rv computing December 11, 2004, 11:02:56 pm Yahoo Message Number: 47680I am one of the lurking wannabes who comments on rare occasion. I hope you'll all be glad to know that I have absolutely NOTHING to add to the bizarre and increasingly contentious tire stem debate. I can, however, chime in on the "what computer to get" question. I would like to encourage anyone thinking of a new computer to consider a Macintosh. Andy Baird's point that they are spyware- and virus-free is one of the most beneficial aspects to consider. PC viruses and spybots do not work on a Mac. You can use the Safari browser and really, really get rid of pop-ups forever. It's very user-friendly. I once sat in an office where everyone was working hard on a deadline. I was the only Mac user. There was a thunderstorm and we all heard that loud, cracking noise. The screen on my Mac blinked for a split second, then came right back. All of the PCs went dead. I could hear the screams of those who hadn't saved recently. Not that I recommend a lack of caution about electrical surges or saving your work, but Macs have many virtues and some of these virtues aren't evident until you've been using one for a while. My husband and I currently have two Macs, two Linux machines, and a PC laptop. We've been through a lot of computers in the last 16 years. If I had to pick just one it would definitely be a Mac.
Re: rv computing Reply #1 – December 11, 2004, 11:49:01 pm Yahoo Message Number: 47683Now, here's another common subject of flame wars. But, hey, I'm already in for a dime might as well weigh in on this one too. I use both pc's and mac's (I call myself bi-OS'd) although I've used mac's much longer than pc's. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty good with linux and I can find my way around unix as well. I have 2 laptops but if I could only have one, it would be the mac powerbook 15" I got this summer. It's a great machine. That's me though and I am good at figuring things out on a computer. If I am giving advice to someone on what to get I ask them a couple of questions first."Are you experienced with one or the other? If you had to, can you reinstall the system on a pc? Can you find the Device Manager easily and know how to use it to check or reinstall drivers for whatever you have?" If you are familiar enough with a pc to do the above and you've never used a mac, I think you would be happier with a good, solid pc."Do you have someone you can call that is a computer guru and they will answer your call at midnight and help you figure out what went wrong?" If you are lucky enough to have a person like this, get whatever brand and OS they recommend. You want them happy and happy to help you.If you answered no to both the above, get a mac. You are going to have a learning curve with either of them but the mac's is much easier to handle. It will need much less fiddling and fuming and you will feel knowledgeable and competent on it much quicker. That's a good feeling.Jonna, in GDL
Re: rv computing Reply #2 – December 12, 2004, 03:18:34 am Yahoo Message Number: 47690"Now, here's another common subject of flame wars."Good decision-making advice, Jonna. I'll add my vote for Macs. A Powerbook or iBook may initially cost more than a PC laptop, but in my experience (I'm sure others have had different experiences) the Apples are more reliable and less costly to maintain in the long run. Again, just my experience. I do own both platforms. I'll also throw in a fourth or a fifth for Firefox...on both Mac & PC.Thankfully, I have absolutely no comment on borgs, Klingons or Vulcans. As a newbie who's recently read many of the old posts, may I remind everyone that these "flame wars" do pop up occasionally here...BUT, everyone seems to eventually settle down and "make up"...sorta. ;-) There are some strong personalities here! That makes for a great group and discussions/arguments/debates. Differences are a good thing...we will NOT be assimilated!peace, not war. ;-) -Andrew
Re: rv computing Reply #3 – December 12, 2004, 05:42:55 am Yahoo Message Number: 47692Oh, this is hilarious! Another "neutral" subject. My only thoughts are that I once owned an Apple II Plus (1981) and an Apple IIGS. Both fine computers for their day but it was the old chicken and egg story and the MAC that did them in. Nobody wanted to finance software development for machines struggling to find a market and the machines couldn't find a market because of the lack of software.My first external hard drive was a Chinook. 40, count 'em, 40 megabytes and cost me $710. I still have it and the GS computer. I sold the II+ years ago for $200 and hear that they bring 10 times that much today. MAC is a terrific computer but I use an HP Pavilion laptop in my LD, viewing the MAC, rightly or wrongly, as a specialized machine geared toward high-end graphical and musical applications. I have no idea as to the availability of general purpose MAC software today.NH Paul
Re: rv computing Reply #4 – December 12, 2004, 08:52:26 am Yahoo Message Number: 47696QuoteMAC is a terrific computer but I use an HP Pavilion laptop in my LD, Quoteviewing the MAC, rightly or wrongly, as a specialized machine geared toward high-end graphical and musical applications. I have no idea as to the availability of general purpose MAC software today. Mostly this is wrong. For those interested they should browse by the apple.com site and check out the "Store" in the tabs above.Also check out the tab "Mac OS X" and go to the downloads section. There you will see a great deal of both open source and commercial software available for Apple computers. Most of the open source stuff will also run on M$. I prefer Unix style operating systems and spend a great deal of time in terminal windows with a very old text editor called vi. This comes native on Unix style machines including Apples running OS X.I Also need X11 windowing capability. This is a little more work on the Apple, but now comes with the standard distribution.Apple also has a very nice free Development environment with an Apple-ized gnu compiler. If a lot of this does not mean much to folks on the site, that is fine. My main point is there are lots of reasons to run OS X that have nothing to do with high end graphical or music.You can also do most of this stuff with M$ but you need to install something called cygwin. This is more work, plus I am stuck with M$ in my wallet all the time.I believe that Apple and OS X have been found to be the most secure operating systems. M$ is not, if for no other reason than they are a big target.There are problems with any system NOT microsoft because many vendors chose to only support the microsoft operating system. If you REALLY need to run something like that, well, you probably should run microsoft. I, however, go to great effort to NOT run microsoft. I always feel like microsoft is pushing me to do things their way. And I hate little pop up help me's that I do not ask for and that won't go away until you reward them.Before closing out I guess I should also point out that Unix front ends have had windowing and point and click since before there was an M$ windows. So if somebody brings up how brain dead Unix is and how you have to do everything with"wierd commands" look at these people as uneducated and out of touch. You can point and click with the best of them in OS X.Randy Judd
Re: rv computing Reply #5 – December 12, 2004, 10:14:15 am Yahoo Message Number: 47700MAC is a terrific computer but I use an HP Pavilion laptop in my LD, viewing the MAC, rightly or wrongly, as a specialized machine geared toward high-end graphical and musical applications. I have no idea as to the availability of general purpose MAC software today.Mostly this is wrong. > Randy Judd>Actually Randy was quoting me with all of the above except, "Mostly this is wrong." As I said, "I have no idea as to the availability of general purpose MAC software today" but I do believe that MAC's are revered, and rightly so, for graphical and musical applications. I don't wish to be embroiled again in a controversial and passionate discussion so I'll simply say that what bothers me about MAC is that I still see statements, in too many places, such as the one I partially copied from a Yahoo! online application, "Note: ... is not compatible with Unix or Macintosh computers." I wish it were not so.I chose a PC for RVing but this is NOT an endorsement of Bill Gates or his company so please don't shoot the messenger. That's all from me about this!NH Paul
Re: RV computing Reply #6 – December 12, 2004, 10:59:43 am Yahoo Message Number: 47705Before we get into another passionate discussion (and I'll freely admit that Many Mac users are as passionate about their choice of platform as Lazy Daze owners are about their rigs, for much the same reasons), let me see whether I can summarize. First, please bear in mind that my original post was in reply to one that began "Being somewhat inexperience[d]..." If someone is already an Windows expert user and is happy with that choice, I'm not going to try to talk them out of it! Jonna, as usual, had good common-sense advice in her post #47683, which bears rereading. If you have a local "guru" who uses a given computer and you know you're going to be turning to her or him for help, getting the same type of machine can make a lot of sense. As far as software's concerned, there are more than 23,000 products made for Macs, including all the major Microsoft and Adobe applications, Quicken, TurboTax, and thousands of shareware and freeware programs. You can find a product guide at guide.apple.com/>. A few areas lag behind--I already mentioned GPS navigation software, where there are only a couple of choices--and there are fewer games on the Mac platform than on Windows. But the Mac is a fine general-purpose computer, and the vast majority of 30+ million Mac users are using theirs that way. Mac OS is pretty easy to get used to if you're familiar with Windows, since the two OSes have common roots and have copied features from each other over the years. You can even use a two-button mouse with scroll wheel--I do! Apple has a pretty good Frequently Asked Questions page for Windows users at http://www.apple.com/switch/questions/ index.html>. Again, if you already have a strong preference, or if your local experts are all on one platform or the other, stick with that. But if you're not comfortable fiddling with the Device Manager or editing the Windows Registry, or you're simply tired of fighting the avalanche of malware aimed at Windows users, you may want to consider a Mac. (Recent tests found that a brand new Windows computer will become infected with one or more spyware apps or worms within an average of *fifteen minutes* after first being connected to the internet. There are no infections under Mac OS.) Jonna summed it up well when she wrote, "You are going to have a learning curve with either [Mac or Windows,] but the Mac's is much easier to handle. It will need much less fiddling and fuming and you will feel knowledgeable and competent on it much quicker." If you're already expert with Windows, fine. If not...a Mac is a good alternative.Andy Baird
Re: RV computing Reply #7 – December 12, 2004, 11:32:12 am Yahoo Message Number: 47709One thing I forgot to mention: in addition to running Mac software, Macs can also run just about any Windows program, using an application from Microsoft called Virtual PC. It actually emulates PC hardware, so that any version of Windows (2000, XP, you name it) can run without any alterations on what it thinks is a real live PC. All this happens in a window on your Mac, so you can copy files and text back and forth between Mac and PC programs, and even share the same internet connection and peripherals (mouse, printer, scanner, etc.). The drawbacks are 1) Virtual PC costs $218, and 2) it's noticeably slower than a real PC. (You won't be happy running games under VPC.) Still, it's very usable for most general- purpose Windows applications. I've taken off-the-shelf Windows software with sound, video and all the trimmings and run it under VPC without a hitch, and I often use it for testing websites with Windows browsers. And because this is all running in a sort of software "containment box," even if your Windows system were to become badly infected with worms or viruses, it would have no effect on the Mac you're using to run VPC. You can simply wipe Windows and reload VPC. VPC works amazingly well if you occasionally need to run a specialized Windows program that you just can't find on MacOS. If you're doing computationally intensive work (or play! ;-) it's probably not a good solution. But given that almost every important Windows application can be had in a Mac version, VPC can fill in the cracks nicely in most cases.Andy Baird
Re: rv computing Reply #8 – December 12, 2004, 11:49:35 am Yahoo Message Number: 47712QuoteI prefer Unix style operating systems and spend a great deal of time in terminal windows with a very old text editor called vi. This comes native on Unix style machines including Apples running OS X. Ah, another old unix hack! I still frequently use vi when I want to do some serious text massaging. But most of the people trying to use either a Mac or PC would be lost trying to use vi. There is a large learning curve and it must be used to be remembered. It's much more than the average person needs.QuoteI Also need X11 windowing capability. This is a little more work on the Apple, but now comes with the standard distribution.Apple also has a very nice free Development environment with an Apple-ized gnu compiler. If a lot of this does not mean much to folks on the site, that is fine. My main point is there are lots of reasons to run OS X that have nothing to do with high end graphical or music. Again this is something that makes OS X a lot more open than previous Mac OSes, but not something most users will ever touch. I have done a lot of this kind of stuff in my working career, but if I can just install an off the shelf software package with little fuss, that's the way I'll go. (Since retiring I don't seem to have the time I used to ;>} )QuoteI believe that Apple and OS X have been found to be the most secure operating systems. M$ is not, if for no other reason than they are a big target. OS X is inherently more secure, but any system is only as secure as it's security features are properly managed. The newer MS systems are much better than earlier products, but MS systems are the targets of the vast majority of hackers, virues writers, etc. Also most users don't really know what needs to be done to insure that their systems are secure. There is enough software out there for Macs using OS X that most people (especially novices) can do everything they want/need. But there are still a LOT more choices for PC based systems. There are a number of special use software packages available only for PC. Most of these can be run on a Mac using Virtual PC, but it will be a bit slower and more cumbersome. We are in the position of having both, a Mac Powerbook running OS X, and a PC desktop and a PC laptop both dual boot into either XP or Linux. But 90% of our computer time is spent reading email and surfing the web. For this either works fine. I think I'd side with most on this board. A novice should seriously consider getting a Mac.Art
Re: [Life With A Lazy Daze RV] Re: rv computing Reply #9 – December 12, 2004, 03:27:02 pm Yahoo Message Number: 47734Thanks to Andy who "showed me the way," I'm a PC convert to Macs I love my Power Book. I love its integrated mail program, photo program and Safari -- clean, slick, simple, efficient -- NO pop ups, NO bugs, or viruses, NO weirdness or dreaded blank blue screens! Macs don't try to be all things to all people so they don't have that bloated feeling. You can get around on a Mac without feeling like you're trying to fight your way out of a maze! It has sometimes been a difficult comeuppance to discover support for Macs, eg. Verizon, Staples, the 2610 Street Pilot, etc isn't available -- but where there's a will, there's a way, and there's usually eventually a solution and someone willing to point you in the right direction.I found connecting to the net on the road with a Mac no more complicated than with a PC -- it's all slow!Gordon Greene with the Lazy Daze Caravan Club conducts some awesome workshops at the GTG's he attends, but he is strictly a Windoze Guru. Cynthia Casebolt, with the Past Tents CC group, decided at the December Caravan it was high time Mac users became a presence. She is spearheading formation of a MUG that she is calling the "Apple Corps"!! At our first "meeting" Barbara B. chased down her DH, Art Berggreen who helped 8 of us sort out the options for connecting to the net on the road via PowerBooks and iBooks. If I know Cynthia, I'd count on her whipping up an eclectic, energetic agenda for future CC get togethers. So........watch for information in the "Caravaner," on the CC web site, look for Cynthia at the next one you attend, and pass the word. We're out there!Lorna
rv computing Reply #10 – December 12, 2004, 11:46:15 am Yahoo Message Number: 47711I would like to encourage anyone thinking of a new computer to consider a Macintosh. I've considered a Mac, but just hate the thought of trying to redo stuff like all my spreadsheets over to a different system. Plus, there would be the expense of having to buy all new software for a different system. And, if I was willing to spend the money for new software, could I copy the information from my PC to a Mac (for example, Quicken -- would the "Restore Backup File" work?). I doubt it...which would mean I'd have to start all over recreating information. It's just too daunting a task to even think about! However, for someone who has never had a computer, getting a Mac to start out with would be a good idea.Linda & Earl 2004 23.5' Red TK From Quartzsite, AZ
Re: rv computing Reply #11 – December 12, 2004, 01:01:52 pm Yahoo Message Number: 47719"I've considered a Mac, but just hate the thought of trying to redo stuff like all my spreadsheets over to a different system." Not necessary--as I said, all the major applications are on Mac: Word, Excel, FileMaker, PowerPoint, FileMaker, Quicken, Photoshop, you name it. And they all read each other's files: PC Excel files open in Mac Excel, PC PowerPoint files open in Mac PowerPoint, PC Word files...etc. I believe the same is true for Quicken. I know it is for FileMaker. Macs read and write PC-format CDs, and connect to Windows filesharing networks, so moving the files back and forth is no problem. I use both Macs and PCs all day at work and exchange files of all kinds with colleagues on both platforms. Very rarely is there any problem. "Plus, there would be the expense of having to buy all new software for a different system." Yes, that is a significant extra expense. You can get the Microsoft Office suite for Mac, but you'll have to pay for it. (Some software makers may offer "sidegrade" discounts, though-- it's worth asking.) Again, if you're curious you might want to take a look at the Apple FAQ I mentioned--it answers most of these questions better than I can.Andy Baird
Re: rv computing Reply #12 – December 12, 2004, 01:24:48 pm Yahoo Message Number: 47721Great summary, Andy, but let me emphasize a couple of arguments FOR a Windows machine. Linda & Earl Hylton wrote: "I've considered a Mac, but just hate the thought of trying to redo stuff like all my spreadsheets over to a different system. Plus, there would be the expense of having to buy all new software for a different system." All MS files can be opened via the corresponding MS Mac software. You don't have to redo such files, but you do have to buy the Mac software. Overall, I agree that if you have lots of Windows software, then stick with a Windows machine.Paul Wood wrote: "what bothers me about MAC is that I still see statements, in too many places, such as the one I partially copied from a Yahoo! online application, "Note: ... is not compatible with Unix or Macintosh computers." I use a Mac 95% of the time and rarely come across this problem. I'm not saying that Paul hasn't...just that I haven't. HOWEVER, the most recent time I did come across this problem could be important for LDers who use cell phones to connect to the 'net. You need computer+cell phone+cable to connect the two (unless you have bluetooth)+DRIVER/script for the cable. There are many more drivers available for Windows than for Macs. What that meant for me is that I could select 2-3 Verizon phones that could easily connect to my Mac for 'net access. A PC user could choose from 8-9 phones. Not such a big deal if you're in the process of getting a new phone anyway, but it matters if you want to use the phone you already have.-Andrew
Re: rv computing Reply #13 – December 12, 2004, 01:38:41 pm Yahoo Message Number: 47722Andy, that is a great summary. One application that folks might consider if they are thinking of migrating from a PC to a Mac is MacLinkPlus. This program was once essential for anyone needing to move data from one platform to another. Now most people will not need it. but for those who have data in a format that will not be directly read by a Mac application it is invaluable. I have even used it to convert some of my old Mac files when the original application would no longer run on the new operating system. Data on the application and a complete listing of the files it will convert is at http://www.dataviz.comMonti
Re: rv computing Reply #14 – December 12, 2004, 03:02:10 pm Yahoo Message Number: 47730"Not necessary--as I said, all the major applications are on Mac"Man, Andy, for a self proclaimed "slow typist" you sure get your responses in pretty quick. Sorry for some of the redundant comments re: mac/pc.-Andrew
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