Considering buying a Mac...

I've been thinking lately about buying myself a Mac so I need some advice from you guys and girls about it. I've used pretty much only used Windows and have no knowledge or experience using a mac but lately ive been tempted in getting a mac, firstly I would like to know about how windows runs on a mac. I read about boot camp with which one can install windows xp. Could someone tell me how stable windows xp runs on a mac and what about software compatibility do all the windows softwares run perfectly fine?

The reason why i want to know about how windows xp runs on a mac is because there are some programs on windows that I use often and would like to know if i will be able to use them. Do window xp games run on a mac? (games like guild wars and command and conquer 3)

Lastly I would like some advice if I should actually get a Mac as I dont have any experience using it or should I just stick with a PC?

any sort of advice is appreciated.

thanks

#470833

I have a Mac that dual boots with Windows. It runs just fine and perfectly stable, runs as well as it would on any regular PC. Apple supplies all the drivers so you won't have any driver issues. It is a fully functional Windows installation and any Windows software will run on it.

If you're into gaming, I would recommend either the iMac, Macbook Pro, or Mac Pro. These all have dedicated graphics cards that will run games nicely. The Mac mini and regular white/black Macbook have an Intel GMA 950 that isn't so great with graphics intensive 3D games. Windows games will run just fine on a Mac though.

If you buy a Mac I'm sure you'll be happy with it and learn to use the Mac OS, which isn't hard to use. You can't lose though since you'll still have Windows. The best of both worlds in one computer!

#470837

Another thing you should do is wait until Leopard before buying a Mac. Leopard is the first system that was truly designed for the Intel Mac architecture, Tiger right now was just ported to Intel Macs. I heard someone say that Leopard is really fast on Intel Macs. The same guy said he had a MacBook with 1GB RAM and with the latest seed of Leopard and a Mac Pro with 3GB of RAM and with Tiger. The MacBook with Leopard is faster than a Mac Pro with Tiger he said.

Also the Boot Camp application in Leopard is going to be pre-installed and won't be beta anymore. Do you really want to use a beta product right now? I suggest you wait until Leopard before buying a Mac.

#470850

There is a program called "WINE", which is origianally written for Linux, but there is also a OS X version as well. As its Linux counterpart, it will allow you to use windows programs nativally on OS X, such as the games you mentioned.

WINE is pretty tricky, but once you get it going, there are hundreds of programs that are compatible with it. Although, not all programs are compatible with it, remember this.

Read here for more info.

#470860

Another thing you should do is wait until Leopard before buying a Mac. Leopard is the first system that was truly designed for the Intel Mac architecture, Tiger right now was just ported to Intel Macs. I heard someone say that Leopard is really fast on Intel Macs. The same guy said he had a MacBook with 1GB RAM and with the latest seed of Leopard and a Mac Pro with 3GB of RAM and with Tiger. The MacBook with Leopard is faster than a Mac Pro with Tiger he said.

Also the Boot Camp application in Leopard is going to be pre-installed and won't be beta anymore. Do you really want to use a beta product right now? I suggest you wait until Leopard before buying a Mac.

Good Advice... Wait for Leopard... the only real decent VM product is Parallels and daaaamn thats hardware hungry for some tasks if your buying a lower spec machine..

#472435

VMWare Workstation is also another great Virtual Machine application.

#472452