Desktop Suggestions, Please
I want to get a new desktop. I want to play music on it. I want to play around with Blender again. I want to watch the occasional movie or TV show.
I need it for writing. I might want to do some layout work.
Oh, yeah, and I probably want to play some games.
I’ll be doing some research anyway but I thought I’d see if anyone here has a suggestion.
Comments
I honestly don’t think you’re going to find anyone here suggesting anything other than an iMac. It’s a no-brainer. Anything else means using Windows.
I kind of figured. I have my sights set on eventually getting an iPad but I don’t know if I’m ready to take the plunge with other Apple computers.
I was talking about this with a few people recently. I aaalmost hate that “iMac” is such an easy answer. But honestly, they’re just so dependable.
I bought mine in 2005 and literally nothing has gone wrong. And with all the PC trouble shooting I have to do for family and friends, reliability is the number requirement for me concerning desktop computers.
Exactly. Even though I’m a tinkerer by nature, I can’t remember the last time I had to futz with something to get my mac to work. And since this is, primarily, a machine I need for work, that’s crucial. If I have something I need to get done, I need to be able to sit down and do it.
As for any sort of learning curve or transitional phase a typical user might experience in moving from windows to Mac, well, I can honestly say there’s practically none. Everything you need on a day to day basis just works like you’d expect it to, and anything that’s more complex and involved has the benefit of a huge community of people on the web (and here) who have the answers.
I think the transition phase is my main concern. I know exactly what I’m doing with Windows stuff. An iMac is new, scary territory in my head. Is there still just one mouse button? Crazy!
Honestly — 99.9% of everything you do on a computer will be exactly the same. Hell, if I had to guess, I’d bet at least 3/4 of what you do is in a web browser. That’s exactly the goddam same. And you can still get microsoft office and all the adobe apps and they all work exactly the same.
The stuff that’ll be different is the stuff that Apple is very good at making obvious. The stuff that “just works” and works exactly like you’d expect it to.
And, for the record, apple mice are one big touchpad. So not only are they two button, they can be three, four, or five button with all sorts of swipes and gestures and things you can program the mouse to do.
John said:That’s exactly the goddam same.
Hahaha, did I hit a nerve or something?
I didn’t know that about apple mice. The last time I used an apple was probably 6 or 7 years ago, and it was an older mac. Can I use the gestures outside of a web browser (I use mouse gestures in Firefox and Opera and like them a lot)?
All right, I think I can start leaning toward an iMac. On top of everything you’ve mentioned it would give me a reason to act a bit more pretentious, and it’s hard turning down those opportunities.
hahahaha, no, that’s just how I talk when I’m confident about things like computers.
Really, if you’r ein any doubt, just head to the store and go play with one for a while.
It’s true about browsers though. They are the exact same on any platform. The only different would be the keyboard shortcuts. CTRL + T vs. THATAPPLEBUTTON + T
Hmm, the no CTRL may be a deal breaker.
I was a dead-set PC guy. In 2007 I had just spent the previous 6 or 7 years learning how to do everything on my pc, upgrading it, tinkering with it, adding software, adding hardware, adding RAM, adjusting settings, learning every shortcut and maneuver. You name it. I was scared shitless of the switch.
But we bought an Imac and have never looked back. Not for one single second. Within a day I was doing everything I could do on a PC, and in the 3 years I’ve had it I have not had to do one single thing to fix or adjust it or correct it or repair it. And it runs just as smoothly and just as quickly as the day I took it out of the box.
You know Kevin, I was about to ask if you ever encountered a problem of wanting any freeware type software and not being able to use it because of lack of support for the iMac. Then I thought about it for a minute and came to the conclusion that most of the freeware I use is cleaning utilities and the like for Windows. So, yeah. Makes good sense.
I say this with 100% certainty there has never been one thing I’ve wanted on my mac that I haven’t been able to find or do. And there are literally hundreds of things I can do that I couldn’t on a PC.
And it’s not like I just switched and am just having selective memory about the troubles of a PC. We got my daughter one last year (it was bad enough we were getting a 9 year old a computer but we were NOT buying her a mac) and I’ve spent the past year wrestling with and fighting the thing and getting it to not be a big pain in the ass so that she can do even the most basic of things a 9 year old would need to do on a computer.
And maybe if I hadn’t made the switch I wouldn’t have noticed those things. But all it does is remind me how much time I had spent when I had a pc doing cleaning and spy sweeps and updates and virus scans and optimizations and defragging and all of that. Horrible. Totally horrible.
Well my iMac’s optical drive broke after six weeks but wooooooo AppleCare
Thanks a lot for your responses! I’m convinced.
If/when you get one, be sure to get MagicPrefs to enable more mouse gestures and Quicksilver cause it’s fucking awesome.
After Christmas I’m buying myself the shittiest full-size wired mouse I can find. SUCK IT FANCY MOUSE
The scroll nipple on their last mouse drove me nuts, but the new magic mouse is pretty awesome, I think.
I don’t really mind the ball, except for the part where it stops scrolling downward half the time. (I’m assuming it’s because I am terribly messy and get crumbs everywhere so there must be crumbs in my mouse.) I also want something that fits my hand better; I don’t really want the gestures and don’t think they fit my computer usage style.
We just bought a bunch of the simplest possible Logitech mouse for my job and I am considering getting that. It’s really hard to do stupid MS Paint crap for too long when your mouse sucks.
Yeah, I should say the only thing that has consistently crapped out on me have been the mice. I’ve burned through 2 wireless ones and on both of them the scroll nipple has crapped out. And I’m back to using the wired mouse and it’s now crapped out on that as well. I’m not sure if I just use them more than normal or if they are just made really crappy.
maggie said:I don’t really mind the ball, except for the part where it stops scrolling downward half the time. (I’m assuming it’s because I am terribly messy and get crumbs everywhere so there must be crumbs in my mouse.) I also want something that fits my hand better; I don’t really want the gestures and don’t think they fit my computer usage style.
The ball gets crapped up for everyone, not just you. You can wet it a bit with the tip of your finger and rub it on some paper and some of the grease and crud will fall out, but eventually that’ll stop working.
I dig the magic mouse because it lets me do one, two, three, and four-finger clicking as well as a middle click. And I use three finger swipes up and down (i hate side-to-side swipes) for Show Desktop and Expose. But honestly, the accelerated touch-scrolling is worth it alone for me.
As for holding a mouse, I’ve never been comfortable tucking a mouse up into the palm of my hand. I usually am just touching the mouse with a thumb tip, pink tip, and a few fingers in their natural resting position.
O.K. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one that has the thing where it stops scrolling downard.
Kevin said:O.K. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one that has the thing where it stops scrolling downard.
Me too! I’m sorry I made the iMac sound flawless. The damn mouse ball!
Paris said:Kevin said:O.K. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one that has the thing where it stops scrolling downard.
Me too! I’m sorry I made the iMac sound flawless. The damn mouse ball!
S’ok, they don’t sell them anymore!