Why I'm glad to be a Mac person

[Lydia Leftcoast]

As a translator, I sometimes have clients who insist on my using proprietary databases or translation tools that run only on Windows, so I have bought a little cheapo Windows machine, but I rarely use it.

I had to use it last night, and it was a hassle just to get the thing booted up, TELL it to find my wireless network, sit through a bunch of updates that I couldn't stop, and then make it install the software that the client wanted me to use. I spent about an hour just getting ready to work.

Today happened to be the day I picked up my new 15" MacBook Pro. There wasn't really anything wrong with my old (early 2007) MacBook except that I was almost out of hard drive capacity and one important key had stopped working, but I decided it was time.

Anyway, here's the part that really surprised and delighted me. When I asked the sales clerk what was the best way to get my old folders and applications and preferences over to the new machine, he said that the setup assistant would ask if I wanted to use Time Machine.

So that's what I did. I performed a complete backup of the old machine, turned on the new one, got to the dialogue where it asked whether I wanted to transfer material using Time Machine, clicked "yes," and plugged the backup external drive into a USB port. Two hours later, the entire contents of the old hard drive was transferred to the new machine, including mail, iTunes music and TV shows, bookmarks, documents, even the layout of the desktop.

Mac is just so much easier, not to mention the fact that it automatically looks for a wireless network without being explicitly instructed to do so.

[chillspike]

1. My experience with Macs has been the same

I love them. And should anyone be crazy enough to want to, you can install and run Windows on your Mac using BootCamp. I never will buy another Windows based computer again.

[freshwest]

2. I joined the 'cult of mac' back in 2002 and never looked back. I do have dumb questions at times.

Yes, that application with macs is terrific! I'm a real believer in back ups now, and have changed from a couple of My Books for time machine to one My Passport.

About two years my hard drive crashed unexpectedly and I was devastated, having spent many hours adding things that were important to me and my family. Pictures, videos, music, books and all my correspondence.

Fortunately I found a great data retrieval service who replaced my hard drive and after almost 7 days with fans blowing on my fried drive, retrieved almost 250 gig perfectly. Now time machine backs my mac every hour.

Sometimes the free upgrades aggravate me though. It seems they are steering me to things I have no use for, but I'm sure others do. Other than that, it's seamless, elegant and simple.

I'm going to look to see if there's a thread on how to save my iTunes library so I can un-install 10 and go back to 9.1 or 9.2 for a while, until I can get some things done that 10 won't do. There is no way to burn my library to a disk.

When I can afford to, I'm going to upgrade my memory. I'm tired of having to burn disks to make room on my hard drive every almost every month and my files are getting fragmented. I don't mean electronically like a de-frag on Windows, just half on the mac and half on disks. It's getting to be a hassle.

I would prefer to keep everything on this one machine. I digitized all my old VHS home movies, am planning to eliminate the last of my audio cassettes, and finish digitizing all photographs from the formats I had them in for decades. Then goodbye all that clutter.

Glad to find mac fans here at DU.

:hi:

[northoftheborder]

4. About your method of digitizing old......

How did you do all of that???? Did you have one of transfer machines such as Brookstone or Hammecher sells? I too have a huge amount of family tape movies, photographs, which need saving to digital. Do you keep them on your computer, or on a disc, or on flash drives??? I have a Macbook Pro, considered old now, I suppose, and may need a new one if I put all the photo & movie formats on the computer. Are you going to use Cloud???

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Have you considered Parallels and a Windows installation on your Mac?

I have to occasionally use AutoCAD. Everything else we use is cross platform except for this anachronism of a crap program, but there ya go. It is the industry's de facto standard, so we have to use it to test our output for compatibility.

There are also a few web sites that seem stuck in the 1990s that we are forced to use. They only work with Internet Explorer (not even Firefox on Windows).

I have a Parallels installation with Windows Vista. One day soon, I'll upgrade to Windows 7. I like to run Parallels in "Crystal" mode. In this mode, Windows programs work almost entirely like Mac apps. AutoCAD, the scourge of my life, actually operates faster on my Mac in Crystal than it does on a native Windows machine.

Parallels is better than Mac's own Boot Camp. Boot Camp requires a complete reboot into Windows. You can't switch back and forth. In Parallels, Windows runs on a virtual machine, which is essentially one big file. Also, in Boot Camp, you need to designate part of your hard drive for Windows. In Parallels, the single file that is your entire Windows installation just adjusts its size to suit what you have installed.

I think, if you need to run that one program that has no Mac alternative, this is the way to go.

[Bonobo]

5. Same here from another J>E translator!

Been using macs for over 15 years as a translator.

These days I don't have to mess with Windows at all. Yeah!