Is it worth buying a Mac purely on the basis of reliability

barrymoney

My opinion: yes. Mac OS X is more stable and easier to use. I dont hate my Windows PCs, but I work with Mac if possible. Can't argue over cost though - expensive

Richie-from-the-Boro

Follow on from post #5

I said I'd look up reliability.

GoTo : http://www.website-design-newcastle.co.uk/articles/71

- this seems a fair critique from the half dozen I've read this morning, the conclusion ? .. .. .. no, Mac's are no more reliable than a decent PC. This I suspect will change over the coming years as the reliability index for the PC will increase as a result of Win7's stability and it's inherent capacity to stop ' user error !.

N.B. of the random 6 I read, 5 said no difference in reliability -the 6th I disregarded as it was clearly a phanboy / infomercial product. The diligent updates at the bottom of the page should also be read.

Hope this helps.

jaydeeuk1

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

GoTo : http://www.website-design-newcastle.co.uk/articles/71

Good little article that, pretty much agree with most of it.

jack_spratt_2

This is an interesting thread !! I have been considering going down the same route but there is one point in that I had been considering the new Sony all in one !!the price range about £1000 to £1300 this is mac money .
The main reason for considering these machines are I am feed up with having a desk full of wires etc.
After doing some research it seems a good idea to buy the one to one care from apple

spaceboy

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

Good little article that, pretty much agree with most of it.

The bit at the end about the failed video card in the iMac is pretty shocking. 3 months warranty on the replacement! And the replacement failed!

jaydeeuk1

spaceboy wrote: »

The bit at the end about the failed video card in the iMac is pretty shocking. 3 months warranty on the replacement! And the replacement failed!

The old dodgy geforce 8000/9000 series. £320 for a £40 card is extortionate, but tbf the one part that did fail probably wasn't made by apple / Foxconn (unless they license the design from nvidia)

rhythmsoup

+1 for giving Linux a try on your machines. Ive breathed life into 3 old pcs in my house using different variants of Ubuntu. Other people I know have gone out and purchased new PCs when they say their old one was running slow... crazy...

Ubuntu like other linux ditributions is free and so makes even more sense to all our money saving posters here :-)

bob_man_uk

I would usually plus one for apple macs here, i love them i really do, i switched with the job, january last year and it really opened my eyes to the world of OS X, where most problems cant be fixed by patches a format will usually solve the problem, i would hazard a guess that macs seem more stable because the operating system was written to work with the hardware, which is the same for every revision of the product, where as windows was written to work with many different types of hardware and i think to this point windows does a very good job at running on so many different variations.

saying this i hate to see a pc go unused, 3 years is relatively new in my eyes, and if you think its a bit weak why not upgrade it? its only 3 years im sure you can pick up more powerful processors/bigger memory/hard drive/graphics etc far cheaper than you could 3 years ago. if its hardware thats causing the bsod, find out whats causing it, if its hardware, replace it, software, format and start again, if its as clean as you say then there should be no problems.

also the people who suggest linux, it may be free and to some extent a lot easier to use with proprietry drivers (big nod to nvidia there) but you will really need to be prepared for a big shock, linux has been made to be as much a drop in replacement as possible but its not always going to satisfy on all levels, for example, i had a netbook and i tinkered with linux, i could have more control over what i have running, have console access and quickly issue one command to do something instead of clicking all the time, whilst this worked to an extent, other things didnt, screen size was a major issue, most apps fell off the bottom of the screen so the likes of ok, continue, cancel etc were never seen, and then theres the hardware, wireless is STILL a complete pain in the backside, i had the option of installing a driver for my device to work, great, go ahead and install it then...... oh whats that? you cant because you require access to the internet? well im sorry but the only way you can is by wireless, catch 22. once i had it all working it was great, slim, fast and light on the battery, but getting to that point wasnt very easy, good for the old grey matter, but slightly stressful lol

debitcardmayhem

londonman81 wrote: »

I'm probably going to open up an age-old can of worms, but here goes anyway....


My problem: I have two PC's from a well known manufacturer, around 3 years old each, one of which has seen minimal usage and yet they both still keep crashing and giving errors etc. Infact I had my first Blue screen within a few days of receiving one of them.

As a result, I am now wondering whether it is worth considering a Mac as my next purchase, simply to have something that works and does what it is supposed to do and which lasts in proportion to its usage.


It is certainly more expensive to purchase a Mac, and the software too, but for the sake of having something that actually does what it is supposed to do I am prepared to take the financial hit.

So shall I make the switch to Mac to avoid this PC grief??

Why bother, you have two PCs, save your money use one with a Linux distro - the one with minimum usage , and then use the one with Windows for the next 3 years and ask for the forum's help to sort out it's problems.

Cost £0 - fun yes well for everything else use M*******RD

gonzo127

bob_man_uk wrote: »

also the people who suggest linux, it may be free and to some extent a lot easier to use with proprietry drivers (big nod to nvidia there) but you will really need to be prepared for a big shock, linux has been made to be as much a drop in replacement as possible but its not always going to satisfy on all levels, for example, i had a netbook and i tinkered with linux, i could have more control over what i have running, have console access and quickly issue one command to do something instead of clicking all the time, whilst this worked to an extent, other things didnt, screen size was a major issue, most apps fell off the bottom of the screen so the likes of ok, continue, cancel etc were never seen, and then theres the hardware, wireless is STILL a complete pain in the backside, i had the option of installing a driver for my device to work, great, go ahead and install it then...... oh whats that? you cant because you require access to the internet? well im sorry but the only way you can is by wireless, catch 22. once i had it all working it was great, slim, fast and light on the battery, but getting to that point wasnt very easy, good for the old grey matter, but slightly stressful lol

never had any problems with Ubuntu with any hardware, ok i have only been using it for about a year so am running 9.04 but i really have not come accross any issues even on my Dell latitude X300 ultra portable (13" screen and about 7 years old) but then again evenones experience is different and it also very much depends on which version you tried, the latest ones are incredible and i can not wait until the final release of 10.04 is launched at the end of the month.

with your net book problem did you consider using the netbook remix? specially designed for netbooks - anyways this is all moving away from the situation at hand

as for the OP trying Ubuntu my thoughts are - what have they got to lose? a disk to burn it of on then 5 mins to try the LiveCD see if everything works properly if it does 10-20 mins for a install