

WS