Mac vs Vista 32/64-bit

[Dial_tone]

I had a friend that did 3D animation 8-10 years ago when cpus were pretty slow. He had top of the line computers and producing 5 seconds of 3D (like a Pixar film) would literally take him 24 hours.

 

[guest username]

so if you have office, and other windows you have to

1) load the mac
2) load boot camp
3) load xp
4) run the application (office)

isn't that lengthy and a long time? And you're still stuck with 3gigs? and how do you access the mac file structure from an xp shell? I have lotsa PC apps.

I just have a feeling I'm gonna be blowing $10g's one day on everything. There goes my beer money.

r

No, Office is available for Macs to run natively. You don't need Windows to run Office.

For most people, the vast majority of computer programs they use are available for Macs.

My Mac software that runs natively:

- Microsoft Office
- Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Lightroom, Flash, Fireworks, Acrobat
- FileMaker
- Stata 10

I only use Windows Vista for a proprietary program that is needed for work.

For most people, they will only need to buy Office (not really a necessity, you can download SmartOffice/NeoOffice for free). Music is through iTunes, photo management through iPhoto (actually has some great features), and if you need basic to mid range video work you can use iMovie.

When I made the switch 6 years ago, I was clueless what was available on Macs. I thought you couldn't run Office on a Mac. That turned out to not be true. There are a lot of programs that run natively on Macs, and unlike Windows, they are stable and rarely crash. In 6 years, I've had 1 "blue screen of death" or serious unstable crash on my Mac. Compare that to my work laptop that I carry overseas. It seems to crash every month (and to make matters worse, it has sensitive government information on it).

 

[layinback]

i am on a mac mini.

i have several and i use them for my business.
never had a crash.

i'm gonna be picking up the new i mac.....boy o boy
that thing is cooool!!!!

i love the mac store

 

[Razorguns]

I had a friend that did 3D animation 8-10 years ago when cpus were pretty slow. He had top of the line computers and producing 5 seconds of 3D (like a Pixar film) would literally take him 24 hours.

the world of HD video has changed *everything*. 1920x1080 uncompressed with 4:4:4 color sampling requires gargantuan computing power through HD-SDI input. Even with a poor man's HDV 4:2:0 compression workflow of it.

SD editing is easy as pie. I can edit family videos all day! lol.

me = sad panda. Learning mac and getting up to speed is gonna waste another month of my time.

Guess it's hard to be a rebel and be pro-Windows-fanboy in Hollywood. Sooner or later you will lose the war.

r

 

[Mr. dB]

But every Windows computer has that stupid fucking 3 GIG limit.

Only the 32-bit version. 64-bit Windows, either XP or Vista, will accept a lot more RAM.

 

[Razorguns]

Only the 32-bit version. 64-bit Windows, either XP or Vista, will accept a lot more RAM.

yeah but it's unstable with 32-bit apps that use >3GB and back to square one we go. Nor MS nor the Software companies provide any support when things don't work. "tough".

r

 

[digger]

I was looking at an 8-core monster Mac today. Drool, drool, drool.

But screw Boot Camp - put Parallels Desktop on your Mac and run XP in a window while you're saving up your nickels to buy the native Apple version of (whatever). No need to reboot to go back and forth; you'll find that XP is stable on Apple hardware, you can make a snapshot of it and EASILY BACK UP a known good configuration to DVD; and you can still throw all the RAM you can afford at the Apple applications. It's a bit like running MS Office under Linux (I don't let Office near my XP box. It runs just fine on Linux with Crossover, which is a commercial port of Wine).

Drop in an instance of Ubuntu while you're at it; Parallels won't mind it a bit.

Vista does suck. Built a nice dual-core box for a buddy, a real rocket; tried Vista Ultimate, and it was like 1998 all over. I put XP Home on there (holding my nose, of course) and it popped right back to 21st Century performance levels.

 

[Razorguns]

i'm seeing some real cheap G5 dual cores on craigslist. Some sounds so cheap, but it's hard to know how good a 4GB 250mb system is.

I may just finish this stupid flick on a new hp, then buy a mac later and have all the time in the world to play with it. i can always give away the hp to some family member.

r

 

[digger]

There's a reason the G5's are cheap. They rocked in their day, but you're not going to run Boot Camp OR Parallels on 'em.

G5 Tower, I wouldn't turn down as a freebie, but I don't think you want the flat G5 iMac. Too much stuff going on in too little space. A tower would make a nice render box, though.

 

[Mr. dB]

I was looking at an 8-core monster Mac today. Drool, drool, drool.

But screw Boot Camp - put Parallels Desktop on your Mac and run XP in a window while you're saving up your nickels to buy the native Apple version of (whatever). No need to reboot to go back and forth; you'll find that XP is stable on Apple hardware, you can make a snapshot of it and EASILY BACK UP a known good configuration to DVD; and you can still throw all the RAM you can afford at the Apple applications. It's a bit like running MS Office under Linux (I don't let Office near my XP box. It runs just fine on Linux with Crossover, which is a commercial port of Wine).

Drop in an instance of Ubuntu while you're at it; Parallels won't mind it a bit.

Vista does suck. Built a nice dual-core box for a buddy, a real rocket; tried Vista Ultimate, and it was like 1998 all over. I put XP Home on there (holding my nose, of course) and it popped right back to 21st Century performance levels.

Aren't there certain Windows things that Parallels doesn't support? Like anything ending in X -- DirectX, ActiveX.

Will Boot Camp and Parallels co-exist on the same system?