Considering buying a Mac

geekgirl

toasterman wrote: »

Just wondering.. looking at the Apple refurb store.. there's the white base-model macbook for £150 under the original price.

I know there are people here who have bought from them before.. how much cosmetic damage/scratching/discolouring..etc...can be expected?
Anyone had any bad experiences?
Presumably the screen won't be scratched, even if the actual casing might have the odd blemish?

In our immediate family we have bought from the refurb store 7 laptops. They have all been perfect in every way with no blemishes or marks or any problems at all.

The discolouration thing is a problem that some of the early white macbooks had whether they came from the refurb store or from other outlets. My son and my niece both had their cases replaced with no problems by apple as it was a known problem.

toasterman

Idiophreak wrote: »

Also, a quick note on toasterman's comments about DRM...I've never had *any problems* in this regard with windows. (or are you talking about an MS online shop for music?)

I rip CDs to my PC, I then copy them to my NAS drive, back to other PCs, MP3 players, burn CDs, whatever...all without *any* restrictions and *much* quicker and easier than using iTunes

Actually my problem with DRM seemed to be caused by DRM itself getting corrupted. I couldn't watch/listen to anything with Microsoft's DRM in it.. so tv shows on the BBC iPlayer (free) wouldn't play, because the DRM was corrupted.

Back when I used to download from Woolworths/Tesco Download's store (before I discovered iTunes), I used to download, burn the resulting files to an .iso file. Then mount the .iso with Nero imagedrive, open it in Windows Media Player, and rip it back (to mp3).
It was a lot of effort, and a similar situation is needed to get things out of iTunes that have been bought online...if you want to remove the drm for some reason.
I think iTunes is easier for having on multiple devices without upsetting the licenses, though.

Most of my stuff was ripped from cds to start with, but I'm loathed to buy an album of some new band who I only like one song of - when I can download the one good track (albeit with DRM), for 79p from iTunes.

While I admit DRM can be a pain in the !!!, I can totally understand why companies would want to put it in there..*and* why companies like Apple and Microsoft would have to put it on there, to get Sony, Universal, Time Warner, etc.. to let them distribute movies, music, etc.
Really, why shouldn't people have the right to protect their own content?

isofa is right though - I have got seriously off topic. Apologies to the op.

shona_2

toasterman wrote: »

Just wondering.. looking at the Apple refurb store.. there's the white base-model macbook for £150 under the original price.

I know there are people here who have bought from them before.. how much cosmetic damage/scratching/discolouring..etc...can be expected?
Anyone had any bad experiences?
Presumably the screen won't be scratched, even if the actual casing might have the odd blemish?

Mine seems perfect...

turbobob

Cerro wrote: »

Open source doesn't spread quickly because it has no big-company comerical backing which can have programmers dedicated to working on it 365 days a year. Open source depends on the community and the Linux community is still small in comparision to OS-X and Windows.

Linux is driven by big companies now. If you are interested in how, and the difference this makes, this interview with a former kernel developer is a good read - http://apcmag.com/6735/interview_con_kolivas

Anyhoo more on topic, I've recently been using XP, Ubuntu Linux, PC-BSD, and Mac OSX and my favourite to actually use is the Mac.

Simon_B_2

blimey OP here this has gone off on a tangent! Anyway thanks for all the input going to check out the apple store next weekend and weigh it up against a vista machine.

also need to test vista as haven't actually tried it properly other than a minute long play in Pcworld or Currys yet.

sleep2much

Attacks on Mac OS X Exploded by 1,550% in 2007 – Just a 36% Growth for Windows, so smug Mac users are going to have to rethink ideas about how secure their systems are, welcome to the club.

toasterman

sleep2much wrote: »

Attacks on Mac OS X Exploded by 1,550% in 2007 – Just a 36% Growth for Windows, so smug Mac users are going to have to rethink ideas about how secure their systems are, welcome to the club.

Well that's sounds like some real scaremongering there...lets put those figures in some perspective, shall we?

According to Kaspersky (which seems to be the source of that information, as far as I can see):

- In the first half of 2007, OS X suffered 2 recorded attacks.
- This number grew by 1,550% in the second half of 2007 to.. 35.
- In 2007 as a whole, there were 228,593 recorded attacks of Windows

And here's the really interesting thing.. there were 166 attacks on Linux!
121 in the first half, and 45 in the second half. Linux was attacked more than OS X.

All this shows is that any operating system that has a lot of, or is increasing its number of, users, will get attacked more than one that considerably lower number of people are using.
This sort of sensationalist cr4p could only come from an antivirus company.

isofa

Exactly, anti-virus software is really still only needed on the Mac if you are swapping a lot of PC files (with potential infections), just to prevent these files harbouring PC viruses (which have no affect on Mac OS X) and passing them on.

A sensible user, who doesn't visit very dodgy websites, or who has the sense not to click on rogue links, is still much safer on OS X. Sure the more popular it gets, the more attacks that are likely, nothing is perfect. It is, without question, more secure than Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Anti-Virus companies have a long history of scaremongering to sell products.

uggstock

what is a virus? (12 year mac user)

sleep2much

It maybe sensationalist cr4p I agree, but if OS X was ever released to the world beyond Mac hardware (legally) it would surely become a target, it's not the fact that it's super secure, it's just that it's only a tiny part of the market, and these hacker types know they are wasting their efforts.
As for percentages, I've always hated it's use, pay deals for example, bloke on £10,000 a year gets a 4% pay rise, the managers trying to look equal take a 4% rise too, on £50,000, so they end up with a tasty £2000 while the bloke has to be happy with £400, and so it goes on, as far as I'm concerned they should get a fixed amount each. %'s :-P