To PC ... or not to PC?

[Dave2002]

You could have run Windows without an emulation using Bootcamp which would have been much more stable than the PC.
The reason why I (somewhat reluctantly) gave up on the PC was that it was inherently an unstable platform for the audio processing and editing that I do.
Constantly having to defragment, update drivers etc etc wasted so much time and led to sleepless nights and hassle.

Sounds very familiar, but surely the problems don't just go away because an iMac is used instead. Was it perhaps because the iMac had much more memory and backing store, or does Bootcamp do something else to remove the nightmares of defragmentation etc? That's not the only think though - continually having to fight off viruses was another issue for me - of course EVERYBODY uses Windows - that's why most people get caught out with viruses and malware! Another example of where what I call the sheep algorithm ***(which works sometimes ...) fails.



***The Sheep Algorithm
If you're going somewhere you've never been before by car (or on foot, cycle etc., but usually by car) as you near your destination you see one or two other cars going roughly the same way. You make an assumption that they are going to the same place or event as you are. Quite often it does work, and you'll find you are driving into the car park of your chosen venue - but it is not guaranteed. Sometimes it can fail spectacularly.

Additional note - you may even know about the failure possibilities, but still do it!

Another thing about sheep (lambs) - sometimes they end up on trucks going to places that I don't think they really want to go to .... !!!!

Don't be a sheep!

[Nick Armstrong]

continually having to fight off viruses was another issue for me

God yes, all that anti-virus software on Windows! I'd forgotten about that! Norton this and that... No need and never 'caught' anything in 10 years on Macs ("An Apple a day....." &c. &c.)

[Dave2002]

Just returned from Snaisburgs where they have a Packard Bell laptop TG71B laptop for £200. Looks quite neat, though has a Celeron processor. In the past they weren't so good - but they're maybe better than Atoms. Whether it could do the kinds of things some of us want on occasions is still an interesting question. Also, not sure what OS it comes with - are most PCs now coming with Windows 10, or is there a variety? Presumably MS isn't offering any sort of upgrade guarantee which Apple usually does after a new OS release which might affect machines still in the pipeline in the shops.

Perhaps this review does explain why it's so cheap though - http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/review/bu...eview-3426133/

Re Bryn's earlier Macbook I'd forgotten that I had an early white plastic one around 2004 - which I managed to borrow from work to take to conferences and meetings. It was fine at the time until one day, perhaps about a year later, it just died and was handed back. It was OK until it gave up its ghost, but totally unfixable after that. I was glad I didn't have to pay.

As I wrote earlier, newer ones are generally better - usually much.

[Dave2002]

Another trip to Snaisburgs enabled me to look at three more of their cheap offerings. All were Windows 8 (8.1?). The two cheaper ones seemed to me to display a new development. They were said to have a sizeable amount of storage, but on closer inspection they seemed only to have about 30 Gbytes on board, and even then the memory was described as eMMC, which this article suggests is not the same as the better SSDs used in quite a lot of new mahines. The idea of using storage "off the machine" is something which various manufacturers have been pushing in recent years, but that really does not seem a good idea to me at all. The large store quoted in the specs appeared to be via OneDrive, and would require almost continuous network access to function. Admittedly some people might like this, particularly if it could deliver some cheap computer kit, and there are storage models using so-called cloud storage which could be very effecitve, though the whole cloud thing has been hyped up quite a lot IMO.

One such model would have most of an end user's data and programs actually residing and running on remote servers - with a possible argument for that model being that the remote servers might be orders of magnitude more powerful and faster than anything the end user might have, so that the communcations overhead would be relatively low. However, I think the argument in favour of that falls down for many of the everyday tasks which most end users actually carry out. There are some specialist applications where such a model might do better than running with data and programs on an end user machine, but really few of us are currently relying on such applications.

For me the other big problem, apart from the fact that any use of cloud storage will cause significant download/upload activity across an external network, is that data is stored externally. Despite assurances that it is safe and secure I do not believe that. If all a user's work data is stored on external sites, then it exposes the user to potential attack by all manner of agencies - some "legitimate" (e.g government, law enforcement etc.) - and some malicious. Some data might be considered safe enough - but other data might be highly confidential, and should never be exported off the "home" machine. This is a big area, and I don't think enough attention is being paid to this. Too many people are now sending data via email or drop box or using other network tools without thinking sufficiently of the implications if the data they are sending/receiving is intercepted or tampered with. I'll leave this for the moment ...

The last of the three machines I looked at cost more, and did indeed seem to have a reasonable amount of storage memory built in, as well as an optical drive.

I think at the moment many machines supplied with Windows 8 (8.1) can be freely upgraded to Windows 10, and the price may reflect this. The end user has to do some work to do the upgrade - Win 10 is not pre-installed, and the price differential between one with the system pre-installed and a slightly older model without might be as much as £150. I've heard that some upgrades are very easy to do, but not always. Apparently it's important to be able to get to Windoes 8.1 in order to be able to do the upgrade to Win 10 - and sometimes this hits snags.

I'm still looking at some cheap PC offerings, as some of them do provide a way of getting to Win 10 for not a lot. If I were to buy Windows 10 and try to install it on one of my iMac machines for example, the cost might not be alot cheaper than buying a cheap PC machine ready to go in some cases, and could require significant work.

[french frank]

I'm still looking at some cheap PC offerings, as some of them do provide a way of getting to Win 10 for not a lot. If I were to buy Windows 10 and try to install it on one of my iMac machines for example, the cost might not be alot cheaper than buying a cheap PC machine ready to go in some cases, and could require significant work.

Because it's topical to me and I'm still trialling - I'm not convinced it was the right solution for what I needed: I was charged £55 for partitioning my MacBook Pro and installing Windows 7 on one half. I imagine most semi IT literate people would do that, nae bother.

BUT 1) I didn't need to give Windows an equal partition because I'll use it for one program only, and its files; 2) the MacBook is just a convenient portable - I don't use it for anything that matters and don't even bother to back it up - everything important is transferred to the desktop.

[P. G. Tipps]

Because it's topical to me and I'm still trialling - I'm not convinced it was the right solution for what I needed: I was charged £55 for partitioning my MacBook Pro and installing Windows 7 on one half. I imagine most semi IT literate people would do that, nae bother.

BUT 1) I didn't need to give Windows an equal partition because I'll use it for one program only, and its files; 2) the MacBook is just a convenient portable - I don't use it for anything that matters and don't even bother to back it up - everything important is transferred to the desktop.

'Nae bother' indeed, at least using the Gparted facility in Linux, even without possessing any particular IT knowledge. However, others may consider £55 well spent for pure peace of mind by getting such things done by professional 'experts'.

Can anyone tell me if one can access Windows OS files on a separate partition via a Mac and vice-versa? I can peruse my Windows Vista () files from Linux but not the other way around..According to Microsoft, and contrary to the perceived actualité, Linux partitions are all a figment of our fevered technological imaginations, it seems.

[Dave2002]

'Nae bother' indeed, at least using the Gparted facility in Linux, even without possessing any particular IT knowledge. However, others may consider £55 well spent for pure peace of mind by getting such things done by professional 'experts'.

Can anyone tell me if one can access Windows OS files on a separate partition via a Mac and vice-versa? I can peruse my Windows Vista () files from Linux but not the other way around. According to Microsoft, and contrary to the perceived actualité, Linux partitions are all a figment of our fevered technological imaginations, it seems.

The partition has to be mounted to access the files, but I don't think that's a problem. It should be visible in Finder. Some partitions may be hidden, but it it possible to "unhide" them.

If the partition is FAT32, then all the files should be both readable and writeable. If by WinOS files you mean NTFS files, then MacOS won't deal with them directly, but it's possible to install tools to make them readable or enable inbuilt tools which MacOS hides away. I have done this in the past with external drives. Enabling write to NTFS is also possible.

There are pages such as this http://hints.macworld.com/article.ph...90913140023382 and this http://osxdaily.com/2013/10/02/enabl...port-mac-os-x/ which give some clues, but looking at them there do seem to be health warnings, and suggestions that things work differently on different versions of Mac OS X.

I think I did this in the past using drive utilities supplied with some external drives, but the pages mentioned above do make one wonder if the NTFS support is consistent and stable enough. Some drive manufacturers may have written their own NTFS drivers which work with their (any?) external drives, but again there might be concerns about how good the code is.

[P. G. Tipps]

Thanks, Dave, my Linux Partitions (whether a division or a separate disk) have never been recognised as even existing by Windows ... unless there is some way to 'unhide' them. Not that I'm ever that desperate to bother with Windows these days and delve into all that Registry stuff again.

Open source software has its huge advantages as well its oft-trailed weaknesses, at least in my experience..The now extensive choice of Linux 'desktop environments' to suit the user, and not simply one determined by the latest silly wheeze of system producers, is an obvious example..

[Dave2002]

Because it's topical to me and I'm still trialling - I'm not convinced it was the right solution for what I needed: I was charged £55 for partitioning my MacBook Pro and installing Windows 7 on one half. I imagine most semi IT literate people would do that, nae bother.

BUT 1) I didn't need to give Windows an equal partition because I'll use it for one program only, and its files; 2) the MacBook is just a convenient portable - I don't use it for anything that matters and don't even bother to back it up - everything important is transferred to the desktop.

How big/old is your Macbook Pro? Seems a shame to have now got one with effectively half the available backing storage , though maybe it's not a problem for you because of your pattern of work. My MBP has 256 Gbytes of SSD store, and it's pretty much maxed out - I'd be desolate if that were needlessly halved to 128 Gbytes.

However, some people do seem to manage with very small storage, including some business users.

[french frank]

How big/old is your Macbook Pro? Seems a shame to have now got one with effectively half the available backing storage , though maybe it's not a problem for you because of your pattern of work. My MBP has 256 Gbytes of SSD store, and it's pretty much maxed out - I'd be desolate if that were needlessly halved to 128 Gbytes.

However, some people do seem to manage with very small storage, including some business users.

Don't know/don't know (it's now downstairs). I think it's 2013, but I don't EVER download videos, don't need to download audio files, and keep photos on the iMac. So it really is just my own data files of which the important ones are stored on the iMac and the rest are just forgotten.

The MacBook is only for doing things when I'm out of the house. I really, really would hate to work very often on a fiddly laptop machine anyway. As for tablets …

[johnb]

Thanks, Dave, my Linux Partitions (whether a division or a separate disk) have never been recognised as even existing by Windows ... unless there is some way to 'unhide' them. Not that I'm ever that desperate to bother with Windows these days and delve into all that Registry stuff again.

Windows does not recognise Linux EXT3/EXT4 partitions (even if you do delve into the Registry). To read(/write) Linuz partitions on Windows you need to use a software utility. The one I use is "Paragon ExtFS" which is free and can be downloaded from here. Other similar free utilities are available.

I'm probably over cautious but I only use it to read from Linux partitions and not to write to them.

(My main computer is a Windows 7 desktop but I also run a Linux Server (a HP Microserver) with Ubuntu Server as the operating system and I have used EXT3 HDDs to transfer video files from a Humax box.)

[P. G. Tipps]

Windows does not recognise Linux EXT3/EXT4 partitions (even if you do delve into the Registry). To read(/write) Linuz partitions on Windows you need to use a software utility. The one I use is "Paragon ExtFS" which is free and can be downloaded from here. Other similar free utilities are available.

I'm probably over cautious but I only use it to read from Linux partitions and not to write to them.

(My main computer is a Windows 7 desktop but I also run a Linux Server (a HP Microserver) with Ubuntu Server as the operating system and I have used EXT3 HDDs to transfer video files from a Humax box.)

Interesting ... with most things to do with computing there's normally a way or ' a workaround' in geeky parlance.

[Dave2002]

Don't know/don't know (it's now downstairs). I think it's 2013, but I don't EVER download videos, don't need to download audio files, and keep photos on the iMac. So it really is just my own data files of which the important ones are stored on the iMac and the rest are just forgotten.

The MacBook is only for doing things when I'm out of the house. I really, really would hate to work very often on a fiddly laptop machine anyway. As for tablets …

Sounds like you have a good one then. Mine is also showing up as early 2013 - click on the Apple thingy at the top left fo find out. You can do About this Mac and then More info on the panel whcih comes up.

Just seems a shame to have only half of the original memory now available for Mac OS X if you are never really going to use Windows much. I'm guessing that's now about 128Gbytes - though as I said, many people do manage with that, and if it's not a problem for you stick with it.

Re tablets - I'm watching with some interest the availability, price and reports of the new iPad Pro - due out next Wednesday.
I didn't think I'd want/need one, but I do have an iPad (which I didn't think I'd want/need - but use it quite a lot) and because of other things I do now I think the iPad Pro might be good for some activities with which I'm involved.

There are undoubtedly problems with tablets (and iPhones - I don't have one of those) - and I think the lack of a sensible file store is a total disaster for people like me, but according to others I know, peole who are scared of "regular" computers find them OK. Must have weird brains I reckon!

Did you do Bootcamp, so you need to reboot into Windows to use the one program you need it for?

[french frank]

Did you do Bootcamp, so you need to reboot into Windows to use the one program you need it for?

THEY did Bootcamp. But it's Cox and Box-ish. I use the MacBook at home only for the Windows partition; away from home it will be just as a Mac.

Why would I need a lot of memory?

[MrGongGong]

THEY did Bootcamp. But it's Cox and Box-ish. I use the MacBook at home only for the Windows partition; away from home it will be just as a Mac.

Why would I need a lot of memory?

If you don't like typing on a laptop and find the screen too small you can use Target Disc Mode to run the laptop from the desktop.
(If that makes sense?)